The Life of Roger Langdon, Told by himself. With additions by his daughter Ellen.

At the heart of this intimate memoir is Roger Langdon, a railway station‑master in a quiet Devon village who turned his spare hours into a laboratory of the skies. With nothing more than a self‑made grinding machine, he crafted an eight‑inch silver‑on‑glass mirror and, in 1872, sent a paper on the markings of Venus to the Royal Astronomical Society. The biography is told in Langdon’s own voice, punctuated by the caring additions of his daughter Ellen, who preserved the details of his modest home, his eight children, and the vibrant garden observatory that greeted visitors.

Listeners will hear the steady rhythm of a man balancing long shifts, a large family, and relentless curiosity. He taught himself French, Greek and shorthand, gave lantern lectures to neighbors, and engineered four telescopes from scratch, proving that ingenuity thrives even on a modest wage. The early chapters capture his early triumphs and the inventive spirit that made a tiny station‑master a respected figure among professional astronomers.