Photography by Richard Giordano
Sitting under a vintage map of Chipping Norton, I wait for my Scotch egg and gin and tonic. Cool autumnal weather typical of the Cotswolds had led me inside, and I figured a good book and an English pub were the perfect antidote. Opening my current read, Barbara Toy’s In Search of Sheba, I pondered the significance of starting the book at the author’s old neighborhood pub, a 17th-century coach house with stone walls and leather seats. The Australian-born adventuress, who passed away at age 92 in 2001, used to live just up the street. Did she order Scotch eggs here, too? I wondered.
Flipping open the book, I’m transported to 1959, where Toy is transferring ownership of her 1950 Series I Land Rover, Pollyanna, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to a technical college in Chesterfield, England. After 210,000 miles and nearly a decade of worldwide travel with Pollyanna, Toy agrees to exchange the battered Series I for a brand-new Series II, satisfying Land Rover’s marketing goals. Leaving the Rover factory, Toy lets out the Series II clutch, feeling the extra power. Passing Pollyanna on the way out, she breaks, tears rolling down her cheeks. I gulp my gin and tonic, knowing all too well the attachment one can develop with a trusted vehicle. Turning to look at the map, I spy my next stop 25 miles away. I was going to see Pollyanna.
Like any solid plan, Toy announced her intention to drive to Baghdad as part of a bet made in a pub. She was directing plays for a theatre production company in London at the time and encountered a group of youngsters tucked into a round of pints. The story goes, according to an interview by the Observer in 1962, the kids were “grizzling about having won the war but lost the peace—this was 1949—and how you just couldn’t get away from it all. I said that was ridiculous. Why the hell couldn’t they just get up and go if they really wanted to?” Toy, “never learning to keep my mouth shut,” told the group she would “cut loose, give up the job, get a car and drive to see an old friend in Baghdad.”
But first, she needed a vehicle. “‘A cheap Jeep that’ll get me there,’ was my slogan while I interviewed scores of London car peddlers,” she wrote of her search in A Fool on Wheels. But a Jeep wasn’t in the cards as she couldn’t find a suitable one for sale. Undiscouraged, Toy turned her attention to Land Rover, successfully finding a demonstration model 1950 80-inch Series I, thanks to a friend who knew a manager at Henly’s. She bought the Rover, registration KYH628, for £630 and named it Pollyanna because it sounded “so very square and solid, and therefore very appropriate.”
To prepare Pollyanna for the journey to Baghdad via North Africa, Toy worked with a crew at Henly’s, who built a lid on the rear of the body and padlocked the hood, toolbox, fuel tank, door, spare wheel, and fire extinguisher. The Automobile Association produced a route map to Baghdad with mileage, accommodation, and water and petrol sources (or areas without them) in the desert regions. Rattling with padlocks, which she soon would realize she didn’t need, Toy admitted being “happier than I could have ever remember being in all my life.”
By then, Toy was in her early forties. Born in Sydney, Australia, on August 11, 1908, she became an avid reader, spending much of her childhood in her father’s library. Bert Toy worked as literary editor of the Sydney Bulletin and put together an extensive home collection, including everything from Virginia Woolf to Havelock Ellis, Henry Williamson, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her love for travel developed during a short marriage to Ewing Rixson, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society who was serving as the consulate for Panama in Sydney. The couple traveled extensively, visiting most of Europe, China, Lapland, Lebanon, the South Sea Islands, and beyond.
Settling in London after separating from Rixson, Toy spent the war years on stage as an actress (briefly), an assistant stage manager of the Richmond Theatre, and an air-raid warden. Rubbing elbows with director Norman Lee, who she joined to co-write Lifeline, a 1943 merchant navy play, she went on to dramatize three novels, including Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and James Hilton’s Random Harvest. She resigned from her management position with the Connaught Theatre to become, unbeknownst to her at the time, one of the pioneers of long-distance overland travel, doing so alone, without support or backup, nearly five years before the illustrious six-man Oxford and Cambridge Eastern Expedition team drove from London to Singapore.
At the end of 1950, Toy shipped Pollyanna to Gibraltar, where her first long-distance journey began. She drove through Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and, winning the bet, arrived in Iraq in 1951. She and Pollyanna spent the next nine years traveling through Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and around the world, including Asia, Australia, and the United States. The Series I proved a reliable travel companion that garnered attention everywhere she went. Asked about any mechanical problems by a journalist in 1957, Toy spoke of an issue with Pollyanna’s petrol tank on the Arabian Peninsula: “Imagine my horror when she suddenly burst into flame! I rushed for the fire extinguisher and couldn’t make it work. Then some Arabs flung sand over her and she went like a bird after that. All she’d been doing was letting off steam. And it did her a world of good, as it does most women.”
By 1959, Pollyanna was used by the technical mechanics’ college for practical demonstrations or odd jaunts by the lads during the holidays. Despite the initial shock of parting with her trusty travel companion, Toy could think of no better place for the vehicle. The Series II, which she drove to Ethiopia, was eventually replaced with a third Land Rover, a 109-inch Series IIA Dormobile she piloted from Timbuktu to Tripoli. Meanwhile, Pollyanna had changed hands and was owned by a Land Rover enthusiast, a Mr. Shakespeare, who displayed the vehicle at shows throughout England. Eager to accompany Pollyanna with some memorabilia and photographs, Shakespeare called Barbara for a favor. In an interview with the Oxford Mail in 1998, Toy remembers the phone call: “I asked if I could buy her back. He said no.”
