Woodland Paradise

I once had the privilege of working with him for a couple of days, during which we explored Saint John’s Wood in Co Roscommon. At first I found him rather daunting. Prof Oliver Rackham OBE is every inch the Cambridge University don. But I soon discovered that the upper-class English mannerisms concealed a rather shy personality with massive enthusiasm for his subject, which was driven by incisive intelligence and an extraordinary breadth of knowledge.

Because of this I was quite excited when I heard he had published a new book called Woodlands that was said to be a compendium of all he had learned on the subject in a long life that had included much travelling to woodlands around the world.