Latest news with #MandyHaggith
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
The Lost Elms by Mandy Haggith review – cultural history of a noble tree
Just as the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 did not originate in Spain, so Dutch elm disease is no fault of the Netherlands. It acquired the name thanks to the pioneering efforts of three Dutch scientists – Marie Beatrice Schol-Schwarz, Christine Buisman and Johanna Westerdijk – who identified the beetle-transported fungus that causes it in the 1920s. Nor is the so-called 'English elm' (Ulmus minor) really English, inasmuch as it is thought to have been transferred here from Italy, so Reform UK party enthusiasts should probably agitate to repatriate all such specimens. More confidently thought native to these isles is the wych elm (from the Old English for 'supple') or Scots elm, which has long been thought to have healing and protective qualities. Our scholarly guide to this noble plant, Mandy Haggith, delves enthusiastically into such lore. The 17th-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper said that elm was connected to the planet Saturn and that its leaves could fix broken bones. Modern 'healers' promise that drinking a decoction of elm bark can purge phlegm and stop diarrhoea. Haggith cites a present-day 'Massachusetts-based herbalist and druid' who claims that slippery elm milk is good for insomnia. It would be unkind to call this sort of thing merely barking. The author insists that 'a western scientific worldview' (in other words, a scientific worldview, shared by scientists in China and India) 'is absolutely not the only way forests can be thought about', which is fair enough. But the fake cures of the 'wellness' industry are not without their own ecological downsides: as Haggith writes later, fashionable pseudo-remedies gone viral on TikTok or whatever can inspire the stripping of bark from healthy trees at injurious scale. Happily, elmwood was not only the preserve of quacks; it was also a sought-after material in shipbuilding (most of the hull of the fast clipper Cutty Sark was made of rock elm), and long before that for making spears and bows: an iron age Celtic tribe was known as 'the ones who vanquish by the elm' (Lemovices). Medieval London, Bristol and other cities had running water delivered by mains pipes of elm. And elm is also the source of a famous insult: when the great Samuel Johnson claimed that there was no Gaelic literature, a poet responded with the Gaelic for 'your head is made entirely of elm, especially your tongue and your gums'. Luckily, although Dutch elm disease has killed hundreds of millions of trees since the early 20th century, the species is not lost, or even on the brink of extinction. Brighton, Haggith sees, is managing the blight well through city-wide surveillance and timely surgery. And the fossil record suggests that elms have previously suffered waves of pandemic disease before bouncing back. There will be time for more poetic mentions of elms of the kind the author rather exhaustively collects towards the end. ('Robert Frost was a big fan of elm trees …') But the greater part of this book's devotion, and its delight, is reserved for living specimens in their habitats. Two rows of elms, Haggith notes, can form a 'corridor for wildlife, dog walkers and feral children', or 'a church-like nave, an arch-shaped cloister that draws the eye' towards a monastery in Beauly. A cheerfully self-described 'tree-hugger', she is inspired to her best writing by close observation of the trees themselves. On an elm growing horizontally out of the rock near a Scottish loch: 'I stand beneath it, neck craned in awe, looking up into the lush green profusion of its living community. It is winter, so all this greenery isn't the tree's own leaves, but photosynthesising life using it as a climbing frame'. Elsewhere she finds beauty even in a diseased log, happily noting the 'beautiful doily pattern made by the brood-chamber and feeding passages of the grubs'. And her enthusiasm is contagious. As someone who began this book with literally no idea what an elm looks like, I was inspired to download the Woodland Trust tree-ID app and resolve to pay more attention to our ligneous friends. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion The Lost Elms: A Love Letter to Our Vanished Trees by Mandy Haggith is published by Headline (£22). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
The Lost Elms by Mandy Haggith review – cultural history of a noble tree
