Oak and Ash and Thorn: The Ancient Woods and New Forests of Britain

by Peter Fiennes

When the government announced plans to sell off up to 150,000 hectares of English forests and woodland in 2010, it ignited an immediate and impassioned fight against the proposal. Even today, the British people continue to have a deep love for their woods, which have inspired countless myths, stories and poems throughout time. Peter Fiennes celebrates the beauty and mystery of Britain's woods, while also closely examining present issues of ownership, access, power and property. Fiennes visits Norwegian spruces in the Scottish Highlands, wild boars in Sussex, the small collection of trees in his childhood home's garden and everything in between in his exhilarating journey to understand our relationship to the forests and our duty to protect them. Of Oak and Ash and Thorn presents a powerful message for readers everywhere: our woods are important; they are under threat; and they must be saved.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, History, Natural History, Science, Environment, Travel

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2017

About the author

Peter Fiennes is the author of To War with God, an account of his grandfather's service as a chaplain in the First World War. As publisher for Time Out, he published their city guides, as well as books about London's trees and Britain's countryside.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

If we were asked to imagine what the UK would look like way back in the Bronze age, people tend to think that there would be a canopy of trees stretching from coast to mountain with gaps where people had felled trees to grow crops. It wasn’t like that though, but there was a significant amount of forests and copses that provided food, shelter, fuel and livelihoods. The love of woodlands is deeply ingrained within our psyche and have contributed to countless legends, myths and fairy tales that have permeated our culture too. In 2010 the government at the time thought it would be a good idea to sell off the Forestry Commission; they didn’t quite expect the reaction that they got from the public who were vehemently against the sale of the woodlands and the plan was shelved.

In this quite delightful and whimsical book, Fiennes taps into that deep love that people have for their forests and local woodlands, mixing his own experiences as he visits ancient woodlands, including one quite dark and creepy moment in a woodland at dusk. He explores the reasons why that even though we have the lowest amount of forest cover of any European country, we have the greatest number of ancient trees, and how London is technically a forest. His ‘Short History of Britain’s Woods in 3508 Words’ is a quite spectacular piece of writing.

His passion for our forests and copses is evident when you read this, but this is a practical book too. He has a great list of 30 achievable things on an action plan list we can do immediately with regards to planting trees and improving our woodlands. They are all simple things and they would make a significant difference to the quality of our natural environment. Definitely a book to read for those who have any interest in woodlands. We cannot rest on our laurels as ancient forests are always under threat from all manner of sources and the more that people are aware of their local woods and use them the better their chances of survival. Would also recommend reading this in conjunction with the excellent A Tale of Trees: The Battle to Save Britain's Ancient Woodland by Derek Niemann.

[Nick Swarbrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully paced and structured exploration of the relationship between trees (more specifically woodland) and the culture we live with. The author is well read, lyrical, whimsical- with an eye for judicious quotations as much as for the trees that make this book (and the making is not unconscious: Fiennes knows how commercial interest can destroy or promote woodland). He is keenly aware of our behaviour: “Most of the time people hesitate on the edges of woods; there’s always at the very least a flicker of a moment when we pause and gather ourselves...” and his reading (lightly introduced) goes from Ovid to (of course) Kipling. He mirrors Macfarlane and Morris in his lament for how “we won’t see what’s no longer there: the butterflies and birds, the lynx and the boar, the orchids, the fungi and, of course, the people...I wonder...if we are now more ignorant about the hidden lives of trees than our Iron Age ancestors ever were.” Fiennes ably contributes to the redressing of that balance.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fiennes has a lot of despair and a sharp tongue, and none of his woods are good enough for him? I mean, I literally bought his book because I like trees, but I spent the whole time reading with the uncomfortable feeling that if he knew me, he would be sure I’m what’s wrong with the world and he’d turn that same sharp tongue on me. So that makes him a difficult companion.

He flirted a couple times with a Thanos-style discussion how the world would be better without people in it, with angry and cruel deaths proposed for those he is particularly upset with, and yeah I am not going to agree with him on that. Do not recommend.

