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Brett Westwood joins Richard Mabey inside an old churchyard yew tree in Hertfordshire, to unravel the fascinating history of our relationship with these ancient trees. From 2016

Brett Westwood steps inside the trunk of an ancient yew tree in a churchyard in Bennington in Hertfordshire, with the writer and naturalist Richard Mabey. From their extraordinary vantage point, the two men begin to unravel the history of our relationship with this most ancient and fascinating of trees. Over the centuries, yews have inspired poets, writers, painters and topiarists - who have shaped them into everything from peacocks to police helmets. With the help of writer and botanist Paul Evans, we learn that the yew is a tree unlike any other: a long-lived, regenerating, poisonous, evergreen, revered, medicinal rule-breaker.

Originally broadcast in a longer form 22/11/2016
Original Producer: Sarah Blunt
Archive Producer Andrew Dawes for ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Audio in Bristol

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Christmas Day 2022 06:35

Dr Anne Anderson

Dr Anne Anderson
, author and lecturer, has been captivated by trees in art since curatingΒ for Southampton City Art Gallery in 2008.

She recently curated Under the Greenwood Picturing the British Tree from Constable to Kurt Jackson for St Barbe Art Gallery and Museum in the New Forest. An expert on the Arts and Crafts movement, which revived the art of topiary, her favourite fantasy is William Morris's Fafnir at Kelmscott Manor, Oxon, a Yew hedge shaped into an Icelandic dragon! Anne is currently a tutor at the V&A and guides art tours at home and abroad.

Paul Evans

Paul Evans
Β is a nature writer, diarist, playwriter, poet, broadcaster and environmental journalist. He is author of Field Notes from the Edge and Herbaceous.

His radio broadcasting began with reports for on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 then became a regular writer and presenter of programmes strands such as Nature, World on the Move, Saving Species and Living World.

His feature programmes are based on creative place-based writing about Wicken Fen, Islay, The Wrekin, Orford Ness and Dungeness. Β Β 

Phil Gates

Phil Gates
Since the early 1990s Phil Gates has developed expertise in Science Communication and Science Journalism. He has written science features for the Sunday Post; Northern Echo; the Guardian; the Independent on Sunday; ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Gardeners’ World (monthly column 1992-2005); ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Wildlife; Kew magazine; Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society (The Garden); She; Australian Geographical Magazine and New Scientist and he has been a regular columnist for ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Gardeners’ World magazine and ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Wildlife.

He has written 17 science books for young people and has won or has been shortlisted for many literary awards. Phil has a strong interest in wildlife conservation and is a former chairman ofΒ Β and past President of theΒ . He is on the editorial advisory board ofΒ Β magazine. His book Spring Fever, published in 1992, was an early prognosis for the impact of climate change on Britain’s flora and fauna that contains a number of predictions that have since been borne out by experience.

Find more from Phil atΒ ,Μύ, andΒ .

Richard Mabey

Richard Mabey
has been a writer and broadcaster for more than 40 years, usually taking a cultural perspective on the natural world. This means his writing has ventured also into art, music, food and biography.

After education at Oxford, Richard worked as a lecturer in Social Studies in Further Education, then as a Senior Editor at Penguin Books. He became a full-time writer in 1974. He is the author of some thirty books, including The Cabaret of Plants: Botany and the Imagination (2015), and Whistling in the Dark: In Pursuit of the Nightingale (1993), winner of the East Anglia Book Award, 2010, in a revised version entitled , (2007), the ground-breaking and best-selling β€œcultural flora” (1996), winner of a National Book Award, and Gilbert White, which won the Whitbread Biography Award in 1986,. His recent memoir (2005), which describes how reconnecting with the wild helped him break free from debilitating depression, was short-listed for three major literary awards, the Whitbread, Ondaatje, and J.R. Ackerley prizes. He writes for the Guardian, New Statesman and Granta, and contributes frequently to ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ radio.

Frances Carey

Frances Carey is author ofΒ Β and a former curator at theΒ .Β In 1975, she joined the British Museum's Prints and Drawings Department as Assistant Keeper of the Modern Collection before becoming Deputy Keeper, Prints & Drawings in 1994. She moved to Directorate as Head of National Programmes in 2003.

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