John Seymour (12 June 1914 – 14 September 2004) was a British author and pioneer in the self-sufficiency movement. In 1976, he wrote The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency. 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. Early life Seymour was born in Hampstead, London, England; His father was Albert Angus Turbayne, a skilled bookbinder and designer. His parents separated and his mother, Christine Owens, remarried and the family moved to the 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, 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 snoek fishing boat operating from Namibia (then South-West Africa) along the Skeleton Coast, 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. 1939 to 1951 At the start of World War II in 1939, Seymour travelled to Kenya where he enlisted in the Kenya Regiment, and was posted to the King's African Rifles. He fought against Italian troops in the Abyssinian Campaign in Ethiopia. The regiment was then posted to Sri Lanka (formerly 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 his return to Britain after the war Seymour worked for a while on a Thames sailing barge 'Cambria', skippered by Bob Roberts, operating around the south and east coasts of England, where he picked up the folk songs of a disappearing occupation. After working as a labour officer for the War Agricultural Executive Committee finding agricultural work for