Bestselling British author Patrick Gale chronicles the misadventures of a misfit tree surgeon in this “modern-day myth of self-discovery” (The Guardian). It was in the ancient cathedral city of Barrowcester that eight-year-old Lawrence Frost began his love affair with the trees that had “sprung up on the site of an ancient plague grave and unconsecrated resting place for the city’s outcasts.” And it is there that the thirty-two-year-old forester and arborist returns one night, after sleeping out in his truck in his beloved Wumpett Woods, to find blood staining the kitchen sink and floor of his farmhouse—his wife and daughter gone. Lawrence is suspected of beating his wife, Bonnie, for cheating on him with an American architect. It appears Bonnie and their daughter, Lucy, have done the sensible thing and fled. But when a corpse turns up, burned beyond recognition, the police decide to comb Wumpett Woods in search of a second body. Soon Lawrence is branded a murderer and arrested. Then Bonnie and Lucy turn up alive, and Lawrence is cleared. But he has lost his family. He takes a five-hundred-passenger cruise on the SS Paulina, where a chanteuse of a certain age—and uncertain gender—captivates him. Lawrence begins a new journey, a spiritual and erotic odyssey that takes him back to the buried secrets of his past and then onward toward the future. From the English provinces to the Caribbean to America—and the giant redwoods of northern California—filled with Shakespearean twists and turns and happy coincidences, Tree Surgery for Beginners is a sprawling, Dickensian carnival of a book. With multiple viewpoints and cameo appearances that include a vacillating tiger, it sweeps readers along as Lawrence himself learns to move forward. By turns moving and tragic, this is a triumphant novel of growth, love, and healing from the bestselling author of Notes from an Exhibition.

Trees are now in the public eye as never before. The threat of tree diseases, the felling of street trees, and the challenge of climate change are just some of the issues that have put trees in the media spotlight. At the same time, the trees in our parks, gardens, and streets are a vital resource that can deliver environmental, social, and economic benefits that make our towns and cities attractive, green, and healthy places. Ever since Roman times when amenity trees were first planted in Britain, caring for those trees has required specialist skills. This is mainly because of the challenges of successfully integrating large trees into the urban environment and the risks involved in working with them, often at height and in close proximity to people, buildings and roads. But who are the people with the specialist expertise to care for our amenity trees? While professionals such as horticulturists, landscape architects, conservationists and foresters have a role to play, it is the arboriculturists who are the ‘tree experts’. For centuries arboriculture was often synonymous with forestry or considered an aspect of horticulture, until it emerged in the nineteenth century as a separate discipline. There are now some 22,000 people employed in Britain’s arboricultural industry, including practical tree surgeons and arborists, local authority tree officers, and arboricultural consultants. This is the first book to trace the history of Britain’s professional tree experts, from the Roman arborator to the modern chartered arboriculturist. It also discusses the influences from continental Europe and North America that have helped to shape British arboriculture over the centuries. The Tree Experts will have particular appeal to those interested in the natural and built environment, heritage landscapes, social history, and the history of gardening.