Narrow Boat

First published in 1944, and now reissued with new black-and-white illustrations and a foreword by Jo Bell, Canal Laureate, this book has become a classic on its subject, and may be said to have started a revival of interest in the English waterways. It was on a spring day in 1939 that L.T.C. Rolt first stepped aboard Cressy. This engaging book tells the story of how he and his wife adapted and fitted out the boat as a home, and recreates the journey of some 400 miles that they made along the network of waterways in the Midlands. It recalls the boatmen and their craft, and celebrates the then seemingly timeless nature of the English countryside through which they passed. As Sir Compton Mackenzie wrote, ‘it is an elegy of classic restraint unmarred by any trace of sentiment’ for a way of life and a rural landscape that have now all but disappeared. AUTHOR: L. T. C. ROLT trained as an engineer, but his fame rests on his classic biographies of Brunel, Telford, Trevithick, and the Stephensons, his superb volumes of autobiography (“Landscape with Machines,” “Landscape with Canals,” and “Landscape with Figures”), his volumes of transport history, and “Red for Danger,” an account of railway disasters of Britain. He founded the Inland Waterways Association and was instrumental in encouraging interest in Britain’s industrial heritage at Tal-y-llyn and elsewhere.

Author Biography

L T C ROLT was born in Chester on 9 February 1910 and died in 1974. He was an engineer and craftsman, whose passion for Britain’s industrial heritage led him to become one of the foremost historians of the 20th century. He was joint founder of the Inland Waterways Association. He also wrote Narrow Boat, Red for Danger and the famous Landscape Trilogy.