John Seymour

John Seymour was a British author and pioneer in the self-sufficiency movement. He was the author of over 40 books, including the best-selling The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (1976), and he had made numerous films and radio programs.

John Seymour was an idealist — he had a vision of a better world where people weren't alienated from their labors. As a young man, he traveled all over Africa and fought in Burma in World War II. Returning penniless to England, he lived in a trolley bus and on a Dutch sailing barge before settling on a five-acre smallholding in Suffolk to lead a self-sufficient life.

He continued this lifestyle with his companion Angela Ashe on the banks of the River Barrow in County Wexford, Ireland. The two had built up the smallholding from scratch over 19 years. In his last years John, Angela, and William Sutherland had been running courses in self-sufficiency from their home at Killowen, New Ross. The courses were taken by students from all over the world, who came to Killowen to learn about his lifestyle and philosophies at firsthand.

Most of his later writing and public campaigning had been devoted to country matters, self-sufficiency, and the environment. In the last 18 months, he was back on his beloved Pembrokeshire farm with his daughter Ann, telling stories to his grandchildren and writing rhyming poetry, with an acerbic wit that was his last weapon against what he saw as our destructive era.