The Fat of the Land

In the 1970s, John Seymour’s book, The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency was a huge, international best-seller, inspiring a new generation to “down-shift” to a new way of life. The book has remained in print ever since. But years earlier, Seymour had written and published The Fat of the Land, telling of how he and his family settled in Suffolk and began a life entirely separate from the modern world. This was a seminal book, published the year before Silent Spring, and offers a personal, practical and optimistic vision of a less-mechanized and less polluting world, one that works in harmony with nature, rather than against it. He goes on to document their life and struggles on the land in chapters on cows, pigs, vegetables and wild food in charming prose. More than fifty years on, The Fat of the Land remains an important and inspiring book, one which retains its power to make us think carefully about our own lives. This new edition comes complete with Sally Seymour’s original illustrations, a foreword by Anne Seymour and a new introduction by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.