Going to Seed

Simon Fairlie is possibly the most influential – and unusual – eco-activist you might not have heard of. The Observer

Simon Fairlie is the original hippie. The Idler

This is a fascinating, funny and moving record of an extraordinary life lived in extraordinary times. George Monbiot

Going to Seed is the unforgettable firsthand account of how the hippie movement flowered in the late 1960s, appeared spent by the Thatcher-consumed 1980s, yet became the seedbed for progressive reform we now take for granted – and continues to inspire generations of rebels and visionaries. 

At a young age, Simon Fairlie rejected the rat race and embarked on a new trip to find his own path. He dropped out of Cambridge University to hitchhike to Istanbul and bicycle through India. Simon established a commune in France, was arrested multiple times for squatting and civil disobedience, and became a leading figure in protests against the British government’s road building programmes of the 1980s and – later – in legislative battles to help people secure access to land for low impact, sustainable living. Over the course of fifty years, we witness a man’s drive for self-sufficiency, freedom, authenticity and a deep connection to the land.

Simon Fairlie grew up in a middle-class household in leafy middle England. His path had been laid out for him by his father: boarding school, Oxbridge and a career in journalism. But everything changed when Simon’s life ran headfirst into London’s counterculture in the 1960s. He finds Beat poetry, blues music, cannabis and anti–Vietnam War protests – and a powerful lust to be free. Instead of becoming a celebrated Fleet Street journalist like his father, Simon becomes a labourer, a stonemason, a farmer, a scythesman, a magazine editor and a writer of a very different sort. He shares the highs of his experience, alongside the painful costs of his ongoing search for freedom – estrangement from his family, financial insecurity and the loss of friends and lovers to the excesses of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Going to Seed questions the current trajectory of Western ‘progress’ – explosive consumerism, growing inequality and environmental devastation; it’s for anyone who wonders how we got to such a place. Simon’s story is for anyone who wonders what the world might look like if we began to chart a radically different course.