Barbara Toy
Barbara Alex Toy FRGS (11 August 1908 – 18 July 2001) was an Australian-British travel writer, theatrical director, playwright, and screenplay writer. She is most famous for the series of books she wrote about her pioneering and solitary travels around the world in a Land Rover, undertaken in the 1950s and 1960s. Toy was drawn to deserts, and so the majority of her journeys were in the arid lands of Northern Africa and the Middle East.[1]
Toy's first solo journey took place almost five years before the perhaps more celebrated six-man team Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition, a London to Singapore overland trip between September 1955 and March 1956 that was also undertaken in Land Rovers.[citation needed]
Life before Land Rovers
Toy was born in Sydney, on 11 August 1908 to Bert Frank Claud Toy and Nellie Frederica (Lowing) Toy, one of two daughters born to the couple.
In London Toy became involved in the theatrical world. After an unsuccessful stint as an actress,[7] from 1939 she worked behind the scenes at the Richmond Theatre in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames as assistant stage manager and then stage director.[1] She worked as a volunteer ambulance driver[2] and/or an air raid warden[1] during The Blitz. After bomb damage closed the Richmond Theatre in 1941,[5] Toy worked at the Welwyn Film Studios, where she met screenwriter and film director Norman Lee.[5][7] In 1943 under the pseudonym 'Norman Armstrong', she co-authored Lifeline with Lee, described as 'a play about the merchant navy in three acts' and her first published work, published by Samuel French.[1][8] Toy also co-authored a film screenplay with Lee, an adaptation of W. W. Jacobs' 1902 horror story The Monkey's Paw, the film of which was released in 1948.[9]
In 1945, Toy travelled to Germany and the Netherlands for
Travels in Land Rovers
Toy had travelled extensively with her husband. In her earlier years she had visited Thailand, Iceland, Europe including Yugoslavia and Greece, and Lebanon, and she had been made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of these travels. However, her life changed to one of solo overland expeditions and adventure in 1950, as a result of a bet made in a pub.[7][12] Toy has been recognised as a pioneer of long distance overland expeditions: not only was she one of the first people to undertake such expeditions (only a Colonel Leblanc had made such a journey before her, in 1949), she was the first woman to do so. Many of the expeditions that followed were team efforts, whereas Toy travelled alone and without support or backup.
First expedition 1950-1: Gibraltar to Baghdad and back to London
Toy had always wanted to visit
Second expedition 1952: Libya
Toy's second journey was through Libya. This six[20] or seven-month[21] expedition was undertaken in 1952.[20] She and Pollyanna arrived by ship at Tripoli. As well as travelling along the coastline, she made two journeys into the interior, to Traghen in Fezzan, and to Al Jawf (called El Giof by Toy) and El Tag in the Kufra oasis. Toy's guide to Kufra was the same man who had guided Rosita Forbes there in 1920-1.[22] In Tripoli, Toy met Major Gordon Lett, who had ordered many vehicles to be pushed over cliffs into the sea rather than let them fall into German hands at the second fall of Tobruk.[23] Toy spent some time in the desert looking for bodies with Herman Schultze-Dewitz, former ADC to Field Marshal Rommel and now in charge of the German War Graves Commission unit in Cyrenaica.[24] Toy dived in Benghazi, and three weeks after her dive the sunken ammunition ship near which she had been diving exploded.[25] She arrived back in the UK in October 1952.[20] Prior to setting out on this journey, Toy had Pollyanna fitted with a new station wagon body to replace her soft top; the flat roof was painted white to reflect the sun's rays.[26]
Third expedition 1953: Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
Another journey followed in 1953, beginning in Kuwait when she wrote to King Abdulaziz, the King of Saudi Arabia asking for permission to visit. Permission was granted, and Toy became one of the first women to explore Saudi Arabia and to meet the King and visit his harem.[3][27]
"Since then [her post-1990 trip to the Alps] I've taken her [Pollyanna, her 1950 Series I Land Rover] on a few runs. I did
John O'Groats just to keep her going but it was terribly dull ... I am planning another trip next year. I want to get back to the Yemenbut I'm having trouble getting insurance. When I ring up and say I'm 90 and my car's nearly 50, they seem to lose interest."
