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Wilbert Awdry

British author and vicar (1911–1997)

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Through Children's literature and World War I

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Early life and education

Wilbert Awdry was born at Ampfield vicarage near Romsey, Hampshire, on 15 June 1911. His father was Vere Awdry (1854–1928), the Anglican vicar of Ampfield, and his mother was Lucy Awdry (née Bury; 1884–1965). When Wilbert was born his mother Lucy Awdry described her newborn son as a "short (but perfectly formed) baby who had long fingers. and toes, a 'mouse-face' (with the Awdry chin and ears) and a loud and persistent voice." Vere Awdry was the son of judge Sir John Wither Awdry and brother of bishop William Awdry. Wilbert was derived from William and Herbert, names of his father's two brothers. His younger brother, George, was born on 10 August 1916 and died on 27 October 1994. All three of Awdry's older half-siblings from his father's first two marriages died young, the youngest being killed in World War I. As a toddler at Ampfield, he saw his father construct a handmade 40-yard (37 m), 2.5-inch-gauge (64 mm) model railway. In 1917, the family moved to Box, in Wiltshire, moving again within Box in 1919 and in 1920, the third house being "Journey's End" (renamed from "Lorne Villa"), which remained the family home until August 1928.

"Journey's End" was only 200 yards (180 m) from the western end of Box Tunnel, where the Great Western Railway main line climbs at a gradient of 1 in 100 for 2 miles (3.2 km). A banking engine was kept there to assist freight trains up the hill. Those trains usually ran at night, and the young Awdry could hear them from his bed, listening to the coded whistle signals between the train engine and the banker, as well as the sharp bark from the locomotive exhausts as they fought their way up the incline. When Awdry lay in bed he described the sound of the engines: "It needed little imagination", he wrote, "to hear, in the sounds the train engine and banking engine made, what they were saying to each other." "There was no doubt in my mind that steam engines all had definite personalities. I would hear them snorting up the grade and little imagination was needed to hear in the puffings and pantings of the two engines the conversation they were having with one another." There was the inspiration for the story of Edward helping Gordon's train up the hill, a story that Wilbert first told his son Christopher some 25 years later, and which appeared in the first of the Railway Series books.

Awdry was educated at Marlborough House School, Hawkhurst, Kent (1919–1924), Dauntsey's School, West Lavington, Wiltshire (1924–1929), St Peter's Hall, Oxford (BA, 1932), and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, where he gained his diploma in theology in 1933.

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