Brian Sibley - The Thomas the Tank Engine Man: The life of Reverend W Awdry

Its been a long wait, but The Thomas the Tank Engine Man , Brian Sibleys biography of the Reverend W. Awdry (last in service in 1995) is back on the rails again in a revised and updated edition, ready to whisk you off for an excursion to meet Thomas, James, Gordon, Edward, and all the other Really Useful Engines on the Island of Sodor and to learn the story behind the books in the famous Railway Series and the modest Church of England clergyman who created them.

Dubbed by his detractors The Puff-Puff Parson, Wilbert Awdry seemed destined for a valuable but not especially distinguished career until the day when he needed to tell a bedtime story to his young son and, drawing on a lifetimes love and knowledge of steam locomotion, invented a little tale entitled Edwards Day Out. Eventually published, seventy years ago this year, in The Three Railway Engines (Thomas came down the line shortly afterwards) that was the beginning of a worldwide phenomenon.

The age of steam may be long gone but it lives on in the affection of millions of children who love Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, as you will know if you were ever one those children or if youve been called upon to read and re-read the adventures of Thomas and his engine friends, not to mention Bertie the Bus, Harold the Helicopter, and Sir Topham Hatt, the Fat Controller.

In 1984, I was privileged to meet the Reverend Awdry when I was working at the breakfast television station, TV-am, and Thomass creator came along as a guest with his son, Christopher, and Ringo Starr, who had just become the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine on TV. I was charmed by the unassuming Reverend Awdry, but he did not give much away. I thought then, Theres a fascinating story here, but I am not going to get it from the great man. I need not have worried: another great man Brian Sibley, who understands childrens writers better than any biographer I know has dug deep and found out all there is to know. With this book, you are definitely on the right track. So, climb aboard. And Tickets please!

Gyles Brandreth

February 2015

Point of Departure

It began with a telephone call: Do you know anything about the Thomas the Tank Engine man? It was John Forrest, then a radio producer with the BBCs Religious Broadcasting Department. I had worked with John on several religious programmes, and was known to have an obsessive fascination with childrens books and their writers, having already made radio features about A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll and J. M. Barrie.

However, I knew very little about the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine , other than the fact that he was the Reverend W. V. Awdry, a Church of England clergyman hence, I deduced, the interest from Religious Broadcasting. But the question awoke my curiosity, and by the end of our conversation I had agreed to research, write and present a programme about Mr Awdry and his famous little engines.

I must confess to having felt a little apprehensive. For one thing, while I had read The Three Railway Engines , Thomas the Tank Engine and a few of the other early books, I was certainly not familiar with all the titles in the Railway Series. Also, and this I hesitate to confess, I was in no sense a railway buff. When I was small, it was my father a lover of everything to do with railways who played with my clockwork Hornby 00 gauge train set while I, to his great irritation, preferred making up stories about the people who worked in the station and playing with the farm animals that lived alongside the line. When I grew older, my feelings towards engines tended to be governed by where they took you to the country or, even better, to the seaside.

However, having agreed to interview W. V. Awdry, I read the entire Railway Series and by the time my producer and I set off to meet the author I was not only steeped in the stories, I was bursting with questions. Happily, interviewer and interviewee hit it off on their first meeting and the result was an excellent programme, warmly received by the critics.

The work done, I found myself wondering whether the research I had started might not have another use possibly a book about Mr Awdry and his engines. Two years of discussions with various publishers were followed by five years of silence. Then, in 1993, Rosemary Debnam of Reed Childrens Books decided that with the approaching fiftieth anniversary of the Railway Series the time had at last come which is how I found myself sitting next to Wilbert Awdry at his eighty-second birthday lunch. To my great delight, our conversation virtually picked up where it had left off seven years before.