John Seymour (author)

John Seymour (12 June 1914 – 14 September 2004) was a prolific early author in the self-sufficiency movement. He had multiple roles as a writer, broadcaster, environmentalist, agrarian, smallholder and activist; a rebel against: consumerism, industrialisation, genetically modified organisms, cities, motor cars; an advocate for: self-reliance, personal responsibility, self-sufficiency, conviviality (food, drink, dancing and singing), gardening, caring for the Earth and for the soil.

Seymour was born in Hampstead, London, England; his father died when he was very young, his mother remarried and the family moved to the fashionable seaside town of Frinton-on-Sea in north-east Essex. It was however surrounded by agricultural land, and the life led by those on the land and in small boats 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, he studied agriculture at Wye College, at that time a school of the University of London.In 1934, at the age of 20, he went to Southern Africa where he held a succession of jobs: a farmhand and then manager of a sheep farm, a deckhand and skipper of a fishing boat operating from Namibia (then South-West Africa), a copper mine worker in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), and a worker for the government veterinary service. Whilst in Africa he spent some time with bushmen where he gained friendship and an insight into the life of hunter gatherers.

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