The discipline of limited finance immediately started to produce an aura of inspired improvising that enabled the amateur builders to move into the problem with a new awareness that they were beating the system once more. For the past ten years I had, to a considerable degree, let go the primitive architectural character and produced over a hundred... See more

Building this house was the re-birth of the original organic concept of the immediate post-war beginnings. It involved a return to first principle devising from what was on hand. Earth for walls, negation of concrete slabs, brick and stone paving direct onto the ground, and the employment of non-professional builders. It recaptured those early days... See more

It was six years since I had seen him last, but he made it seem as though it were only yesterday. What I wanted to ask him was who owned the land that Margot and I liked nearby, but what I uttered was quite something else: 'Eddie', I said, 'I don't want to muck you around. Will you sell me some land?' Eddie was the largest landholding farmer in the... See more