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 homour, 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 an Australian. In 1998 when about 90, 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.

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, 1950; dramatised by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy.