How to be Free by Tom Hodgkinson is a jaunt comparing a new trend lifestyle of getting back to nature with a little twist. The author tries to debunk the myths of and promote the benefits of the Medieval lifestyle. Hodgkinson writes about the book, “On first sight, this idea seems bonkers. Surely the medieval age was a time of bad diets, corrupt priests and abject serfdom? Well, no. This view is actually a calumnious caricature. When I started to write How To Be Free, I decided to read Mutual Aid by the great 19th- century anarchist Prince Petr Kropotkin, described by Oscar Wilde as one of the most cheerful men he had ever met. In Mutual Aid, published at the same time as Darwin’s Origin of Species, Kropotkin argues that cooperation is an essential part of animal and human life and development. He also reminds us that it was in the medieval age when the great free city-states such as Florence were created. The medievalists, he says, valued craftsmanship, cooperation and justice. Mutual Aid led me to read other books on medieval customs and culture, and what I found was a society that made a sustained and conscious attempt to live fairly and justly.” The idea is the Victorian age coupled with the industrial revolution wiped out our connection or understanding of our true place on earth- as part of the natural world. Medieval lifestyle certainly could be describe as down and dirty.
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