The Oak Papers
James Canton
Available as Paperback, eBook
Blending personal experience with cultural legacy, this homage to the oak tree presents a case for the important role it plays today: in our landscape and in our lives
‘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.
“This is a profound meditation on the human need for connection with nature, as one man seeks solace beneath the boughs of an ancient oak tree. The tree and its surrounds come to life in shimmering detail, and Canton’s writing has an exquisite, somewhat dreamlike quality”
Peter Wohlleben, Author Of The Hidden Life Of Trees
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“James Canton knows so much, writes so well and understands so deeply about the true forest magic and the important place these trees have in it. Knowledge and joy”
Sara Maitland
“With rare delicacy and precision, James Canton has captured the magnificence and mystique of the oak tree. The Oak Papers is a book of deep knowledge, perception and love”
Philip Marsden
“This is a moving, poetic and life-affirming exploration of the idea that a person can form a rich and rewarding bond with an individual tree. The Oak Papers possesses great sensitivity, real wisdom and a deep mystical power”
Patrick Barkham
“In the same way that Canton immersed himself in the attentive activity of observing the oak, this is a book to return to again and again. As Canton found solace through spending time with nature, through the pages of The Oak Papers you see more and more, then you forget yourself, then you find out who you are”
daily Telegraph
James Canton
Dr James Canton runs the Wild Writing MA at the University of Essex and has done since its inception in 2009. He is the author of Ancient Wonderings (2017) and Out of Essex: Re-Imagining a Literary Landscape (2013) which was inspired by his rural wandering in East Anglia. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Essex and reviews for the TLS, Caught by the River and Earthlines. Canton is a regular on television and radio and lectures frequently.
@jamescanton | @jrcanton1 | jamescanton.co.uk