Thomas The Tank Engine
Let me guess… everyone’s suddenly talking about Thomas because The Fat Controller wants to furlough staff on his rail line.
No. Prince Harry has filmed an introduction for a show for the 75th anniversary of the Thomas The Tank Engine books. It’s the latest link to royalty. In 1949, the creator Wilbert Awdry sent a book as a first-birthday gift for Prince Charles, and a 1950s story had the Fat Controller (Sir Topham Hatt) meeting the Queen. A threeyear-old Harry took a Thomas bag to his first day of kindergarten. So Thomas goes back a bit?
Rev Awdry started writing when his son Christopher, now 79, was bed-ridden with measles aged two, amusing him with tales inspired by the engines he remembered from boyhood. The first book, published days after VE Day in 1945, didn’t include Thomas, but when the tank engine came along, children quickly identified with his eager naivety. The pictures must have helped…
Yes, although the Hampshire vicar got through several illustrators who didn’t meet his exacting standards. One called Awdry a ‘ pedantic, remote man’. He’d rewrite each page up to 26 times and mapped out a full geography for the fictional island of Sodor. Once called ‘the Puff Puff Parson’ – to his annoyance – the vicar was such a railway geek that three of his eight Desert Island Discs were recordings of locomotive sounds. His stories also had old-school Christian morals: bad behaviour was punished, repentance rewarded. To modern ears, the notion that every engine must know its place is contentious – and sexist, as male locomotives push female carriages around. But they made him rich?
Not as much as you might think. Biographer Brian Sibley says Awdry got £25 (£ 1,150 in today’s money) for his first book, and even at his most industrious he got a penny for each book sold. Not that it bothered him, as he lived a frugal life. TV brought greater success, after an inauspicious start. The BBC animated the adventures in 1953 – live on air with model trains. But one derailed and a massive hand put it back on the tracks, spoiling the illusion. It took 30 years for the next effort, the hit series narrated by Ringo Starr. And it’s still going strong…
Absolutely. Son Christopher started writing new stories in 1983 and it’s now a £ 800 million- a- year brand – Thomas ramen noodles, anyone? – with 200 million books sold. There might have been one about Harry, the Duke of Sussex… if Duke The Lost Engine hadn’t already been written in 1970. STEVE BENNETT