I Bought a Mountain

Name: I Bought a Mountain
Brand: Hachette UK
Availability: InStock
Author: Thomas Firbank
ISBN: 9781780725581

Author: Thomas Firbank

Narrator: Elliot Fitzpatrick

Unabridged: 11 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Short Books

Published: 06/30/2022

Categories: Nonfiction, Social Science, Agriculture & Food, Biography & Autobiography, Memoirs, Technology & Engineering, Agriculture

Synopsis

WITH A FOREWORD BY PATRICK BARKHAM
And an essay by Welsh hill farmer, Dafydd Morris-Jones

'One of the great no-holds-barred life-adventures in the wilds of the British landscape.' ADAM NICOLSON

Written on the eve of the Second World War, this memoir tells the remarkable story of how 21-year-old Thomas Firbank decided on impulse to purchase a 2,400-acre hill farm in the rugged, inhospitable mountains of Snowdonia, and how he and his wife struggled to build it back into prosperity.

The book became an international bestseller, selling over half-a-million copies worldwide and pioneered the genre of 'good life' rural escape literature. This new edition is introduced with a foreword by the award-winning nature writer, Patrick Barkham, and includes an afterword by contemporary Welsh sheep farmer, Dafydd Morris-Jones.

I Bought a Mountain is a thrilling human tale of tragedy and triumph, as well as a portrait of a lost era when farming was a communal endeavour, offering precious insights into conservation and sustainability relevant for today.

(P) Octopus Publishing Group 2022

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul

Thomas Firbank was born in 1910 in Quebec to an English father and a Welsh mother. Following his father's early death he was raised among his mother's hill-farming community in the Berwyn Mountains of north Wales. I Bought a Mountain describes how, aged only 21, he bought Dyffryn Mymbyr, a 972ha she......more

Goodreads review by Peter

First bought this book more than 30 years ago because I was told about the section on the 14 peaks, which I was doing at the time, so only read that bit. Now with the benefit of age I have read the whole thing and found the details about the ins and outs of sheep farming and the difficulties faced ab......more

Goodreads review by Isaak

The book itself was great. It was super cool reading about how life was conducted in the Welsh sheep farming communities. The author does an excellent job going into detail about every aspect. The foreword and afterword did not need to be in the book in my opinion. Had I read either looking for a sn......more

Quotes

'"There's nothing so fine as courage," Thomas Firbank writes in I Bought a Mountain and that is the motto of the book: challenge after challenge faced, suffered and, in part anyway, relished for its stimulus. One of the great no-holds-barred life-adventures in the wilds of the British landscape. Every page is alive with the presence of the Welsh mountains and and their people, every chapter with the insistent, often beautiful, often savage realities of the natural world.' Adam Nicolson

'One of the most compelling and successful 20th-century versions of the urge to escape to the country... deeply inspiring... highly pertinent.' PATRICK BARKHAM

'Extraordinarily relevant... this book could have been written in 2022, with Firbank talking angrily of a country that needed to improve its self-sufficiency... Above all, however, he describes so movingly the privilege of farming this miraculous landscape.' Country LIfe

'A delightful book, full of vivid experiences.' Telegraph

'Vitally convincing and exhilarating.' OBSERVER