In 1989, Barbara received a telephone call. Mr. Shakespeare had died. Toy bought Pollyanna from the estate for £3,500—five times what she had originally paid in 1950. By this time, the Solihull factory was no longer offering maintenance services, so Barbara was on the hunt for a mechanic. Fortunately, through the Land Rover Register, she found Guy Pickford, who ran a service and repair business. Toy, then in her early ’80s, had Guy recommission Pollyanna in preparation for her second round-the-world tour in 1990. She arrived home just in time for Christmas. Barbara continued road-tripping with Pollyanna until she died in 2001, including retracing the route of Hannibal’s elephants across the Alps and journeying from Land’s End to John o’Groats, which she referred to as being “terribly dull.” Guy cared for Pollyanna during Toy’s lifetime, frequently visiting Rover gatherings, and offering the vehicle to his son, Tom, while supervising his first drive around the family farm at age thirteen.
Pulling a North American-spec Toyota into a yard filled with old Land Rovers is bound to make you feel out of place. A lineup of Series trucks sporting various shades of green patina caught my eye as we pulled alongside an old barn with stone walls and a weathered wooden door. Pollyanna was tucked somewhere inside. Heading to the shop, I spotted various treasures, from half-dismantled Series trucks to engine blocks awaiting their fate to a table filled with rare copies of Barbara Toy books, old photographs, newspaper clippings, and an original Henly’s sales invoice dated December 1950. I’d spent months searching for Toy’s rare travelogues, flew to Saudi Arabia inspired by her stories in Travelling the Incense Route, and pulled publisher’s files at the Scottish National Library purely out of curiosity. This was a big day. A bearded gent wearing a hoodie and a smile stepped forward to grasp my hand. “Hi, I’m Tom.”
Finally, I looked up toward Pollyanna. “Go on, then,” he said, encouraging me to take a closer look. At first glance, the Series I is petite, like its former owner, but instantly recognizable with the KYH628 registration, army green jerry cans resting on the front bumper, and antique Automobile Association badges from Ghana, India, the Sahara, and beyond.
The interior is dusty and bare bones, with incredibly thin aluminum panels and doors that remind me how far we’ve come with vehicle safety standards in the last 75 years. The dashboard is no more than a small gauge cluster with a bar running beneath the windscreen. I spot Toy’s lucky boots, mentioned in Columbus Was Right, hanging from a small circular rearview mirror. The crimson trinket, which she picked up on her way to Turkey, is a smaller version of tsarouchi, a traditional shoe worn by the Greek Presidential Guard. Another lucky item, tucked into the dash on the passenger side, is a billy club given to her by a French gendarme near Algiers during her first trip. Apparently, he was appalled she wasn’t carrying a gun.
“Want to go for a drive?” Tom asks. We’re about to take Pollyanna for a rip down some country lanes, stopping for lunch along the way. The 1.6-liter petrol engine starts right up. I jump in the back. Sometime before Toy’s Libyan expedition, Pollyanna was fitted with a station wagon body to replace the soft top, and the roof was painted white to reflect the sun’s rays, which helped immensely during long, hot desert stints. More recently, Tom refitted the Rover with a canvas roof in honor of the original design. Guy sits in the front passenger seat, showing me the custom wooden center console he built for Barbara in the ’90s and her rusty medical kit, which she filled with tablets for purifying water, disinfectant, and dysentery pills. I can barely hear anything from the back bench seat apart from the wind whipping through my hair and Pollyanna’s four-speed transmission whirring. Tom toots the horn. “She’s got a good little chirp,” he grins. He isn’t afraid to push the vehicle on the narrow English roads. Barbara, or Miss Toy, as he still refers to her, would be thrilled, no doubt.
Months earlier, a Scottish friend, James, had me take out his Series II. “If you’re going to drive Pollyanna, you need to be prepared,” he said. I had never driven a Series Rover before. Doubtful the scenario would actually materialize, I humored him and plodded along while he very patiently walked me through the basics while bumping along a grassy farm field. I uttered a whisper of gratitude to James when Tom asked me if I’d like to drive. Tucked behind the wheel, I lacked Barbara’s self-assuredness. Fortunately, Tom’s quiet confidence and understanding made him the perfect co-pilot. At that moment, I could picture myself following Toy’s tire tracks across the globe in an old Land Rover.
Back in Chipping Norton, I try my luck at a local antiquarian bookstore. Although I found success at the nearby Oxfam shop, a few of Barbara Toy’s books remain absent from my collection. Sidling up to a heavy wooden desk, I inquire with the owner. He looks to be in his eighties, though I’m not great at guessing ages. “Barbara Toy,” he muses. “Yes. She used to live here in town. Spent a lot of time at the theatre. Really nice lady,” he says. Unfortunately, none of her books are in stock. They rarely are. He glances up at me, squinting a bit behind his spectacles. “You’re about her size. Are you related?” I smile at him, taking it as a compliment. “No, no, I’m not,” I say. “Just a big fan.”
Specifications: 1950 Land Rover Series I, Pollyanna
Power
1.6-liter petrol engine
Four-speed manual transmission
Suspension and Drive
80-inch wheelbase
Standard leaf spring suspension
Wheels and Tires
6.00 x 16 Dunlop Trakgrip tires
Interior
Custom-built center console
Accessories
80-inch soft top
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Overland Journal’s Summer 2025 Issue. To learn more about Barbara Toy, read author Lesley Wildman’s book “Which Way Now: The Three Lives of Barbara Toy.”
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