Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 An individual and inspiring journey January 1, 2009
Wildwood is a highly individual book, unique even. Ostensibly about various types of trees and their wood, it combines natural history, diary and travelogue, and is written with passion, enthusiasm and personal flourishes which make it impossible not to like it.
Deakin, one of the founders of Friends of the Earth, shift time, location, subject and writing style with each new chapter. He starts off at his home in Suffolk, discussing his hedgerows, the wooden propellor on his desktop, the old railway carriage where he often sleeps. Moving further afield, he roams the Southern half of Britain talking about the willow trees used to make cricket bats, the Celtic tradition of the Green Man, the moths which can be found in a forest at night, and artists who work with driftwood, or who fashion objects from unseasoned oak and then leave it to misshape itself. Finally he roams the world, rambling through Polish forests or tracing the ur-apple and the ancestor of all walnuts to the mountains and valleys of Kazakhstan and Krygestan.
As you might gather, it's a rather random journey, held together only by the common topic of trees, and by Deakin's infectious passion for his subject. Particularly moving are his tales of school camps in the New Forest, where his teacher got the whole class carrying out detailed surveys of the local plant and animal life. You can't help thinking that this inspirational teacher had a huge influence on the course British Natural History, as not only Deakin but several other leading British naturalists graduated through this same teacher's wildlife camps.
 A delight October 23, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is one of those books you can just dip in and out of every time you're feeling a little stressed with urban life. Each chapter is devoted to a different aspect of the world of wood and trees. Deakin, a true English eccentric, owned woodlands in Suffolk and loved and nurtured them like his children.
In this book he travels the world from the new forests of Hampshire to the Australian outback in search of new woodland experiences and other people as obsessed by wood as he is. The pace is gentle, his love of nature and his ability to write with fluid beauty about it is a joy and even though I am a townie through and through I found myself longing to wander through the woods with him.
Sadly, this is never to be, so the book is as close as I'm ever likely to get. His atmospheric and loving prose is no poor second.
interesting but smug March 31, 2008
4 out of 10 found this review helpful
A great read if you can cope with the "heres another one of my friends who owns a wood etc"
A book to savour next to a roaring log (oops!) fire March 29, 2008
30 out of 30 found this review helpful
Sorry about the pun above, but it's true. This is a large book that deserves a huge armchair, a wee dram and the aforementioned fire.
At last I have got round to reading this, and devoured it over a wet Easter weekend. If ever a book encouraged you to get out there and actually SEE the natural world around you, and APRECIATE it, then this is the one. Sure there are minor criticisms, mainly stylistic, but if you read this in conjunction with his good friend Robert McFarlane's book you will see that this book was (possibly) written under circumstances where the author was unwell, which perhaps leads to the sometimes "bitty" nature of the narrative. But even without eulogising too much over this one, the author's love of the countryside shines through and if the purpose of this book is to put that across and get the reader to think outside their four walls then this surely succeeds.
Inspiring, and inspired February 10, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
A lovely book. I came upon Wildwood as a novice, never having read anything by Deakin before - but he is good; he is very good. The book comes in four main blocks: Roots, about his home and youth; Sapwood, on British wood, woods and artists; Driftwood, on his travels in Europe, Australia and central Asia; and Heartwood, back to his home area of Suffolk. Each block comes in short chapters, full of information, insight, and excellent writing. He likes sleeping outside or in an old railway wagon, and links this to writings by Jefferies or Thoreau, recites the beams in his house, or starts talking about an ancient propeller hub in his study and diversifies that into walnut and all its applications, down to Jaguar gear knobs. I could have done without the Australian bits - they just don't resonate for me (hence four stars). But the Kazak and Kyrgyz chapters are wonderful, and more than make up for it. He is never dull - the writing is full of links to the familiar, observations on new insights, fascinating snippets. This is an inspiring book, by an inspired writer.
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