Some five years ago, I sought solace from the ways of the world by stepping into the embrace of an ancient oak tree . . . From the first meeting, there grew a strange sense of attachment I did not consciously recognise until I later began to realise the significance that trees, and oak trees especially, can have in our lives.’
James Canton spent two years sitting with and studying the Honywood Oak. A colossus of a tree, it would have been a sapling when Magna Carta was signed. Initially visiting the tree for escape and solitude, in time he learns to study it more closely. He examines how our long-standing dependency on oak trees has developed and morphed into myth and legend.
The Oak Papers is a stunning, meditative and healing book about the lessons we can learn from the natural world, if only we slow down enough to listen.
Despre autor
Dr James Canton is Director of Wild Writing at the University of Essex. He is the author of Grounded: A Journey into the Landscapes of Our Ancestors (2023), The Oak Papers (2020), Ancient Wonderings: Journeys into Prehistoric Britain (2017) and Out of Essex: Re-Imagining a Literary Landscape (2013), which was inspired by his rural wanderings in East Anglia. He has written for the Guardian, reviews for the TLS and Caught by the River, and is a regular on television and radio.@jamescanton | @jrcanton1 | jamescanton.co.uk