What's the connection between a most successful and unusual book on trees and the warfare in South Africa of nearly a century ago? Simple: the connection is Thomas Pakenham. For, in addition to his tree book, which must have weighed downs many a Christmas stocking, he is the author of The Boer War and The Scramble for Africa and will be giving a lecture "Ireland and the Boer War" on Thursday 9th of January - this coming Thursday.
It is at 8 p.m. in Griffith College, South Circular Road Dublin. (Still Griffith Barracks to many). The lecture is one of the series of The Military History of Ireland, that estimable body, which produces the best journal in the country: The Irish Sword, and is not only estimable but chivalrous, in that its programme bears the footnote: "Non members are, welcome to all On then, briefly to the trees.
His book is engagingly called Meetings with Remarkable Trees. Remarkable is the mot juste, for while so many of them are beautiful on to incredibly beautiful, he has an eye for the freak, the ghoul, the horror. Many of them are barely trees at all - just the reminder of something that was there. He is well aware of what he is doing. The reputation of the ash tree at Clapton Court, Somerset is based on its distended belly. "However, I must admit that a surreal quality redeems the wayward proportions. . . its bark is the texture of stone. Is that a huge mossy boulder squatting on the lawn? Or (more alarmingly) some gigantic family pet as drawn by Thurber?"
He likes a sparky headline; "Tulips a hundred feet high" is of course about a tulip tree of, in fact, 110 feet. Death at Chatsworth refers to some oaks. He has quoted Dryden's lines: Three centuries he grows, and three he stays,
Supreme in state, and in three more decays.
The oldest are kept secure behind locked gates. "Some are already dead, and stand corpselike, with hands outstretched. I have chosen two of them for my photograph." And his words fit the picture brilliantly.
A short notice because already everything has been said about this book. But don't forget the lecture. Not about trees.