In Search of a Dream

In Search of a Dream

The Life and Work of Roye England

This book tells the story of the life and work of a remarkable man whose ambition was to capture a portait of 1930s rural England that was fat disappearing, and to present it in miniature form - in a model village of hitherto unimagined accuracy and detail, complete with a landscape of fields and woodlandsand with a representation of the GWR running through the scene. The inspiration for the dream - like project was the once beautiful Vale of White Horse, which Roye first visited soon after his arrival in England in 1925, and which he subsequently made both his physical and spiritual home. Out of the enterprise grew the world - famous Pendon Museum of Miniature Landscape and Transport that Roye established at Long Wittenham, Oxfordshire from 1954. The story, which is semi - autobiographical, is not a history of Pendon per se. The book also presents one man's reflections upon the changing world in which he lived, of the despoiling of the countryside ( as Roye saw it )in the name of ' progress ', of the heyday of steam railways and the eventual demise of steam - hauled services and of greater matters too.

The book has a few small creases, but this does not effect the contents of this fine book.

Softcover, 224 pages, 269 b/w illustrations