Category: United Kingdom

An update on Lucy Irvine is published in the Independent, describing briefly her activity since publishing Castaway, which described her 1981 adventure on a deserted island. Irvine lives in rural Bulgaria among hills and plum trees, and relishes her isolation, though she returns to the UK to publicize her latest book. For a time she fluttered between reclusion and notoriety, and her biography is an interesting one, as are her books, giving an unusual approach to reclusion perhaps akin to proverbial writers and occasional celebrities rather than monks and hermits — classic “reclusion.”

URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/lucy-irvine-hell-is-other-people-898978.html

Also Lucy Irvine’s web site: http://www.lucyirvine.com

An objective and positive article in the British Independent by Henry Hemming, author of the book In Search of English Eccentrics on the subject of hermits, recluses, and eccentrics in modern Britain. Looks at two contemporary recluses; includes a few historical notes about famous British eccentrics and mentions the historical travails of women hermits in England. Hemming concludes that “As well as reminding us that it’s possible to live without material possessions, by their example Woodcock and Leppard [his interviewees] remind us not to confuse the words ‘alone’ and ‘lonely’.”

URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/british-hermits-the-growing-lure-of-the-solitary-life-859656.html

Perhaps a classic case of society versus individual is represented in this news article titled “Hermit Battles to Save His Hut,” about a man whom local city authorities wish to evict from a parcel of land on the outskirts of Cotswald, Brimpsfield near Birdlip, England. The man describes his makeshift home as “Hermit’s Corner” and is in trouble ostensibly for specific infractions of code. The authorities apparently want to oust him altogether. Interesting comments from readers, too.

URL:
http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=231771
&command=displayContent&sourceNode=231754&
home=yes&more_nodeId1=231776&contentPK=20417728.

And the district council’s decision was against the “hermit.” URL: http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=231771
&command=displayContent&sourceNode=231754&
home=yes&more_nodeId1=231776&contentPK=20465452

Frank Bottomley is a medieval and local historian concentrating on Yorkshire, England. His monograph “Yorkshire’s Spiritual Athletes: Hermits & Other Solitaries” is a wonderful resource which he makes available free at his website. (The text appears complete in the main link, but the appendices only include one of several projected items in the table of contents.) The work extends the detail of venerable predecessors like Rotha Mary Clay’s Hermits and Anchorites of England.

URL: http://dryfish.org.uk/~medieval/
and main text directly at http://www.zurgy.org/medieval/hermits.pdf