Tom Williamson, Gerry Barnes, and Toby Pillatt have produced a valuable book that applies evidence from meticulous research into a wide range of historical sources. Their Trees in England: Management and Disease since 1600 is an important contribution to present-day discussions on woodland management and the conservation of both nature and heritage. Overall, the book is an impressive addition to available literature on tree and woodland history. In 2018, it won the prestigious Best Woodland Book of the Year award.

The background to the work presented in this volume is a major review of English arboriculture spanning a period of around four hundred years. The insights presented provide readers with a genuine feel for the ways that woods and hedges have evolved. It also helps establish the importance of their management over long periods—indeed for much longer than generally appreciated. While some readers may find the statistics and micro-detail rather daunting, these generate fascinating insights into trees and their management. The volume will be excellent reading for all those interested in British trees.

Overall, this book provides a rich resource with data that can be used and quoted by historians interested in the countryside. It is likely to remain a keystone in understanding the English landscape for some considerable time. Indeed, it can be asserted that the volume will be firstly a must-read for those interested in the role of trees and woods in past landscapes, but also essential reading for people concerned with trees and future landscapes. It has already received glowing reviews from a wide range of academic and practitioner disciplines and publications.

The three authors are experienced and passionate historians, each with a deep knowledge of trees, treed landscapes, and the ways in which people and trees have interacted in England historically. The period addressed is since 1600 AD, which essentially takes us from the time just prior to the landmark publication by John Evelyn (Sylva, 1664), and the beginnings of modern forestry and tree management. Indeed, this is a time at the interface between the older medieval landscape and the emergence of the new, industrial, modern countryside and urban settlements. Where ancient trees survive, they bridge the gap between the two periods and help provide a sense of place.

Well written and thoroughly researched, this book will be a fascinating account for a diverse range of readers; in many complementing the more scientific sources with which many tree specialists are more familiar. Indeed, as do Melvyn Jones (Sheffield's Woodland Heritage, 2009) and Oliver Rackham (Ancient Woodland: Its History, Vegetation and Uses in England, 1980; The History of the Countryside, 1986), Williams, Barnes, and Pillatt establish here a strong case for embedding the evidence of historical research into our understanding of present-day landscape resources. I argue that only through understanding this past evidence can we better inform our judgments on today's environmental resources. Furthermore, future activities to address current ecological issues and crises such as biodiversity loss and the spread of invasive pests and diseases must be guided by informed judgements enlightened by history. Alper Çolak, Simay Kırca, and I take a similarly broad approach in editing Ancient Woodlands and Trees: A Guide for Landscape Planners and Forest Managers (2018), but at a British and European scale; I do likewise, but with a lighter touch in Ancient Woodland: History, Industry and Crafts (2013) considering connections between history, ecology, and heritage in woodlands. With The Woodland Heritage Manual: A Guide to Investigating Wooded Landscapes (2008), my co-authors and I provided a first “handbook” for a multidisciplinary approach to trees and woods. The present volume, however, drills deeper into specific examples from history to inform our knowledge and insight into the English treescape over recent centuries. Importantly though, this is at once a good read and a very informative literary exploration of trees in the post-1600 English countryside. The book is targeted at landscape historians, natural scientists, foresters, and arboriculturalists. However, considering trees as a resource in the context of the history of human interaction with the natural environment, it will be much appreciated by all those interested in countryside and tree management.

The book opens with an introduction, “Trees, Woods, and History,” followed by “One Continued Grove” and “The Economics of Farmland Trees.” There follow highly readable chapters: “Woods and Wood-Pastures,” “The Nature of Trees,” and “Trees in the Modern World.” (I take the theme of wood-pastures further by in Shadow Woods: A Search for Lost Landscapes [2017] with the emerging “shadow woods” concept in which historical ecology guides ideas of future rewilding but which postdates the volume under review.) Finally, with a broader context of current worries and debates about invasive pests and diseases, there are two closing chapters: “The Threats to Trees” and “Past and Future Treescapes.”

Today there are serious concerns about our tree health and the implications for our future woodlands. Indeed, since the catastrophic impact of the Dutch elm disease outbreak during the 1970s and 1980s there has followed a series of further epidemics, with more still to come. Ash dieback is just the latest of a series of outbreaks, with climate change, environmental pollution, and globalization set to bring more problems in the future. These outbreaks sit alongside other major threats to woods and trees, such as, for example, the High Speed 2 project, which will cut a great swathe though middle England. With this volume, Williamson, Barnes, and Pillatt bring sharp eyes and more to examine critically the historic context of past changes and the future threats. This perspective can be set alongside scientific considerations to provide much-needed insight into the character of England's trees and woods. Often highly unnatural in character due to planting and management over centuries, alongside environmental factors these treescapes have been shaped by economic and social forces too. This is the take-home message from the book.