On 4th July 1854 Henry David Thoreau, a 27 year old Harvard graduate, failed teacher and student of Eastern philosophy, walked into the woods near his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts and decided to stay. For 26 months he lived alone in a hut he built on the shores of Walden Pond and attempted to survive entirely by his own resources. Walden, Thoreau’s account of his ‘experiment in simple living’ is one of the most extraordinary and unclassifiable books ever written.