The Reverend W Awdry was a devoted pastor and family man, who adored trains. He started to tell stories about Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, in order to entertain his son Christopher. Those stories have gone on to entertain generations of children around the world.
Awdry was a man of courage, who believed that you should live by certain rules. He built his imaginary world on the island of Sodor on these rules, and showed how those who transgressed them would always be 'punished, but never scrapped', as he said.
A convinced pacifist, he was thrown out of one curacy and denied another during the Second World War, because of his beliefs. Never afraid to fight for what he thought was right, he argued with his publishers and his illustrators, demanding the best for his favourite creations - the trains and their friends.
With a foreword by Gyles Brandreth