Browsing recently in a charity shop, I came across a copy of a book I had at home on my shelf of treasured children’s books. I was young when I first read it and it proved to be a seminal book, one to which I have been indebted ever since. First published in 1937, it was written by a Wesleyan minister who roamed England in a horse-drawn caravan, writing as he went of the countryside and its wildlife. He called himself Romany.
Born in 1884 in Hull, “Romany” was George Bramwell Evens, the son of a true-blood gipsy mother and a Salvation Army lieutenant father. His fame grew gradually from the appearance of his first book A Romany in the Fields in 1929. This was followed by three more until 1937 when Out with Romany was published, the first in a series of six books which continued until his death in 1943. All the books became bestsellers and Romany became a household name with his Out with Romany programmes on BBC Radio. These began on BBC Northern Children’s Hour and went nationwide in 1938.
The programmes and books provided welcome relief and interest throughout the war, when everyone yearned for a romantic view of the countryside, a yearning that is still with us today.
The reason for Romany’s success was the skill with which he imparted expert knowledge of natural history with an air of relaxed enjoyment. He was the David Attenborough of his day for the young, initiating an enthusiasm for wildlife.
To appreciate his books we have to look to his formative years. Although his childhood was imbued with the Christian religion, a life devoted to it was not the sort of life he would have chosen for himself. His mother, in later years, admitted: “I gave him to the church before he was born,” and he never found the over-emotionalism of Mission meetings to his liking.
At school he was an all-round athlete, captain of football and cricket, had a talent for art and was a gifted musician. Fortunately, his headmaster interpreted the Bible in a way that treated equally the beauty of religion and the natural world around him. Steered as he was
into Wesleyan ways, he became a genuinely sincere and convinced Christian. A rebellious streak remained, however, and a tendency to be outspoken singled him out from the early days of his induction.
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Browsing recently in a charity shop, I came across a copy of a book I had at home on my shelf of treasured children’s books. I was young when I first read it and it proved to be a seminal book, one to which I have been indebted ever since. First published in 1937, it was written by a Wesleyan minister who roamed England in a horse-drawn caravan, writing as he went of the countryside and its wildlife. He called himself Romany.
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