The story of a tragedy never forgotten, and a community who came together to mourn a generation of childrenIn October 1966, a small Welsh mining village was hit by disaster. Heavy rain had been pounding the village for days and over time filled a tip containing coal waste, situated high above the village. Within minutes, the coal tip had slid down the mountain, engulfing a farm, several houses and a school, and ultimately killing 28 adults and 116 children. It was ...

The botanical history of Britain and North West Europe has a dark and a light side. Plants have been used as weapons to harm people, taken deliberately as addictive drugs and also employed as tools in witchcraft and used as magical amulets. Yet many of these same plants have been medicinally vital to numerous European communities; as the author notes, frequently the only difference between a benevolent medicine and a poison is dosage. In this book, which is richly illustrated with modern c...

The gnarled, immutable yew tree is one of the most evocative sights in the British and Irish language, an evergreen impression of immortality, the tree that provides a living botanical link between our own landscapes and those of the distant past. This book tells the extraordinary story of the yew’s role in the landscape through the millennia, and makes a convincing case for the origins of many of the oldest trees, as markers of the holy places founded by Celtic saints in the early medieva...

The story of a tragedy never forgotten, and a community who came together to mourn a generation of childrenIn October 1966, a small Welsh mining village was hit by disaster. Heavy rain had been pounding the village for days and over time filled a tip containing coal waste, situated high above the village. Within minutes, the coal tip had slid down the mountain, engulfing a farm, several houses and a school, and ultimately killing 28 adults and 116 children. It was ...