High Horse Riderless
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Re-issued by Green Books in 1988
First published by Allen & Unwin in 1947
LTC Rolt was first and foremost an engineer with a passion for machines. He was acutely aware, however, that the mechanical, material and largely urban world was overriding traditional and organic values. In High Horse Riderless he set out to answer how machines and science could be reconciled with the harmony of the natural world and with the life of individual creative freedom. It is as relevant today as it was in 1947.
"LTC Rolt’s great relevance to us today is that he was the first thinker - and remains practically the only one - to address himself to the problem of how we should use machinery sensibly ..."
"Too much of our ‘alternative’ thinking comes from people who have never really done anything in the real world. The strength of Rolt is that he had done things. He had been part of and had helped to build the real world as it is now, and yet he saw its faults and contradictions, and saw where it was tending. In his Conclusions at the end of this book he tells us how to change things - how to bridle the ‘high horse’ and to turn its energies to good purpose instead of evil ones."
John Seymour in the introduction to the 1988 Green Books edition
