Ancient by Luke Barley review – the secret history of Britain’s woodlands

2026-02-27 - 07:13

A former ranger tells the story of how the UK’s forests intimately shaped – and were shaped by – its people It may not sit well with the politicians who now seek to govern it, but Britain has always been a land of immigrants – our “native” fauna and flora among them. More than 10,000 years ago, in the wake of retreating ice sheets, trees from the warmer south began to re-colonise this chilly north-western fringe of Europe: first birch, then hazel, elm, oak and alder. By the time rising sea levels submerged the marshy lowlands connecting it to the rest of the continent, the new British mainland was covered in a luxuriant tangle of forest. In this primeval wildwood, a squirrel could leap tree-to-tree from north coast to south, east coast to west. Or so one story goes. In Ancient, woodland expert Luke Barley sets out to tell a more complex and fascinating tale of our forests and the people that have lived with and made use of them. His title points back to