3 Dec 2015

Robert Penn: The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees

From Nine To Noon, 10:07 am on 3 December 2015

Robert Penn cut down an ash tree to see how many things could be made from it. After all, ash is the tree we have made the greatest and most varied use of over the course of human history. His book The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees chronicles his journey from Wales across Europe and Ireland to the USA, where he discovered the ancient skills and knowledge of the properties of ash, developed over millennia, are far from dead – with people still making everything from wheels and arrows to furniture and baseball bats.