The Sacred Yew: Rediscovering the Ancient Tree of Life Through the Work of Allen Meredith

by Anand Chetan, Diana Brueton, David Bellamy (Introduction)

This volume centres on the work of Allen Meredith, who for 14 years has been tracking down and charting all Britain's yew trees, and whose life is now dedicated to their preservation. His discovery that many of these trees are thousands rather than hundreds of years old is now accepted by botanists like David Bellamy, and his theory that the Magna Carta was signed, not at Runnymede, but beneath a yew tree just across the Thames, has also found scholarly support. Meredith has a visionary belief in the importance of the yew tree to life on Earth, and the other main strand of the book is a study of the tree's role in Christian and pre-Christian the inspiration of the ancient festival of yule, was it also the Nordic tree of life, Yggdrasil?

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1995

Reviews

[Karen Sawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my all-time favourite books. It sparked off my love for the yew tree - the most ancient tree in the world, capable of immortality and transformation.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst this was an interesting deep dive into the yew tree, there were many many tangents going on that made the book feel far longer than it should have been. The title mentions the sacred yew and to be fair that's what the focus of the book is mainly- the sacred aspect of the tree- druid, celtic, folkloric etc.

Allen Meredith is undoubtedly knowledgeable in the species but there is a lot of "he sensed .....", "he just knew........", "this came to him in a dream and it turned out to be true.......". To be fair I'm not a scientist and am not particularly looking for hard facts but for those looking for a robust study of the yew, this book could be a bit disappointing with all the surmise and conjecture (whether borne out to be true or not).

Don't get me wrong, this book is interesting to read and I enjoyed the reading but it did start to drag, purely for some overly lengthy sections (hefty reproduced quotes, poems, sayings and mentions of yews in ancient literature).

I'm probably not going to return to this one if I'm honest so I'll be sending it on.

3 stars

[YA · Rating 5 out of 5]

The YEW is "my" tree ... and this book gives deep insights into the life of those mighty wonderful tress! >>> magic!

[James Emmans · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books