S02E26 Music Hath Charms by L T C Rolt

Music Hath Charms by LTC RoltLionel Thomas Caswall Rolt, was an English writer born in 1910 and who died in 1974, therefore for us, he's a recent writer! He was a prolific writer who had an interest in engineering and that shows in this story in his description of the tunnels and the knowledge of ventilation shafts which are integral to the plot of the story.  In keeping with this love of engineering, he wrote biographies of major engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. He had a major enthusiasm for vintage cars, heritage railways and was a pioneer of the canal cruising industry.  From 1936, Rolt decided he wanted a life afloat and he converted his uncle's old boat Cressy into a boat he could live in and spent his time mooching up and down the canals of England. During the Second World War, he went to work for Rolls Royce and made Spitfire engines, the Royal Airforce's legendary fighter plan.  After the war, Rolt teamed up with Robert Aickman, another major ghost story writer to form the Inland Waterways Association to promote the use of the canals and restore them.  L T C or Tom Rolt was an accomplished author and an inland waterway enthusiast, and together with the another famous ghost story writer, Robert Aickman, and their wives, formed the Canal Restoration Trust which was responsible for bringing back the industrial waterway network of England and Wales back into service for leisure travel. When we know Rolt's love of machinery we understand the detailed description of how the musical box works in Music Hath Charms. I now know all about them. He also gives more detail than many would to about bus timetables. The story is set in wild Cornwall, which because of its remoteness and its Celtic past is a suitably remote setting for a ghost story. Cornwall has a history of smugglers and wreckers and this is the background to this story. We also see that another author who set her work in Cornwall, Daphne Du Maurier often used smugglers and indeed Frenchmen