Hovel in the Hills

Hovel in the Hills

File:Hovel in the Hills book cover.jpeg
Author	Elizabeth West
Subject	Back-to-the-land movement
Published	1977 (Faber and Faber)
OCLC	3203547

Hovel in the Hills: An Account of the Simple Life is the first book in a three-book non-fiction series by British writer Elizabeth West, recording her and her partner’s experiences as part of the back-to-the-land movement in the United Kingdom in the mid-20th century. Hovel in the Hills was originally published by Faber and Faber in London in 1977.

In Hovel, Elizabeth and her husband Alan exchange their city jobs for subsistence living in a small, soggy cottage in Wales between 1965 and 1974. West calls their home Hafod in the book, which is a “pseudonym” from the Welsh word meaning “summer cottage.” The real name of the cottage, located near Llanrwst, is Bron yr Haul.

”Long, long out of print…this first came out in 1977, soon after The Good Life first hit the air. Self-sufficiency had found its author, though favorite chapters deal with their struggles to find temporary jobs to pay the bills.”

“An extremely good account of the ‘simple life' which the author and her husband lead in their primitive cottage in Wales. The author's style is humorous and direct as she describes the original and resourceful ways they cope with the endless problems they encounter. Not being able to make ends meet financially they have to leave their cottage for four- and five-week stints as a free-lance cook, maid and handyman team which gives some eye-opening and entertaining descriptions of this side of their life.”

”They live a very frugal life and are foragers long before this concept becomes fashionable. The book can be read as a manual on how to live on very little money. Elizabeth is at her best when writing about coping for oneself and about plants and animals.”

The sequels are Garden in the Hills and Kitchen in the Hills, the latter being primarily a cookbook.

”I wrote to Mrs West via the publisher to tell her I had at last found a copy and she wrote back to tell me that she'd never been happy with the book as the publishers had made her change all the recipes to feed four people and add in all the oven temperatures. Of course all her cooking had been done for two and often on a wood-fired stove. She thanked me for enclosing a SAE and said that they'd been unable to write back to people during their years at Hafod as even buying a stamp was impossible to afford.”

Elizabeth later wrote a fourth book about “the good life” at a different property called A Patch in the Forest. She also published two books about working at a school.

The most widely quoted passage from Hovel in the Hills may be this bit about bicycles:

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man’s convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man’s brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle.

— Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills

External links

• Revisiting the Hovel Books
• Books like Wild, The Salt Path, Hovel in the Hills
• archive.org: Hovel in the Hills

See also

• Hafod#Name origin