Most of his later writings and public campaigning have been devoted to rural matters, self-sufficiency, and the environment. John Seymour is the author of over 40 books, including the best-selling Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, and he has made numerous movies and radio programs. The courses are taken by students from al over the world, who come to Killowen to learn about John's lifestyle and philosophy at first hand. For the last four years, John, Angela, and William Sutherland have been running courses in self-sufficiency from their home at Killowen, New Ross. The two have build up a small farm from scratch over the last 19 years.
He continues this lifestyle today with his companion Angela Ashe on the banks of the River Barrow in County Wexford, Ireland. Returning penniless to England, he lived in a bus and a sailing barge before settling on five acres of land in the country to lead a self-sufficient life. As a young man, he traveled all over Africa and fought in Burma in World War II. John Seymour was born in England in 1914. He doesn't go into great detail rather, he gives the basic facts of each forgotten labor of love, and it's up to readers to decide if it's a labor they want to undertake.
Since this book is intended as a comprehensive survey, don't expect to be an expert on, say, forging metal by reading Seymour's descriptions.
Seymour respects what he calls "the discipline of natural materials," and he longs for a world free of "mass produced rubbish." Chapters cover an astonishing range: from clog making to spinning to canning. In the introduction he writes, "Are we justified in using articles, no matter how convenient it may be for us to use them, that we know were produced in conditions which bored and even stultified the human beings who had to make them?" This question led Seymour to the research that forms the foundation of the book: rediscovering natural ways of making tools, shoes, furniture, and a variety of other items using methods that follow the grain of wood or the idiosyncrasies of a piece of stone. Seymour is a utopian-he has a vision of a better world where people aren't alienated from their labors. Originally published in two separate volumes ( The Forgotten Arts and Forgotten Household Crafts), this book brings under one cover the wisdom of John Seymour, a well-known thinker on matters of self-sufficiency, traditional arts, and voluntary simplicity.
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