John Seymour was born in London, England; his father died when he was very young, his mother remarried and the family moved to Frinton-on-Sea in north-east Essex. A fashionable seaside town with a golf club, a tennis club and a population of 2,000 might seem an unlikely place to develop Seymour’s later philosophy of life. It was however surrounded by agricultural land, where the horse was king; the sea was on his doorstep, there were quiet backwaters where he could learn to sail within a couple of miles of his home. The life lead by those on the land and in small boats would have laid a foundation for his later vision of a simple cottage economy with farming and fishing providing the essentials of life.

After schooling in England and Switzerland Seymour studied agriculture at Wye College, which was then a school of the University of London.

In 1934, at the age of 20, he went to Southern Africa where his wish to experience life took him in through a succession of jobs. In the Karoo as a farmhand and then manager of a sheep farm; from Walvis Bay in South-West Africa (now Namibia) as a deckhand, later as a skipper, on fishing boats; in Northern Rhodesia(now Zambia) in copper mines as a trainee mining engineer; later working for the Northern Rhodesia Veterinary Service as a livestock officer; making a game survey of the Luangwa River valley for the Game Department. Whilst in Africa he spent some time with bushmen where he gained friendship and an insight into the life of hunter gatherers.

1939 to 1951
At the start of World War II in 1939 John Seymour travelled to Kenya where he enlisted in the Kenya Regiment and was posted to the King’s African Rifles, a colonial regiment of the British army with white officers. He fought with them against Italy in the Abyssinian Campaign in Ethiopia. After defeating the Italians the regiment was posted to Sri Lanka (then a British colony called Ceylon) and afterwards to Burma where allied forces were fighting against Japan. For Seymour the war ended on a low note, he expressed his disgust when the Allies used fission bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On arrival in Britain after the war Seymour worked for a while on a Thames sailing barge, these traditional craft were still operating around the south and east coasts of England, here he picked up the folk songs of a disappearing occupation. After working as a civil servant (labour officer for the Agricultural Committee) finding agricultural work for German prisoners of war (some had still not returned home in 1950) he found an opening into broadcasting when he created a series of short programmes on the BBC Home Service (now Radio 4), speaking on subjects that interested him. He then travelled overland to India for the BBC gaining experience of the subsistence farming still common in eastern Europe and the Asia. His experiences on this journey led to his first book The Hard Way to India, published in 1951.

The Smallholdings
Seymour was living aboard a Dutch sailing smack when he married Sally Medworth, an Australian potter and artist, in 1954. In this they travelled around the waterways and rivers of England and Holland, journeys later described in Sailing through England. As their first daughter grew older they felt that a landbase would be more suitable. They leased two isolated cottages on 5 acres (2 hectares) of land near Orford in Suffolk. The manner in which they fell into self-sufficiency on this smallholding is recounted in The Fat of the Land (1961).

At the beginning of the 1970s the family moved to a farm near Newport in Pembrokeshire. This decade saw Seymour’s publication rate reach a maximum, In 1976 The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency was published, a guide for real and dreaming downshifters. Published shortly after E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful – a study of economics as if people mattered (1973) and, more mundanely, The Good Life’s first showing on British television (1975), the sales of the new book exceeded all expectations. It was also set to establish the reputation of two young publishers, Christopher Dorling and Peter Kindersley who had commissioned and edited the work. His writing was not restricted to self-sufficiency: he wrote four guide books in the Companion Guide series and was now being asked to speak of his vision at conferences.

In the 1970s and 1980s he was also making television programmes: an early series followed the footsteps of George Borrow’s Wild Wales (1862), later he spent three years making the BBC series Far From Paradise (with Herbert Girardet) which examined the history of human impact on the environment.

His farm in Wales welcomed visitors seeking guidance on the smallholders life a project which expanded to the School for Self-Sufficiency when he moved to County Wexford in Ireland during the 1980s. Here in 1999 he was taken to court for damaging a crop of GM sugar beet.

