The Flower of Gloster

Themple Thurston's original book opens with the author dreaming of escape to the English countryside and trying to buy a narrowboat from which to see it. After meeting with scepticism and warnings about the unsavoury nature of canal people, he is advised to go to Oxford to view The Flower of Gloster. The boatyard owner, similarly sceptical, advises him to hire 'some decent fellar with an horse, what'll look after yer going through the locks.'.[3] He introduces him to Eynsham Harry who, after some protracted negotiations in The Nags Head, agrees to be Temple Thurston's guide and mentor.[4]

Their journey takes them first along the Oxford Canal to just north of Banbury, where they join the sprawling network of Midlands canals. They head north through Warwick and Leamington Spa, but as they near the heavily industralised landscape of the Black Country Temple Thurston begins to have some doubts about continuing and beseeches Eynsham Harry to turn the boat around – no easy task! - and head back via the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal to the pastoral landscapes they have so recently passed through.[5]

At one point in the journey, Temple Thurston abandoned the canal in order to walk along the River Avon to Evesham and Tewkesbury, where het met up again with Eynsham Harry and The Flower of Gloster. According to David Viner's analysis of the text, the seemingly simple circuit of Oxford-Banbury-Warwick-Stratford-Tewkesbury-Oxford would not have been as straightforward as the author portrays it.[6] Viner questions whether the journey ever took place in its entirety, the story was a composite of several journeys or canalside visits made on separate occasions. Whatever the truth, Viner concluded that none of the doubts on the literal interpretation of the journey detract from the book's value as a 'good read', an example of Edwardian romanticism, or its influence on canal history which has now lasted over a century.[7] He is said to be the last person to navigate the Thames and Severn Canal.

Advert for original edition

Setting down his own experiences thirty years later in his book Narrow Boat, historian L.T.C. Rolt referred to The Flower of Gloster with delight, saying that it held pride of place in his own tiny collection of canal literature, the only professional account to have appeared in the previous fifty years.[9]

The 1911 edition of Flower of Gloster included six watercolour scenes and numerous line drawings, all by Scottish artist W.R. Dakin and based on the author's photographs. The illustrations appear to have been a large part of the book's appeal and in its review of 'a delightful book' The Westminster Gazette said that the illustrations were 'among the sincerest, most spontaneous and charming ever seen in modern books'.[10] The Scotsman's reviewer noted that the book's value was heightened by 'the excellent sketches by W.R. Dakin in black and white and colours'.[11] Dakin was a contributor to The Bookman, a monthly review magazine. As editor of the 1968 David & Charles edition, L.T.C. Rolt dropped Dakin's watercolours in favour of eight of Temple Thurston's original photographs. The photographs were kept for the 1984 book, mixed in with many more contemporary photographs which editor David Viner[12] thought gave Temple Thurston's account a 'period feel' as it was a time of great activity for photographers recording social life and customs for use as postcards.[13]

An American edition was published by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1912. The US version was identical to the first British editions apart from the original ‘Art Deco’ cover, which was changed to include an illustration of a boat more in tune with the American concept of a canal barge

In 1967, Granada TV broadcast a 13-part children's serial called The Flower of Gloster, loosely based on Thurston's original. When their boatyard owner father is taken ill, his eldest son Dick, accompanied by siblings 10-year-old Michael and 12-year-old Elizabeth, volunteers to deliver a narrow-boat – The Flower of Gloster - to a buyer on his behalf. During their 220-mile trip south they make new friends, face dangers and difficulties, played out against the changing patterns of the British countryside. Their course winds its way from Wales, through the inland waterways of England to the Pool of London at Tower Bridge.

It was the first Granada TV series to be filmed in colour (though initially transmitted in black and white). Professional actors Richard O'Callaghan and Annette Robertson, were cast alongside real-life siblings Elizabeth and Mike Doherty playing the younger children. Also appearing were many of the real-life canal folk, by then an almost extinct as a breed.

The TV serial was followed a few years later by a book of the same name, authored by the producer Bill Grundy.[14] Grundy intended the series to be educational as much as adventure, with information about geology and wildlife. He claimed to have got the idea after visiting a rally near his home in Marple[15]

• The Flower of Gloster at IMDb