Barbara Toy, speaking in 1998.[28]
Fourth expedition 1956-7: Round the world
Her 'boldest feat'[2] was her fourth journey, a round-the-world trip in Pollyanna, through Europe and Turkey to Pakistan, through Asia, from Perth to Sydney and finally from San Francisco to New York, a journey that she described in her 1958 book, Columbus was Right!: Rover around the world. She had reached Singapore by March 1957[27] and was in Australia by May that year.[7]
Fifth expedition 1959: Libya, Central African Republic, Congo, Tanganyika, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya
Toy felt that her fifth journey, in 1959, was when she became a real 'explorer'. She travelled from Libya to the
Sixth expedition 1961: Timbuktu to Tripoli
In another journey, undertaken in 1961
Expeditions in later life
In 1990, at the age of 81 and as Vice-President of the Land Rover Register 1948–1953, Toy set off on her second world tour in the original Pollyanna. She successfully completed a second circumnavigation and was home just in time for Christmas.[2] After that, she made a trip across the Alps, retracing the steps of the journey made by Hannibal and his elephants.[28]
Toy was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and received the Rover Award for one of her journeys.[30]
Pollyanna
Pollyanna was Toy's first Land Rover, in which she undertook the journeys described in her first four books. It was a 1950 80" soft-top Series I Land Rover, a demonstration model (i.e. second hand) bought in late 1951 from Henly's in Osnaburgh Street in London for £640,[13][28] with the registration KYH 628. Thanks to the publicity generated by her books about her travels, Toy entered into a sponsorship deal with Rover, the makers of Land Rovers. Before her second journey, to Libya some time between 1953 and 1955, Toy had Pollyanna fitted with a new station wagon body to replace her soft top, and the flat roof was painted white to reflect the sun's rays[26] In around 1960 (dates vary: some sources say 1958), after nearly a decade of service and 210,000 miles of travel, Rover pressured Toy into exchanging Pollyanna for a newer long wheel base Series II model, as the company felt she could not be seen representing the marque in an old-fashioned and battered 1950 Land Rover. Rover then gave Pollyanna to a technical mechanics' college in Chesterfield.[3][28] It was later recognised as the iconic Pollyanna and bought and restored by a Mr Shakespeare, a Land Rover enthusiast.[11] He showed it at shows and rallies, and approached Toy for memorabilia from her travels to display at such events. She asked to buy Pollyanna back, but he refused.[28] In 1989, after he had died, Toy was able to buy Pollyanna from his estate for £3,500, paying five times what she had originally paid for it.[28][32] A passage in Toy's book In Search of Sheba: Across the Sahara to Ethiopia (1961) describes her feelings on being forced to trade in her beloved Pollyanna for a newer, unwanted model—and one which she considered to be less reliable.
By 2009, Pollyanna was in the ownership of Tom Pickford and his father Guy,[14][28] who during Toy's lifetime had looked after it for her at their workshop. It can occasionally be seen at specialist car shows and rallies.
Personal life
In a newspaper article of 13 February 1963, Toy was described as a widow.[3] Her obituary in The Times stated that she was married briefly to Ewing Rixson and that they had no children.[2] In 1998 Toy was living in Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire;[28] she died in Banbury on 18 July 2001, just three and a half weeks before her 93rd birthday.[2]
Works
Plays and screenplays
- 1943 Lifeline. Play, co-authored with Norman Lee with Toy writing under the pseudonym 'Norman Armstrong'.
- 1948 The Monkey's Paw. Film screenplay, co-authored with Norman Lee.
- 1949 Murder at the Vicarage. Play, co-authored with Moie Charles.
- 1950 Random Harvest. Play, co-authored with Moie Charles.
- 1953 Man in Grey. Play, co-authored with Moie Charles.
Books
All but the last were published by John Murray in London.