His Books
The Hard Way to India (1951). London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
Boys in the Bundu (1955) London: Harrap. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
Round About India (1955). London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
One Man’s Africa (1956). London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
Sailing Through England (1956). London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
The Fat of the Land (1961). London: Faber & Faber. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
On My Own Terms (1963). London: Faber & Faber.
Willynilly to the Baltic (1965). Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons.
Voyage into England (1966). Newton Abbott: David & Charles.
The Companion Guide to East Anglia (1970). London: Collins.
About Pembrokeshire (1971). TJ Whalley.
The Book of Boswell – autobiography of a gypsy (1970). London: Gollancz. (Author: Silvester Gordon Boswell, Ed. John Seymour.)
Self-Sufficiency (1970). London: Faber & Faber. (With Sally Seymour.)
The Companion Guide to the Coast of South-West England (1974). London: Collins.
The Companion Guide to the Coast of North-East England (1974). London: Collins.
The Companion Guide to the Coast of South-East England (1975). London: Collins.
The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (1976). London: Faber & Faber.
Bring Me My Bow (1977). London: Turnstone Books.
Keep It Simple (1977). Pant Mawr: Black Pig Press.
The Countryside Explained (1977). London: Faber & Faber. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
I’m A Stranger Here Myself – the story of a Welsh farm (1978). London: Faber & Faber. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
The Self-Sufficient Gardener (1978). Londoon: Dorling Kindersley
John Seymour’s Gardening Book (1978). London: G.Whizzard Publications Ltd: Distributed by Deutsch,
Gardener’s Delight (1978). London: Michael Joseph.
Getting It Together – a guide for new settlers (1980). London: Michael Joseph.
The Lore of the Land (1982). Weybridge: Whittet. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
The Woodlander (1983). London: Sidgwick & Jackson. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
The Smallholder (1983). London: Sidgwick & Jackson. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
The Shepherd (1983). London: Sidgwick & Jackson. (With illustrations by Sally Seymour.)
The Forgotten Arts (1984). London: Dorling Kindersley.
Far from Paradise – the story of man’s impact on the environment (1986). London: BBC Publications. (with Herbert Girardet.)
Blueprint for a Green Planet’ (1987). London: Dorling Kindersley. (with Herbert Girardet.)
The Forgotten Household Crafts (1987). London: Dorling Kindersley.
England Revisited – a countryman’s nostalgic journey (1988). London: Dorling Kindersley.
The Ultimate Heresy (1989). Bideford: Green Books.
Changing Lifestyles – living as though the world mattered (1991). London: Gollancz.
Rural Life – pictures from the past (1991). London: Collins & Brown
Blessed Isle – one man’s Ireland (1992). London: Collins.
Seymour’s Seamarks (1995). Rye: Academic Inn Books. (with Connie Lindquist)
Retrieved from the Future (1996). London: New European,
Rye from the Water’s Edge (1996). Rye: Academic Inn Books. (with Connie Lindquist)
Playing It For Laughs – a book of doggerel (1999). San Francisco: Metanoia Press. (with illustrations by Kate Seymour)
The Forgotten Arts And Crafts (2001). London: Dorling Kindersley.
The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (2002). London: Dorling Kindersley. (with Will Sutherland.)
The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It (2003). London: Dorling Kindersley. (with Will Sutherland.)

To find books by John Seymour please click here>>>

Abbey was born in the Pittsburgh DMA town of Indiana, Pennsylvania and grew up in nearby Home, Pennsylvania. In the summer of 1944 he headed west, and fell in love with the desert country of the Four Corners region. He wrote, “For the first time, I felt I was getting close to the West of my deepest imaginings, the place where the tangible and the mythical became the same.” He received a Master’s Degree in philosophy from the University of New Mexico and also studied at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 1950s Abbey worked as a seasonal ranger for the United States Park Service at Arches National Monument (now a national park), near the town of Moab, Utah, which was not then known for extreme sports but for its desolation and uranium mines. It was there that he penned the journals that would become one of his most famous works, 1968′s Desert Solitaire, which Abbey described “…not [as] a travel guide, but a eulogy.”

Edward Abbey

Desert Solitaire is regarded as one of the finest nature narratives in American literature, and has been compared to Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and even Thoreau’s Walden. In it, Abbey vividly describes the physical landscapes of Southern Utah and delights in his isolation as a backcountry park ranger, recounting adventures in the nearby canyon country and mountains. He also attacks what he terms the “industrial tourism” and resulting development in the national parks (“national parking lots”), rails against the Glen Canyon Dam, and comments on various other subjects.

Abbey died in 1989 at the age of 62 at his home near Oracle, Arizona.

Abbey’s abrasiveness, opposition to anthropocentrism (sometimes mischaracterized as misanthropy), and outspoken writings made him the object of much controversy. Conventional environmentalists from mainstream groups disliked his more radical “Keep America Beautiful…Burn a Billboard” style. Based on his writings and statements (and apparently in a few cases, actions), many believe that Abbey did advocate ecotage. The controversy intensified with the publication of Abbey’s most famous work of fiction, The Monkey Wrench Gang. The novel centers on a small group of eco-warriors who travel the American West attempting to put the brakes on uncontrolled human expansion by committing acts of sabotage against industrial development projects. Abbey claimed the novel was written merely to “entertain and amuse,” and was intended as symbolic satire. Others saw it as a how-to guide to non-violent ecotage–the main characters do not attack people. The novel inspired environmentalists frustrated with conventional methods of activism. Earth First! was formed as a result in 1981, advocating eco-sabotage or “monkeywrenching.” Although Abbey never officially joined the group he became associated with many of its members, and occasionally wrote for the organization.

Sometimes called the “desert anarchist,” Abbey was known to anger people of all political stripes (including environmentalists). In his essays the narrator describes throwing beer cans out of his car, claiming the highway had already littered the landscape. Abbey has been criticized by some for his comments on immigration and women. He differed from the stereotype of the ‘environmentalist as politically-correct leftist’, by disclaiming the counterculture and the “trendy campus people” and saying he didn’t want them as his primary fans, and by supporting some conservative causes such as immigration reduction and the National Rifle Association. He devoted one chapter in his book Hayduke Lives to poking fun at left-green leader Murray Bookchin. However, he reserves his harshest criticism for the military-industrial complex, “welfare ranchers,” energy companies, land developers and “Chambers of Commerce,” all of which he believed were destroying the West’s great landscapes. Abbey refused to be ideologically pigeon-holed by the left or the right; above all he was a staunch advocate for wilderness preservation and ecological protection. Abbey thrived on controversy and his popularity has proven to span generations.