[Graham Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Fiennes is just so angry. Angry at how councils, governments, trusts, everyone has behaved with such cavalier indifference to our ancient woodlands. Some of that anger gets to you. I got angry at Sir John Winter, even though the old fool died over 300 years ago.
He was the landowner in the Forest of Dean who, even as parliament debated in 1661 how to protect the old forests, simply cut down the forest. In 1667 there were fewer than 200 mature oaks in the Forest of Dean. Six years earlier there had been 30,000. He just cut them down.
The author is angry at the Forestry Commission tearing down, poisoning and killing our own broadleaf forests so they could plant conifers in neat rows that clashed with the countryside, weren’t attractive to animals and birds and which poisoned the soil into lifeless mud beneath them. Even though he is quietly pleased at their recanting and now they’re doing the exact opposite. As they should.
For anyone who loves the British countryside – and he focuses on England most of all – this is an angry defence of what is left. It needs saying, it needs shouting, but sometimes I found that the sheer remorseless litany of depressing statistics, the constant anger at everyone for their boneheaded stupidity became slightly wearing.
There is love here, for the trees, for the forest, for nature, and he knows his trees and his nature. And he also has a plan as to how we can conserve our gorgeous forests, woods and copses. Some of it is eminently sensible, and is the sort of thing we should be doing anyway – going to the woods, protecting green belts, planting millions more trees. Of course not everyone would advocate placing bear traps for fly tippers or putting developers into wicker man cages, but perhaps I’m being too timid.
It’s ironic perhaps that the forest that gives him the greatest pleasure and hope is the Heart of England Forest, the one being built at breakneck speed using the formidable proceeds of the late publisher Felix Dennis. Peter Fiennes and Felix Dennis would not have got on I’d guess. Fiennes as a Time Out London liberal, Dennis the belligerent entrepreneur who’d stiff anyone – his most famous saying is (rendered politely here): ‘If it flies, floats or fornicates – rent it don’t buy it’.
He was a man of excess in every department, but he slowed in later life and became a poet and a forest builder. The man who cut down millions of trees to power his publishing empire – trees planted for that express purpose of course – has become one of the symbols of what we – not governments – can do. We can make a difference, as Peter Fiennes eloquently and passionately reminds us.
And perhaps this book makes a difference too. It gives all the information and knowledge you’d need to help look after and restore our battered realm and all the trees clinging on in stands and copses and woods and forests. It’s a good book to read, but try to be inspired by it, not angered.

[Kelly Buchanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent meandering, earnest loveliness.

[Ann Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent several months reading this book slowly, savouring each and every chapter. Near the end I wanted to stretch the book out even further but alas I just had to finish it at some point. This book is the perfect blend of history, culture and nature, all bound up in choice bits of poetry that reflect the ongoing and eternal love affair people have with nature - our trees, woods, forests, ancient and new, small and large - despite the destruction we also wreak on them.

Fiennes is at his best when he's being celebratory and glorying in a particular wood or nature reserve. There's so much joy and evocative detail in these sections that I felt like I was literally there with him, walking in the woods, among craggy oaks and wildflowers and birdsong. He also has a very dry and funny tone that made me chuckle at so many points. I enjoyed a little less his tirades about what we have done to destroy woodland and what we can do to save them - totally sensible and well-written tirades, but I merely felt it was 'preaching to the choir' - I already agreed, and I simply wanted more lovely forest walking and poetry.

I suppose as well when he denounces the short-sighted money-making schemes that inevitably contribute to the partial or wholesale destruction of woodland, it simply made me sad and frustrated, thinking of the ancient woodland we have already lost and the last clinging bits of woodland we might lose in the future. It's a horrible thought. I loved feeling surrounded by trees in Fiennes' book and I can only hope that we are more literally surrounded by trees in the future, with more planting, more saving of ancient woodland, and more integration of modern construction with green planning to incorporate nature into urban areas.

[russell barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm guessing the 'Nature and Poetry' shelf is a fairly niche offering in the bookshops of the world. But if Oak and Ash and Thorn is anything to go by, it's one which deserves rooting out because this is bloody brilliant.

On the face of it it's another brief history of nature, in this case the UKs trees, but don't be deceived.

Like a lot of the new wave of natural history books there's so much more between the covers. It's a eulogy to our ancient forests and woods, an historical look at how we've ended up with huge plantations of pines in our landscape rather than our native broadleaf varieties, a search for what's left of our surviving ancient trees - those over 350-odd years old - and a paen to Fiennes' youth running around the woods of West Sussex and Kent.