- 1955 A Fool on Wheels: Tangier to Baghdad by Land-Rover (First journey, undertaken in 1950-1)
- 1956 A Fool in the Desert: Journey in Libya (Second journey, undertaken in 1952)
- 1957 A Fool Strikes Oil: Across Saudi Arabia (Third journey, undertaken in 1953)
- 1958 Columbus was Right!: Rover around the world (Fourth journey, undertaken in 1956-7)
- 1961 In Search of Sheba: Across the Sahara to Ethiopia (Fifth journey, undertaken in 1959)
- 1964 The Way of the Chariots: Niger River – Sahara – Libya (Sixth journey, undertaken in 1961)
- 1968 The Highway of the Three Kings: Arabia from south to north
- 1970 Rendezvous in Cyprus
- 2009 (posthumously) Travelling the Incense Route: From Arabia to the Levant in the Footsteps of the Magi
Articles
- 1961 "Wahni, The Princes’ Prison Mountain" in The Cornhill Magazine, Spring 1961, no. 1027, 16–31. London: John Murray.
See also
Further reading
- Debra Adelaide, Bibliography of Australian Women's Literature 1795–1990: A Listing of Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Non-Fiction Published in Monograph Form Arranged Alphabetically by Author. 1991. Melbourne: D. W. Thorpe in association with NCAS. Entry for Barbara Toy.
- M. D. Allen, 'Barbara Toy 11 August 1908–', Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 204: British Travel Writers, 1940–1997. Edited by Barbara Brothers, Julia M. Gergits and Gale Cengage. 1999. Detroit: Gale, pages 288–296.
- Jane Robinson, Wayward Women: A Guide to Women Travellers. 1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
References and notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Barbara Toy". austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Barbara Toy, 92: Travelled the world in her Land Rover 'Pollyanna'". The Times. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ a b c d e Henty, Carol (13 February 1963). "A woman's-eye view of Timbuktu ..." The Australian Women's Weekly. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ a b "Mr Bert Toy". Sydney Morning Herald. 30 September 1931. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ a b c "Toy, Barbara". Sydney University Annotated Bibliography of Australian Travel Writing 1830 – 1970. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
- ^ a b "To-day's Diary". Evening News (Sydney). 6 December 1930. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f "A 'toy' on wheels". The Australian Women's Weekly. 15 May 1957. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
- ^ "Lifeline a play of the Merchant Navy in three acts". Imperial War Museum. Archived from the original on 16 January 2014. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ "The Monkey's Paw (1948) Full Cast & Crew". imdb. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ISBN 0-00-216330-6.
- ^ a b "Barbara Toy". www.allisons.org. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ The dates of Toy's travels are sometimes hard to establish. She rarely mentioned dates in her books. The date of her first expedition has been given in various sources as 1949, 1950 and 1951. Toy even contradicts herself in various interviews, sometimes mentioning 1950 and sometimes 1951.
- ^ a b Barbara Toy, 1955, A Fool on Wheels, pages 9–10
- ^ a b Pickford, Tom (March 2010). "Tom Pickford Writes. Preparation for a trip to Australia, July 2010" (PDF). Full Grille, The Newsletter of The Land Rover Register 1948 – 1953. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ Barbara Toy, 1955, A Fool on Wheels, page 251
- JSTOR 4199548
- ^ Barbara Toy, 1956, A Fool in the Desert, page 8
- ^ Barbara Toy, 1955, A Fool on Wheels, pages 19–20
- ^ "Barbara Toy. A Fool on Wheels. Review". The Spectator, no. 6618, 29 April 1955, page 557.
- ^ a b c "Woman Finds Lipstick Morale in The Desert". The West Australian. 18 October 1952. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
- ^ Barbara Toy, 1956, A Fool in the Desert, dustjacket inner front flap
- ^ Barbara Toy, 1956, A Fool in the Desert, pages 145–6
- ^ Barbara Toy, 1956, A Fool in the Desert, pages 130–2
- ^ Barbara Toy, 1956, A Fool in the Desert, pages 122–30
- ^ Barbara Toy, 1956, A Fool in the Desert, pages 104–111
- ^ a b Barbara Toy, 1956, A Fool in the Desert, page 3
- ^ a b "She was invited to King Saud's palace". The Straits Times. 20 March 1957. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Tarrant, Fiona (29 September 1998). "Queen of the desert". Oxford Mail. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
- ^ "Land Rover FAQ – Vehicle Identification – Dormobiles – Books".
- ^ a b "Barbara Toy (author profile)". Macmillan.com. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
- ^ Hall, David. "Leave in the Sahara 1961" (PDF). davidnhall.org.uk. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
- ^ "'Pollyanna': Barbara Toy's 1950 Series I Land Rover SWB". series123.com. Retrieved 16 January 2014.