In 1907 Charles Rose was chairman of the Royal Automobile Club. Rose was in
the habit of driving down country lanes at high speed wearing a balaclava hat.
Kenneth Grahame, the author of Wind in the Willows, was a frequent visitor to
Rose’s Berkshire country house on the banks of the Thames. His family firmly
believed that Rose was the model for a character in Grahame’s book—Mr
Toad. Not a lot of people know that. Piers Brendon’s history of the 100-year-old
RAC (The Motoring Century, Bloomsbury, £25, ISBN 0 7475 2187 5) is a
fascinating chart of Toad’s progress.
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