Green cloth binding with brown title on the spine.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

•          Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list

•  Hardcover. Condition: Good. No dust Jacket. Illustrated by Reg Gammon. 1949 reprint. A 1930s style of natural history for children.

Review: My grandparents had a copy of this book when I was a child, and I always loved reading it and looking at the pictures. Part of my pleasure in owning my own copy therefore has to be nostalgia, but it was also a real pleasure to find the condition of the book had been so accurately described by the seller – even down to the amount of scuffing and (very minor) damage to the spine. In fact the book was in far better condition than I had ever hoped I would find. My apologies for not posting a comment sooner, but many thanks to the sellers – hardingsbookshop – who delivered the book so promptly and had posted such an accurate description of its condition. I am really thrilled with the book and hope to have many years enjoying it.

The Rev. George Bramwell Evens (15 February 1884 – 20 November 1943) was, under the pseudonym Romany (and sometimes The Tramp), a British radio broadcaster and writer on countryside and natural history matters – quite possibly the first to broadcast on such issues. He was also a Minister of the Methodist Church. Evens’ mother was Romani, born in a vardo (Romany wagon). His father was Salvation Army Lieutenant George Evens, a native of Plymouth. He was born at 3 Argyll Street, Anlaby Road, Hull, England and educated at Epworth College, Rhyl, as boarder, then at Queens College, Taunton. He married Eunice, the daughter of The Reverend Owen Thomas on 1 August 1911.

He is most famous for his Out with the Romany radio programmes (later Out with Romany), which commenced in 1933 on the BBC‘s Children’s Hour, describing travels in his own vardo (purchased in 1921, at Brough Hill Fair, for £75), with Comma the horse, his English Cocker Spaniel Raq, and his young friends Muriel and Doris. Although the programmes were all pre-scripted and performed entirely in the studio, the impression given was of Romany and his friends going for a walk in the countryside and spontaneously discussing the plants and animals they came across. Raphael Samuel saw the programme as instrumental in making the countryside desirable for a generation of listeners. Simon Barnes has paid tribute to how his father (radio) and himself (books) were drawn to natural history by Romany: “I longed to walk through the country with the all-knowing, all-seeing Romany”.

As a Methodist minister, Evens’ ministries included Goole; the Methodist Central Hall, Carlisle (1914–1926); Huddersfield (1926–1929); and the King Cross Methodist Chapel, Halifax (1929–1939), after which ill health forced him to give up the ministry. He retired to Wilmslow, where he died, leaving his wife, son Glyn and daughter, Romany June.He lived at Number 1, Parkway, Wilmslow and he died in the house following feeling unwell building a Cumbrian stone rockery in the garden. His ashes were scattered, at his request, at Old Parks Farm, Glassonby, Cumbria, which he had enjoyed visiting over a 22-year period: in 2001, a memorial to him was erected there by The Romany Society.

The vardo was donated, unconditionally, by his widow, to the forerunners of Cheshire East Borough Council (CEBC). For many years it was displayed by CEBC, outdoors, in Wilmslow. In late 2012, having deteriorated badly, it was restored and moved to Bradford Industrial Museum, to be displayed indoors.

The Romany Society, originally formed in 1943, disbanded in 1965, and re-founded in 1996, celebrates his life and work, with regular newsletters and an annual magazine. Its patron is Terry Waite. The BBC radio programmes were all broadcast live, and only one recording survives – dated October 1943, just a month before his death. It was released on CD in 2006.