Laced through it all is a silvered strand of poems and poets who have cherished our landscape and trees, giving an ethereal counterpoint to Fiennes' often-bleak roll-call of man's desire for cash over natural resources. Disappointingly Edward Thomas comes across as a bit of a dick though - sad days for those of us whose unbending love for him is based on 1 year study at Swansea University in 1992...

Buy it, rediscover a love of our natural woods, forget Edward Thomas was a dick and then buy a small wood using the directory in the back. I am and it's going to be glorious!

[Dave Hartley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our invisible friends; Perhaps a strange thing to say about trees but reading this book reminded me that we humans are often guilty of forgetting. Trees blend into the backdrop of our lives, are ignored, undervalued, invisible; Until someone like Peter Fiennes gently grabs us by our lapels and says wake, up look around, smell the monoterpenes.

Mercifully he does not use such dry words in this book. It moves along at a good clip, with good storytelling, and colourful characters; But it is a call to action. The Eu average of woodland is 39%, in the UK its is just 13%. There is little or no protection for ancient woodlands and many grow up without ever seeing one.

However, he does offer hope and practical steps we can all take. Perhaps the most hopeful message I took from the book was that most people *do* care about woodland and don't, to use the words of Joni Mitchell, want to "pave paradise and put up a parking lot". In this book, he highlights the case of Smithy Wood, an ancient woodland on the edge of the M1 that developers were determined to flatten and put up a motorways service station. At the time of writing the book, this was a very real possibility. I am glad to report (spoiler alert) that in 2020 the developers, faced with relentless, determined, mounting public opposition, gave up.....

There is hope

[Adam Chamberlain · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We are not oak trees and we don't notice the full sweep and scope of the changes we have unleashed. We can only comprehend the immediate detail: the loss of a wood here, a river dammed and poisoned there, a water meadow drained, England's last wolf cornered and killed. If we could live as an oak for eight hundred years, and watch the landscape as the busy mass of humanity scurried and scraped at its surface, the villages emptying, coalfields rising and falling, the last pockets of wilderness tidied away, we would feel the agony of our loss."

I first took this book with me on a fortnight-long expedition deep into English woodland with Earthwatch over the summer. To my detriment it takes me too long to finish many books—putting them down and taking far too long to find the time to pick them up again—and as such I have only just finished reading this over Christmas. That is no indication of its quality, though, as it is an insightful, charming, vital, and beautifully written volume that explores British woodlands as they were, as they are today (depleted and under further threat), and how they could be again. Highly recommended.

[Gary · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book about English woodlands which appears to act mainly as a vehicle for expressing the author's vaguely nostalgic and patriotic sentiments but otherwise lacks any kind of direction or thesis. The title of the book is from a Kipling quote, throughout the book there are various poetic quotes from the likes of Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth, etc, all of them more or less romantic. The vibe is C20th GCSE / 'O' level English, I found it enjoyable enough to read but was neither enlightened nor convinced of the author's passion for the subject. There was enough content in the bibliography (from the likes of Monbiot, Klein, Avery) to suggest he could have tackled the political underpinning of the predicament of English woodlands, but instead we get musings on the 'joys' of hunting. This book is an example of a genre I would describe as 'wannabe Oliver Rackham'.

[Graeme · Rating 3 out of 5]

In which a suburban boy takes time out to ramble through some woods making random observations about the state of things.

Peter Fiennes seems uncertain whether he is writing about Britain or England. After quoting Rudyard Kipling on 'the England of our dreams', he frets about 'the need for the whole of Britain to unite in our forests'. Why that might be necessary or desirable is not made clear. His cultural perspective on woods is unmistakably English. All of the woods he visits are in England (most in the South) and the great majority of his literary references are English.

I was interested to learn that the final resting place of the Babes in the Wood can be specifically located to Wayland Wood in Norfolk.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.

This is an interesting exploration of the forests of the UK, although mostly confined to England. I liked how he wove poetry and prose quotes throughout to showcase the significance trees have had across the ages.

It felt a bit jumpy at times and I wasn't quite sure where the points were leading. His writing style didn't quite work for me, or possibly it was his palpable rage seeping through?

I did like that Fiennes linked our destruction of forests to history and unsustainable economic growth, and gave a call to action for us all to do what we can, because we have the power to save our woods.

