Thomas Firbank

Who was Thomas Firbank?

Thomas Firbank was a Canadian/Welsh author, farmer, soldier and engineer.

He was born in Quebec, Canada, to an English father and a Welsh mother. Following his father's early death, he was raised among his mother's hill-farming community in the Berwyn Mountains of North Wales. He was educated at Stowe School.

His first book, an autobiography entitled I Bought a Mountain was published in 1940 and became a major international best-seller. It describes how aged only 21, he bought Dyffryn Mymbyr farm, a 2,400-acre sheep farm in Capel Curig, North Wales, in 1931 and painstakingly learnt his trade, while portraying the beauty of Snowdonia. Firbank was a keen mountain walker, and the book includes a hair-raising account of how he and his two companions were possibly the first to ascend all of the Welsh 3000s in less than 9 hours. Firbank's first wife, Esme, a Surrey-born actress whom he met in 1933, features prominently.

The book ends with pastoral calm interrupted by the ominous drumbeats of the Second World War which drew Thomas Firbank away from his beloved farm to enlist in the Coldstream Guards.