Meetings with Remarkable Trees - Softcover

Pakenham, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375752684 ISBN 13: 9780375752681

Publisher: Random House USA Inc, 1998

Synopsis

With this astonishing collection of tree portraits, Thomas Pakenham has produced a new kind of tree book. The arrangement owes little to conventional botany. The sixty trees are grouped according to their own strong personalities: Natives, Travellers, Shrines, Fantasies and Survivors. From the ancient native trees, many of which are huge and immeasurably old, to the exotic newcomers from Europe, the East and North America, Meetings with Remarkable Trees captures the history and beauty of these entrancing living structures. Each tree is a living hisorical monument in its own right and this volume reveals a variety of sacred trees, poets' trees and fantastical trees extraordinary in both their appearance and history.

About this title

Review:

Thomas Pakenham, a distinguished historian of Africa, takes a new tack by writing an old-fashioned kind of book in Meetings with Remarkable Trees: a catalogue of trees of the British Isles. The last such book was published in 1826. In Meetings with Remarkable Trees Pakenham assembles a beautifully photographed gallery of 60-odd trees of Scotland, England and Ireland, and magnificent trees they are. One is a 600-year-old king oak that looms large over Charleville, Ireland; another is the yew tree that Wordsworth called the "pride of Lorton's vale"; still another is a sequoia brought from the United States and planted in a Herefordshire grove in 1851, where it has since flourished. Pakenham helpfully includes a map showing the locations of his scattered dramatis personae; you could make a fine tour retracing his steps and having a look for yourself. --Christine Buttery, Amazon.com

Review:

Thomas Pakenham will attend the Edinburgh Festival on 25/8/03

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0375752684
• ISBN 13: 9780375752681
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192