T.C. Smout writes:

Mabey’s essays, which begin from his own experience, are sometimes Schama-like in their self-indulgence, sometimes useful oral history, as in his accounts of managing his own small wood and of the great storm of 1987. He gives a lively if brief account of the economic history of the Chilterns and ecological history of the New Forest, and sets about describing the changing attitude to trees in general and beeches in particular since the days of John Evelyn. He tells how woodmanship, in Rackham’s sense, turned to forestry and landscape gardening, with the improvers’ excessive stress on interference and regularity. He explains the Romantic reaction to this, and is particularly interesting on the resemblances between the aesthetic theory of Uvedale Price and modern ecological ideas, alike in their interest in diversity and niche. He describes Gainsborough’s methods of painting trees, but has surprisingly little to say about Constable. He reveals William Cobbett to be an old curmudgeon who ‘viewed trees much as he did cabbages . . . as utility vegetables’.

(LRB 29 November 2007)

Chatto | hardback 289 pp. |ISBN: 9781856197335