Barbara Toy

Barbara Toy was a great traveller, driving Land-Rovers on her adventures, mainly in North Africa and the Middle East, during the 1950s and 1960s. She wrote a series of books describing her travels, starting with A Fool on Wheels, in which she drove her first Land-Rover, Pollyanna, across North Africa.

In her third book, A Fool Strikes Oil, she wrote to the King of Saudi Arabia, asking if she might visit his country. Permission granted, she set off from Kuwait. Barbara Toy was a keen observer, with a sense of humour, and a touch of self deprecation, but she was no fool.

About 1959 the Land-Rover company replaced the short wheel base series-1 Pollyanna with a long wheel base series-2. Pollyanna has given to a boys' school. A Mr. Shakespeare later obtained Pollyanna and after his death Ms. Toy repurchased Pollyanna and, in 1990, took it (her?) on a second world trip (-- Michael Bishop).

Barbara Toy was born an Australian. In 1998 she told journalist F. Tarrant "in the 1940s I was married to a Finnish American [until we] drifted apart." She moved to England, became an actor, and even adapted Agatha Christie's Murder at the Vicarage for the stage. Barbara Toy died in 2001; she was 92.

Books

Barbara Toy, A Fool on Wheels, 1955; Tangier to Baghdad.

Barbara Toy, A Fool in the Desert, 1956; journeys in Libya.

Barbara Toy, A Fool Strikes Oil, 1957; Kuwait to Saudi Arabia.

Barbara Toy, Columbus was Right!, 1958; her round the world trip.

Barbara Toy, In Search of Sheba, 1961.

Barbara Toy, The Way of the Chariots, 1964; Niger River, Sahara, Libya.

Barbara Toy, The Highway of the Three Kings, 1968; Arabia, south to north.

Barbara Toy, Rendezvous in Cyprus, 1970.

Pollyanna, KYH 628, in 2009

And also

Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage, 1949, dramatised by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy.

The Man In Grey, by Barbara Toy and Moie Charles, from the novel by Lady Eleanor Smith.

Random Harvest, Moie Charles and Barbara Toy, based on the book by James Hilton.