His chapter entitled A Short History of Britain's Woods in 3509 Words was brilliant!

[Jordan Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellently written book that is equal parts educational and poetic. This book weaves through a history of British woodlands and forests, visiting the people (and wildlife) that have lived in them, those that appreciated and championed them, and those that have contributed to their destruction. Peter Fiennes' research is very thorough from both literary and scientific perspectives, but also leaves space for a good amount of personal comment and introspection.

I found Oak and Ash and Thorn to be very well paced, and for a book that the author admits somewhat lacks in a formal structure, it flows very well.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a long time to finish this, and to be honest, if the book itself hadn't been so beautiful I probably never would have. I received an early review copy if this book, and tried to read it right away but kept stalling. The writing is good, but the pace is uneven and the tone wanders from detailed natural and historic summaries to personal narrative to indignant ecowarrior lecture, in a way that I found difficult to settle into. It is also possible this story would have been more engaging for a native Brit who could picture the trees under discussion, because half a dozen years of living in London did not equip me to be able to visualise native British trees in any detail, and this book absolutely thrives on detail.

[Michael Dodsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A whimsical ramble through the history of trees, punctuated by some serious concern about the damage we are doing to our planet by denuding our forests. I enjoyed Peter Fiennes's gentle rants and found myself agreeing with him on a whole range of subjects from hunting, conifer planting and development. How nice to read something by one who genuinely cares; the point is, will any of us take heed? A lovely book.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is like taking a lovely ramble in the woods with an ecologically-minded John Oliver. It's sweet and funny, a little bit repetitive but also full of righteous anger. I learned a lot and even a walk in my neighborhood has me appreciating the trees in a different way. The folklore, song and poetry throughout is more than welcome. A beautiful book.

Thanks to Library Thing and their early reviewers program.

[Christina Reid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book felt a bit like taking a meandering wander through some woods whilst conversing with a friend. There are lots of interesting facts, but the structure of the chapters and the book left me a little confused at times. I would recommend this for anyone interested in the effect of humans on our natural landscape, especially forests, but would recommend Wild Kingdom for a slightly more cohesive overview.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a real rallying call for the preservation of the little ancient woodland that we have and the effort required to reverse the decline.

To illustrate how connected we are with woodland there is plenty of poetry etc. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have the right poetry appreciation genes so I didn't get most of these.

Great how the author managed to infuse humour into his desperation into the sad state of affairs.

[Carol Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This apparently aimless ramble through real woodland, folkore and literature is also as angry a piece of writing as you'll ever read. It's also a plea and a plan, and should be prescribed reading in all schools. Beautiful and lyrical, I was engaged in this, walking alongside the author as he explains what woods should mean to us all.

[Cory McClung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read if you want to hear about the natural history, cultural history, literature on nature, government policy, and state of affairs of forests in Britain. At times Fiennes can ramble on a bit too much and the book could have bettered with a couple less chapters. Overall it's a great read for anyone trying to reconnect with the woods and nature.

[Steve Gillway · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable voyage to various woods (Famous and unheralded) and back in the company of the writer, his memories, some history about the demise of forests in England and various literary luminaries. However, he seems to have missed all the Harry Potter references to trees

[Kendra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visit a woodland alone or with others. Donate to a woodland conservation charity if you are able. Be in love with woods and protect them fiercely.

If you need reminding why, where or how you should do these things, read this book.

[MH · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was slightly put off by the overwhelmingly negative tone in this one. Though very understandable with the looming crisis, I'd expected more wonder, awe and celebration, and a little less frustration, cynicism and outright anger. Props for the wry humour though.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I would have liked this book more if I lived in the UK. The history of trees through fact and literature. Interesting

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A blend of history, poetry and the state of our forestry. Trees are vital to the land, the culture and our future, so this book was full of insights, even when slightly hysterical in prognosis.

[Deborah Wickham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some lovely insights, but unfortunately felt too much like a rant. Not what I want from a book, I can do that well enough myself.

[Rosamund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enthusiastic and well intentioned book. Felt it could have been better. Perhaps because it is a bit confused in structure.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

would re read this book.

[Greg Wilkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profound but often whimsical journey through Britain's forests which perfectly combines history, ecology and folklore.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still digesting all the wonders of this wild book. Loved it all.