Find books by Edward Abbey at OneToRemember

Dave Foreman (born 1947) is a US environmentalist and co-founder of the radical environmental movement Earth First!

The son of a US Air Force career officer, as a young man Foreman supported the Vietnam War. He received the highest honor of the Boy Scouts of America, the rank of Eagle Scout. Foreman first became involved in political activism as a college student, supporting Republican Senator Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1964 and founding the New Mexico branch of the conservative youth organisation Young Americans for Freedom. After graduating from college in 1968, and attending the Officers Candidate School of the US Marine Corps, Foreman’s radicalism began to take shape.

Foreman had been interested in environmental issues since childhood, and from 1971, he became involved with wilderness protection. Between 1973 and 1980, he worked for The Wilderness Society as Southwest Regional Representative in New Mexico and the Director of Wilderness Affairs in Washington, DC. From 1976 to 1980, he was a board member for the New Mexico chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

By the late 1970s, Foreman had become increasingly disillusioned by what he viewed as the “professionalisation” of the environmental movement. After the United States Forest Service’s Roadless Area Review and Evaluation II resulted in the opening of thirty-six million acres (146,000 km²) of land for logging in 1979, Foreman left Washington and abandoned his job as an environmental lobbyist.

In April 1980, Foreman and friends Howie Wolke, Bart Kohler and Mike Roselle took a week long hiking trip in the Pinacate Desert. It was during this trip that Foreman is believed to have coined the phrase “Earth First!”

The movement that subsequently bore that name was inspired, in some part, by the writings of Edward Abbey, author of the satirical novel The Monkeywrench Gang. In contrast with the cautious lobbying efforts of the established environmental organisations, “monkeywrenching” – industrial sabotage traditionally associated with labor struggles – would become the chief tactic of the Earth First! movement in the 1980s; the Earth First! Journal, which Foreman edited from 1982 to 1988, featured lively debates on the ethics and effectiveness of this controversial tactic.

In 1985, Foreman published the first edition of the book Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, sharing the editing credits with one “Bill Haywood”. Ecodefense collected articles published in Earth First! Journal’s “Dear Nedd Ludd” column, which provided advice to would-be monkeywrenchers on sabotage techniques.

In 1990, Foreman was one of five people arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation following operation THERMCON, in which FBI agents infiltrated an Arizona Earth First! group, encouraging them to sabotage a powerline feeding a water pumping station. While Foreman had no direct role in the attempted sabotage, he was arrested on a charge of conspiracy. He was permitted to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for handing two copies of Ecodefense to an FBI informant, and received a suspended sentence.

Following his 1990 arrest, Foreman ceased acting as a spokesperson for Earth First! In 1991, he co-founded the Wildlands Project, which aims to establish a network of protected wilderness areas across North America. From 1995 to 1997, he served on the Sierra Club’s board of directors, but departed after the organisation rejected his proposed policy on restrictive immigration. In 1997, Foreman co-founded the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. In 2003, Dave Foreman and the board of directors of the Wildlands Project founded a new think tank, the Rewilding Institute, dedicated to “the development and promotion of ideas and strategies to advance continental-scale conservation in North America and to combat the extinction crisis.”

Foreman is the author of The Lobo Outback Funeral Home, a novel, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, a collection of essays, and Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century. He also co-authored The Big Outside with Howie Wolke.

Jeremy Leggett is chief executive of solarcentury, the UK’s largest independent solar electric solutions company, one of the UK’s fastest growing tech companies, and winner of the FT-Treasury Inner City 100 Greenest Company award. After a D.Phil in earth sciences at Oxford, Jeremy began his career at Imperial College consulting for the oil industry and researching earth history. He won two major international awards for his research on the history of oceans. His work on oil source rocks was funded by BP and Shell.

Jeremy Leggett 2007

In a second career as an environmental campaigner for Greenpeace International, he won the US Climate Institute’s Award for Advancing Understanding, at which time the Washington Post described him as “one of the half-dozen experts most responsible for putting climate change on the international agenda.” In his third career, as a social entrepreneur, he is in addition to his solarcentury role a director of the world’s first private equity fund for renewable energy, Bank Sarasin’s New Energies Invest AG, and a member of the UK Government’s Renewables Advisory Board. His critically-acclaimed account of the first ten years of global warming, The Carbon War, was published by Penguin in 1999. His account of peak oil and its conflation with global warming was published in November as The Empty Tank in the US (Random House) and Half Gone in the rest of the world (Portobello Books).

The Financial Times has described Leggett as having “done more to change attitudes towards the (solar) resource than almost any other individual,” and Time magazine – confused among other things by an absence of grey hair – has profiled him as “one of the next generation of young leaders.”