With this astonishing collection of tree portraits, Thomas Pakenham produced a new kind of tree book. The arrangement owed little to conventional botany. The sixty trees were 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. Common to all these trees is their power to inspire awe and wonder. This is a lovingly researched book, beautifully illustrated with colour photographs, engravings and maps - a moving testimonial to the Earth s largest and oldest living structures.
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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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Thomas Pakenham will attend the Edinburgh Festival on 25/8/03
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THE TWO LARGEST COMMON OAKS (Quercus robur) in Britain and Ireland - and probably Europe, too - are the Fredville Oak in Kent and the Bowthorpe Oak in Lincolnshire. Read the first page
Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
THE TWO LARGEST COMMON OAKS (Quercus robur) in Britain and Ireland - and probably Europe, too - are the Fredville Oak in Kent and the Bowthorpe Oak in Lincolnshire. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
54 of 54 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is not a book for someone who merely enjoys a walk in the woods, this is a book for people who feel passionately about trees, who understand them and appreciate the beauty of these amazing natural structures that give shape and interest to our land. This book takes you back in time and allows you to understand the lives of these many unusually shaped, living historical monuments. This is a book that will change how you look at trees. The photography is amazing and the guide to where to find the trees is very helpful. Everybody who has ever looked at a tree and wondered about it's life should buy this book, trees will never look quite the same again.
41 of 41 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
I am just doing a quick review, though it must be a year since I bought my copy, as I'm about to buy another one for my Mum for Christmas (she doesn't use computers so she won't know I've said this). I take Meetings with Remarkable Trees down from its shelf more often than any of the books of travel photographs, art books, souvenir-type books most people own but don't look at. Why? It inspires me, tugs at the emotions in a way you'd never expect. Look at it in a shop and you'll never appreciate its long-term magic. It's difficult to explain why you should buy it - there's no guarantee you'll see anything other than an expensive picture book - but you might and if you do, it'll be worth every penny. Buy the hard-back. You'll want to keep this book for a long time. I'm not normally a 5-star reviewer but it's one of the few books I have which are worth it, so that's what I am giving it.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By Jeremy Bevan
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
A sumptuous photographic celebration of the finest, tallest, oldest and in some cases oddest trees in Great Britain and Ireland. A quirky and original arrangement that starts with native giant oaks and beeches, moving on to cover American imported specimens, including the British Isles' tallest tree - a 212-foot Douglas Fir at the Hermitage, Dunkeld. On then to imports from the East, including cedars of Lebanon and gingkos - a tree species whose evolutionary lineage is so ancient that it first appeared before leaf-eating insects, and so remains untroubled by them to this day.
Author Thomas Pakenham then tires of organising things geographically, celebrating instead trees as shrines (sacred trees, poets' trees and `trees of liberty' like the sycamore beneath which the Tolpuddle martyrs met to plan the first Trade Union), trees as fantasies, and finally, appropriately, trees as ruins and relics. These include a decaying oak at Bowthorpe, its hollowed-out trunk so large that twenty people can dine inside it.
The photos are, almost without exception, stunning, mixing fine detail of bark and leaves with more panoramic shots. Pakenham's accompanying brief texts are always informative, often with literary allusions or a poetic turn - he says of the Nymans cedar in Sussex: `in the hot wind we could smell the resinous tang of Solomon's temple' (64). You sense a genuine love of the trees he describes and the part they have played in our natural and social history, no more so than when he laments the decayed or dying state of those affected by the hurricanes of 1987 and 1990. A wonderful hymn to trees in all their magnificence.
Author Thomas Pakenham then tires of organising things geographically, celebrating instead trees as shrines (sacred trees, poets' trees and `trees of liberty' like the sycamore beneath which the Tolpuddle martyrs met to plan the first Trade Union), trees as fantasies, and finally, appropriately, trees as ruins and relics. These include a decaying oak at Bowthorpe, its hollowed-out trunk so large that twenty people can dine inside it.
The photos are, almost without exception, stunning, mixing fine detail of bark and leaves with more panoramic shots. Pakenham's accompanying brief texts are always informative, often with literary allusions or a poetic turn - he says of the Nymans cedar in Sussex: `in the hot wind we could smell the resinous tang of Solomon's temple' (64). You sense a genuine love of the trees he describes and the part they have played in our natural and social history, no more so than when he laments the decayed or dying state of those affected by the hurricanes of 1987 and 1990. A wonderful hymn to trees in all their magnificence.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Book by renowned author.
Excellent book.
My mother was a Land Army girl in WW2 working with the forestry commission.
I have grown up with my mother's love of trees, the history and stories these... Read more
My mother was a Land Army girl in WW2 working with the forestry commission.
I have grown up with my mother's love of trees, the history and stories these... Read more
Published 8 days ago by Briony Holyoake
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truly wonderful
A delight for anyone in love with trees, and whose own photo album is full of pictures of beautiful trees - this is perfection indeed!
Thank you Thomas Pakenham.
Thank you Thomas Pakenham.
Published 10 days ago by Maggie
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful book
I already have the book - this one was a gift for a friend who worked with trees and he is delighted with it
Published 3 months ago by Joanna Mackay
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meetings with remarkable trees
I bought this for my partner for Christmas and he loved it. Then his father, brother and cousin have had a read. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Charlotte
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meetings with remarkable trees.
If you love trees, and as a woodturner they are an important part of my life, this book is a must have.Its very well written with superb photographs.a book to treasure..
Published 11 months ago by woodturner
3.0 out of 5 stars
Invest in the hardback
This is a wonderful, lush, magical book, make no mistake. But I was a cheapskate, and bought one of the later re-issues, in paperback. It was a mistake. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Peasant
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent
Seems to be out of print in English, found it in Spanish so wanted English version, but best photoset I've ever seen.
Published 13 months ago by Mr. D. M. Fayers
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful book, usual high level of service
Lovely book, great photos, it's remarkable to look on things that have survived everything. This book would make a tree hugger out of anyone . Gift for the gardener in winter. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Matthew Griffin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tree books by Thomas Pakenham
Always was a terrific book about trees. So is the other by same author. He started a trend but has rarely been matched.
Published 19 months ago by C. B. Heywood-Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meeting with Remarkable Trees
Enjoyed this book very much indeed. A lot of them are in my locality which makes it even more interesting and some actually on the estate where I live.
Published 19 months ago by Tuliplady
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