Just as the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 did not originate in Spain, so Dutch elm disease is no fault of the Netherlands. It acquired the name thanks to the pioneering efforts of three Dutch scientists – Marie Beatrice Schol-Schwarz, Christine Buisman and Johanna Westerdijk – who identified the beetle-transported fungus that causes it in the 1920s. Nor is the so-called 'English elm' (Ulmus minor) really English, inasmuch as it is thought to have been transferred here from Italy, so Reform UK party enthusiasts should probably agitate to repatriate all such specimens. More confidently thought native to these isles is the wych elm (from the Old English for 'supple') or Scots elm, which has long been thought to have healing and protective qualities. Our scholarly guide to this noble plant, Mandy Haggith, delves enthusiastically into such lore. The 17th-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper said that elm was connected to the planet Saturn and that its leaves could fix broken bones. Modern 'healers' promise that drinking a decoction of elm bark can purge phlegm and stop diarrhoea. Haggith cites a present-day 'Massachusetts-based herbalist and druid' who claims that slippery elm milk is good for insomnia. It would be unkind to call this sort of thing merely barking. The author insists that 'a western scientific worldview' (in other words, a scientific worldview, shared by scientists in China and India) 'is absolutely not the only way forests can be thought about', which is fair enough. But the fake cures of the 'wellness' industry are not without their own ecological downsides: as Haggith writes later, fashionable pseudo-remedies gone viral on TikTok or whatever can inspire the stripping of bark from healthy trees at injurious scale. Happily, elmwood was not only the preserve of quacks; it was also a sought-after material in shipbuilding (most of the hull of the fast clipper Cutty Sark was made of rock elm), and long before that for making spears and bows: an iron age Celtic tribe was known as 'the ones who vanquish by the elm' (Lemovices). Medieval London, Bristol and other cities had running water delivered by mains pipes of elm. And elm is also the source of a famous insult: when the great Samuel Johnson claimed that there was no Gaelic literature, a poet responded with the Gaelic for 'your head is made entirely of elm, especially your tongue and your gums'. Luckily, although Dutch elm disease has killed hundreds of millions of trees since the early 20th century, the species is not lost, or even on the brink of extinction. Brighton, Haggith sees, is managing the blight well through city-wide surveillance and timely surgery. And the fossil record suggests that elms have previously suffered waves of pandemic disease before bouncing back. There will be time for more poetic mentions of elms of the kind the author rather exhaustively collects towards the end. ('Robert Frost was a big fan of elm trees …') But the greater part of this book's devotion, and its delight, is reserved for living specimens in their habitats. Two rows of elms, Haggith notes, can form a 'corridor for wildlife, dog walkers and feral children', or 'a church-like nave, an arch-shaped cloister that draws the eye' towards a monastery in Beauly. A cheerfully self-described 'tree-hugger', she is inspired to her best writing by close observation of the trees themselves. On an elm growing horizontally out of the rock near a Scottish loch: 'I stand beneath it, neck craned in awe, looking up into the lush green profusion of its living community. It is winter, so all this greenery isn't the tree's own leaves, but photosynthesising life using it as a climbing frame'. Elsewhere she finds beauty even in a diseased log, happily noting the 'beautiful doily pattern made by the brood-chamber and feeding passages of the grubs'. And her enthusiasm is contagious. As someone who began this book with literally no idea what an elm looks like, I was inspired to download the Woodland Trust tree-ID app and resolve to pay more attention to our ligneous friends. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion The Lost Elms: A Love Letter to Our Vanished Trees by Mandy Haggith is published by Headline (£22). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Scotsman
20-06-2025
- Scotsman
Ten books about the outdoors to read this summer
