To me, this book is a priceless gem, but I can see that not everyone will share my enthusiasm... I suppose it depends a lot on where you live, what you are interested in, and where your life is going when you look at it.

So, to begin at the beginning..... cob is a mix of clay, with sand and straw added, mixed to a squelching mush with water, and then used for building work. There are various places in Britain, (but mainly the South West), where there are cob houses which have stood for over half a millenium and are still in use. For some mysterious reason, the secrets of how to build with cob were almost lost, until re-discovered by Ianto Evans and friends.

Ianto is/was an architect by profession. That is to say, he got a degree in architecture a long time ago, even though in his own words, he "knew nothing about building". And he taught students of architecture so that they would also know nothing. That was years ago, on another continent.... after he returned his diploma (or whatever papers architects have), he set about living with tribal peoples in different countries and studying vernacular building techniques.

At first the secret of the perfect recipe for cob eluded him, until he found himself working on a project to produce a wood burning stove in Guatemala. The objective was a stove with a chimney for extracting the smoke, and a low consumption of fire-wood. He tried with a mix of clay and sand, but the mix kept cracking when it dried, so Ianto went on adding more and more sand until, to his surprise, a very fine cob was produced which gave excellent results.

The book contains some beautiful photographs of very old cob buildings in places as far apart as England, Scandinavia and the Yemen, and some very new ones in North America and elsewhere.

On the outside they are quaint and pretty... on the inside they are stunning and magical. Ianto can not stop enthusing about how cosy they are, how friendly and comforting, the quality of the sound and the light.... the sheer joy of living in them.

This book is full of that rare entity which is inaccurately called "common sense". The prospective cob builder is encouraged to mix the mush by hand, and by foot (literally), rather than use machines. The houses made in this way do look like something from the set of Middle Earth... hobbit houses, with lovely curved walls and round windows, and they remind me of the images of the gingerbread house from the tale of Hansel and Gretel.

The fact that they are dirt-cheap to build, low technology, and environmentally friendly are very seductive points in their favour. Consider this... for most building work you reach a certain height and then need scaffolding, or a lot of ladders. Not with cob... you can build timbers into the walls which can support the scaffolding once it is dry. Afterwards, you can use the timbers for something else or just saw them off and hide the hole where they were.

Of course, cob building is very labour intensive, but Ianto has a view on that as well.

The author himself looks a little like a hobbit.... there is a photo of him near the front, a wee baldy head and a generous beard, a big grin and bare feet. Don't let his looks deceive you, here is a man with something important to say.

Even in the heavily regulated United Kingdom, there are cob houses being built which meet all the specifications of planning committees, building regulations etc... so it is only a matter of time before these techniques become main-stream again, as they were when Walter Raleigh and Will Shakespeare were lads.

There is, of course, a website at www.cobcottage.com

I must say something else as well.... the author seems to have very little interest in making money. He is on a mission to spread the word, and encourage other people to discover the joy of building their own carbon-neutral home, with curved walls and cubby holes.

I once read the memoir of an Oglala Sioux called Black Elk. (Black Elk Speaks, by John G. Neihardt). Black Elk comments that the problem with white people is that they live in unnatural rectangular houses, and this accounts for their pig-headedness. All the God's other creatures make a rounded shelter, the fox his earth, the beaver his lodge, the birds make round nests, and the Plains Indians their teepees.

Ianto appears to have taken a page from Black Elk's book, and found it to be an uplifting and fulfilling experience.