ABSTRACT
The late Colin Ward was a major figure in British anarchist thinking and action, and was also influential in Italian anarchist circles. This chapter seeks to connect Ward's ideas and their origins with the very pragmatic, practical approach to spaces of people's lives. Ward's attachment to the idea of mutual aid was directly influenced by his enthusiasm for P. Kropotkin's elucidation of the idea, in his book of the same name. Geographies of leisure are rarely thought of in relation to notions of anarchy. Colin's anarchy championed human life, supported the post-war development of new towns; he wrote two classics The Child in the City, and The Child in the Country. Leisure geographies generally have a connection to state intervention and, more recently, commercialisation. In the posthumous collection of a number of Colin's essays and talks, Talking Green, in which he drew threads that had grown through his life, his concern for pollution and green leisure space emerges.
