At school in London I was taught that James Watt invented the steam engine and George Stephenson built the first railway locomotive. A great day out during the school holidays was a trip on the tube to the Science Museum, a wondrous place for inquisitive young minds with lots of working models explaining how things worked.
Whilst there I encountered an enormous steam engine (I was quite small!), built by a man with an unpronounceable name, this completely phased this young lad, I’d been taught at school about Watt & Stephenson but Trevithick ? Obviously a foreigner the little lad thought. I didn’t encounter the name until much later in life when I realised that Richard Trevithick had been airbrushed out of history.
Not only Trevithick but a good deal of Cornwall’s history has been “airbrushed”.
The Celtic Cornish don’t regard Cornwall as an English county. I’ve been chastised more than once by my good friend Pawl Dunbar for forgetting that I was in Cornwall not England. Actually this is supported by lawyer John Kirkhope’s, and others’, investigations.
The time came to approach Pawl to persuade him to use his considerable knowledge of the history, language and culture of Cornwall to write and present a film about Cornwall WITHOUT the airbrush.
Intended for a general audience, the Cornish people, visitors & holiday makers, the film introduces us to the origins of the Celts and visits well known events and some less well known, stunning Cornish scenery and places of interest.
The film also puts the record straight about Richard Trevithick’s and Cornwall’s key part in what became the world wide industrial revolution.
Roger L. Webber
