Thomas Pakenham’s family of trees

I have been remarkably fortunate. I developed a passion for trees and the trees responded. At any rate, most of my trees seem happy where I planted them. Many will, I fondly believe, outlive the youngest of my grandchildren. And, unless they fall victim to global warming (which, sad to say, is quite possible), these trees will give comfort and pleasure to children yet unborn.

Why did I develop this passion for trees? Like most sensible people I find them irresistible. And in my case I believe that the roots of my passion for trees lie deep in my childhood. My sister Antonia and I were “Irish twins”: we were born within 11 and a half months of each other. In 1936, when I was three, the centre of our world was a large, airy nursery on the upper floor of a large, plain house at Rose Hill, in the unfashionable suburbs of south Oxford. Our garden was somewhat bleak. The house, appropriately, was called Singletree.

For most of the day, our lives were ruled by Jean, our young and energetic nurse. But at six o’clock, if we were lucky, we would be brought down, in pyjamas and dressing gowns, to meet our mother in the drawing room. Here she would be seated, shining like a goddess, ready to read us a book of our choice. And we would sit, dazzled by this privilege, snuggling up on either side of her on the green sofa. My favourite book was called The Wood That Came Back. It was written and illustrated (I later discovered) by an accomplished British artist called Clare Leighton. The theme would be topical today but, I now realise, had a special resonance at Singletree.

A married couple buy a site to build a house. But the site is already occupied by a clump of beech trees, and a community of squirrels, rabbits, foxes, jackdaws and other birds. The husband, in plus fours, cuts down the trees with an axe, one by one. The animals and birds are driven away, and a new house is built where the trees once stood. But the foolish couple have left the stumps intact. Imperceptibly the trees regrow from the stumps, eager to get their revenge. Meanwhile the birds and animals have joined forces to drive out the newcomers. The story ends with nature and the trees triumphant, as the foolish couple run screaming down the hill, desperate to escape their tormentors.

There’s a later, more prosaic explanation for my passion for trees. In the first week of February 1961, I was 27 and had just got a job as a cub reporter in London on the diary of the new-born Sunday Telegraph. That week, as the new paper rolled from the presses, I heard news that was to change the direction of my life. My father’s elder brother Edward, the 6th Earl of Longford, was then fifty-eight and a remarkable man in many different ways. He was a passionate Irish nationalist, who had devoted his life to the rescue and running of the Gate Theatre in Dublin; he owned our 1,500-acre family estate in Westmeath; and he seemed in perfect health, although he was believed to weigh 24 stone. On February 4th he died suddenly of a stroke. My father Frank inherited the Longford title. But under a family settlement, originating before my uncle was born, the bulk of his fortune passed directly to me. I felt like someone who has won a prize in the lottery, and in a sense I had: the anachronistic lottery of birth. Antonia was the eldest child, but the nineteenth-century settlement had no time for girls. All that mattered to the lawyers was that I was the eldest son.

The family estate at Pakenham Hall (a name I quickly abolished by restoring the original Irish name, Tullynally) seemed to me magnificent, perhaps because I knew nothing about farming. There were 1,000 acres of boggy farmland, grazed by halfbred heifers and bullocks, two small Ferguson tractors and 500 acres of gardens and woods. The house was a crumbling neo-Gothic castle. But there was a snag. In those days death duties in Ireland seemed to be designed to crush the life out of an old estate. In my case they would run to 62 per cent. So I would start my new career as a farmer up to my ears in debt. But how could I resist those boggy acres, the crumbling castle – and those noble beech trees and oak trees that studded the demesne?

It was the ancient trees in the parkland that from the beginning grabbed my imagination and excited my senses. This was my treasure trove. Most of my eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors made their careers serving (and sometimes dying) as generals in the army or as captains in the navy. Men like that would have felt no need, even if they could afford it, to impress their neighbours by buying Chippendale sideboards or landscapes by Richard Wilson and Claude Lorrain. But they loved the family estate and planted many parkland trees to make it beautiful. Now these were in my care: individual oak and beech and sweet chestnut as fine as you could observe in any great park in Britain or Ireland. These were the treasures I had inherited – living landscapes by Wilson and Claude. And with the joy of possession went the duty of looking after them.

What new trees was I planting myself? The strange thing, I now realise, is that during the 1960s and 1970s – the first 20 years of my life at Tullynally – I hardly planted a single tree. I can only offer various excuses. True, the demesne and the pleasure ground were well stocked with giant beech until battered by a series of storms in the 1970s. But the main reason was that I was engaged in a tormenting struggle to pay off my debts to the government and the bank. To create a 300-cow dairy farm and make it a commercial success was the main imperative. At the same time I was committed to writing a series of history books – The Year of Liberty (a history of the Irish rebellion of 1798), The Boer War and The Scramble for Africa – which took the rest of my energy. It was not until 1987 that I finally broke free from my debts, and leased the farm, by then a successful business, to an accomplished neighbour. By 1990 I could at last indulge my passion for trees.

The Company of Trees: A Year in a Lifetime’s Quest by Thomas Pakenham is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in hardback at £30 (eBook, £15.99)