Oliver Rackham's Best

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Trees and
Woodland in the
British Landscape

Long accepted as the best work on the subject, Oliver Rackham's book is both a comprehensive history of Britain's woodlands and a field-work guide that presents tree individually and as part of the landscape.

From prehistoric times, through the Roman period and into the Middle Ages, Oliver Rackham describes the changing character, role and history of trees and woodland. Their subsequent decline until the present century is also studied, with chapters devoted to key themes, from commons and wood pasture, parks and Wooden forests, to farms and hedgerows.

Drawing upon years of research, Oliver Rackham is as highly readable as he is informative and topical, concluding this definitive study with a section on the conservation and future of Britain's trees, woodlands and hedgerows.

"He has the gift of presenting solid scholarship in a way that kindles the imagination and stimulates the sense of curiosity .... it is difficult to convey the quality of Dr Rackham's book on the strength of a few quotations. As an aid to understanding the landscape I haven't found its equal."

New Scientist

An acknowledged authority on the countryside and its history, Dr Oliver Rackham carries out research in the Botany Department at Cambridge University, where he is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. His books

The History of the Countryside

and The Last Forest

are also published by Dent

CONTENTS:

The constant spring: how woods and trees work
Wildwood and prehistoric beginnings
From Claudius to Hugo de Northwold
Classical woodland management: the Middle Ages and after
The woods in decline: post-medieval changes
What woods now mean: a guide to field-work
Trees on commons: the wood-pasture tradition
Parks: private wood-pasture
Wooded Forests: the king's wood-pasture
Trees on the farm: hedges and elsewhere
Conservation and the future

Text and line illustrations, Oliver Rackham, 1976, 1990 First published 1976
Reprinted, 1978 Paperback edition, 1981 Reprinted 1983 Revised edition first published, 1990 First revised paperback edition, 1993

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rackham Oliver
Trees and woodland in the British landscape -Rev. ed.
1. Great Britain. Woodlands, history
I. Title
941'.009'52
ISBN 0-460-86097-6

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