4. Outline by Paul Nash
Tate Britain’s winter retrospective demonstrated Paul Nash’s extraordinary and enduring feeling for trees. His autobiography, Outline, works as a companion to his painting career, linking the beech tree in his special childhood place in Kensington Gardens to the mysterious group of beeches silhouetted on the hill at Wittenham Clumps, and then to the devastated, topless trunks in the first world war battlefields of northern France.
The journey begins not with a single tree, but an entire forest, or “selva oscura”. Lost among the thick trees, which may owe something to the great yew forests of medieval Italy, but probably much more to the shady canopies of the mind, the poet makes his way down through the darkness into hell.
6. Sylva by John Evelyn
The enduring classic of all things arboreal. Evelyn published his marvellous account of England’s trees soon after the Restoration of Charles II, to promote tree-planting and so secure the country’s future supplies of oak timber. In the days before iron and steel, trade, exploration and defence all depended on oak-built ships. What’s appealing about this classic is Evelyn’s infectious enthusiasm and strong opinions about trees. Gabriel Hemery’s recent revisiting, The New Sylva, brings Evelyn up to date and includes beautiful pencil sketches by Sarah Simblet.
7. Whispers in the Graveyard by Theresa Breslin
This enthralling Scottish gothic tale follows a lonely boy, whose struggles with dyslexia at school and an alcoholic father at home lead him to seek refuge by the old rowan tree near the local kirk. When council workers arrive with an order to fell the tree, what is unleashed from the graveyard makes Solomon’s story spiral from modern misery to timeless terror, as Breslan brings ancient folklore into a story of contemporary urban adolescence. A compelling and compassionate tree-tale of our times.
8. Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery by John Clare
So many poets have responded powerfully to trees that it’s very difficult to single out one, but John Clare was inspired by them so often that I’ve chosen him as the one among many. For Clare, the local trees around his home at Helpston were lifelong companions, thriving in his memory even after he was confined to a lunatic asylum. Clare could conjure an utterly convincing sycamore or willow in a few lines, and lament the fall of an elm as powerfully as the death of a friend.
Hardy’s novels all show a deep understanding of the natural world, but this one’s so thick with trees that at times the human characters almost get lost in the woods. The woodlands supply everyone with fuel, timber, fruit and a livelihood, but Hardy, never comfortable with pleasing pastoral, directs us to the ominous figure of the elm looming over Marty South’s father. Paralysed by fear of this tree, Mr South becomes too ill to leave his house, but when Dr Fitzpiers arrives with a fresh approach and orders the tree to be felled, the shock of its removal proves far too great. His patient dies the next day.
10. Apple Acre by Adrian Bell
This vivid account of self-sufficiency at the outbreak of the second world war is a testament to the human capacity to keep going and keep hoping. The apples are vital to the Bells’ physical and spiritual survival: reminders of nature’s eternal, cyclical strength and pledges of future peace. The book is valuable, too, for the portrait of the infant Anthea Bell, who grew up to become famous as the translator of the Asterix books.
The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford is published by Yale University Press
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