It's shaping up to be a vintage summer for books about the outdoors – here are some new releases worth seeking out, writes Roger Cox Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Summer is the best season for reading outdoors, and it's also the best season for reading about the outdoors. After all, books about the sea have always made the best beach reads, and books about mountains tend to feel more real when you're sitting in a tent looking out at a real one. With the summer holidays just around the corner, here are some recent and imminent releases to consider taking with you on your next adventure. The Lost Elms, by Mandy Haggith For many years, Achmelvich-based writer and activist Mandy Haggith has been a sort of unofficial poet laureate of our woodlands. When I last interviewed her back in 2012, she had just taken up a post as writer-in-residence at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, and was working her way through the Ogham, the ancient Gaelic alphabet in which each of the 18 letters corresponds to a different species of tree, writing a poem about a different tree every day. For her latest project, however, she's very much focused on one species of tree - the elm - and this book is billed as a love letter to the hundreds of millions of these trees wiped out globally by Dutch elm disease over the past century. (Wildfire, £22, 3 July) Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Mandy Haggith | Chris Puddephatt The Restless Coast, by Roger Morgan-Grenville Roger Morgan-Grenville is the author of several books about the natural world, most recently Waking Land (2023), which saw him trekking 1,000 miles north through Britain, following the advance of Spring. This new book sees him undertaking an even more impressive yomp around the coast of mainland Britain, hiking for around 2,000 miles of his journey and using public transport and hitchhiking to make up the rest. Along the way, he meets some of the people trying to protect our remaining wild places. (Icon, £22.99, out now) Community: People and Wildlife on the West Coast of Scotland, by Jane Smith Hard to know what to love more about this book: the crisp, precise writing style or the very stylish illustrations. Argyll-based nature artist Jane Smith travelled to various different locations in the west of Scotland to make Community, with each stop on her journey representing a different type of habitat. Her descriptions of the wildlife she encounters are wonderfully evocative, but she's also concerned with the complex relationships between the people who live in these places and the natural world around them. (Birlinn, £17.99, out now) Swimmingly: Adventures in Water, by Vassos Alexander As he trains for a swim across the English Channel, sports presenter Vassos Alexander takes a deep-dive into the history and culture of open water swimming, meeting everyone from elite athletes to enthusiastic amateurs. (Bloomsbury Sport, £16.99, out now) Upland: A Journey Through Time and the Hills, by Ian Crofton Writing in The Scotsman a few weeks ago, Allan Massie described Ian Crofton's account of a lifetime walking the hills and mountains of Scotland, England and Wales as 'a delightful book, beautifully written and rich in memories.' Also notable is Crofton's tendency to derive as much enjoyment from climbing more modestly-sized hills as he does from scaling grander peaks. (Birlinn, £20, out now) Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ian Crofton | Contributed The Perilous Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic, by Karl Bell Not only does Karl Bell's new book provide a colourful compendium of the 'merfolk, ghosts, phantom ships and sea monsters' that have populated the seafaring folklore of the Atlantic nations for centuries, he also looks at how and why these tales came into being, and how they evolved and mutated as they were transmitted from place to place over time. (Reaktion, £18, 1 July) Nic Wilson: Land Beneath the Waves Struggling with chronic health issues, Guardian Country Diarist Nic Wilson examines the ways in which the natural world has impacted on her life. Sample sentence: 'The memories are papery and thin, like honesty seed heads some will blow away, but I can see through the layers to the kernels within.' (Summersdale, £18.99, out now) The Sound of Many Waters: A Journey Along the River Tay, by Robin Crawford Robin Crawford's last book, 2018's Into the Peatlands, was an exploration of the ways in which the titular landscapes here in Scotland link us to our past. Now, in The Sound of Many Waters, he sets out to explore the River Tay, delving into its history and also charting the ways in which it has impacted on his own life. (Birlinn, £14.99, 3 July) A Year with the Seals, by Alix Morris As the title suggests, this book sees Maine-based environmental journalist Alix Morris spend a 12 month period delving into the secret lives of seals. Along the way she meets the scientists who study them, the fishermen who curse them and the surfers and swimmers who now encounter seal-hunting sharks in coastal waters more frequently as seal numbers increase. (Ithaka, £16.99, 10 July) Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
