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The Medicine Tree
- Author
- Nick Hayes
- Narrator
- Nick Hayes
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Publish Date
- 1 October 2026
- Run Time
- 15 hours 19 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
A stunning, deeply felt exploration of the struggle between ownership and belonging in England, by the best-selling author of The Book of Trespass
Early one September, Nick Hayes brought his houseboat up the Thames into rural Oxfordshire, mooring opposite a strange tree that towered over the surrounding meadowland. The tree, he would discover, was a hybrid of the eastern cottonwood, brought back from colonial Canada. The land was the Hardwick estate, whose apparently timeless tranquillity – like so much of the English countryside – masks a darker history. Yet Hardwick also tells another, quite different story.
Over the following months, Hayes learns that its rolling hills and fertile valleys are on the front lines of a battle between ownership and belonging. Through a golden autumn, and the frosts and floods of winter and early spring, Hayes explores an estate that, acknowledging the colonial origins of its wealth, has become a haven for those who are both unable and unwilling to be part of a countryside geared towards profit at any cost. Living and working among this extraordinary community of farmers and craftspeople, Hayes contemplates what we have lost in England, as our sense of kinship with the land, and the deep knowledge that arose from it, was destroyed.
Yet, Hayes suggests, if we can learn from the cultures we have exploited, and from the tentative roots being put down in this radical Oxfordshire estate, perhaps we can start to unpick – and even re-enchant – our relationship with the land. The Medicine Tree is a singular act of storytelling and recovery: of giants, gods, witches, trees, horror and hope, of entanglement, reparation and solidarity.
© Nick Hayes 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
Critics Review
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This book elegantly weaves between a diaristic account of nine months moored on the Thames and a sprawling, granular and global history of the politics and spirituality of land. Both Nick's accounts of the past and the contemporary are shot through with righteous anger but countered by his tender, visceral descriptions of the body within nature that makes the reader ache to swim naked and walk barefoot in the dew. Every chapter, based on the months from September to May, demonstrates Haye's profound attachment to community, and are a clarion call for the vital rediscovery, or invention, of an Albion kinship of the land and the rivers
Leah Gordon
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Dazzling in scope, effervescing with insights, richly illustrated, lyrically written and fired by a yearning to remake England anew. Hayes has delved deep into our buried radical history and forgotten folklore and unearthed a treasure trove
Guy Shrubsole
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An astonishing and revelatory work of reciprocity and re-membering, The Medicine Tree is a purification ritual for the first victim of English colonialism, England herself. As a community moves from dreaming of better to doing better, stories of embedded trauma unfurl on scales that are both epic and intimate. Nature, culture, global and local history, economics, politics and metaphysics have seldom felt so utterly enmeshed. I’m reeling
Amy Jane Beer
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The Medicine Tree is many things at once: the glittering journal of a river year; an impassioned mapping of the asymmetries of power, justice and wealth that underlie the English ‘countryside' as surely as strata; the hopeful weaving-into-being of a possible world to come. It stands in a tradition of dissenting English rural writing that includes William Cobbett, Roger Deakin, Colin Ward and Thomas Hardy. Fiercely clever, compassionate and self-interrogating, it lays bare the 'rotten roots of England' -- but also sets out the principles for a progressive politics of place and belonging. At a time when an ethnonationalist far right is on the march, and when the severance between people, land and the larger web of life is deepening disastrously, this is vital, urgent work. Like its predecessor The Book of Trespass, The Medicine Tree will touch hearts, spark debate and inspire change
Robert Macfarlane
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Nick Hayes
- Narrator
- Nick Hayes
- Duration
- 15 hours 19 minutes
- Release Date
- 1 October 2026
- ISBN
- 9781837313747
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Genre
- European history, Colonialism and imperialism
Synopsis
A stunning, deeply felt exploration of the struggle between ownership and belonging in England, by the best-selling author of The Book of TrespassEarly one September, Nick Hayes brought his houseboat up the Thames into rural Oxfordshire, mooring opposite a strange tree that towered over the surrounding meadowland. The tree, he would discover, was a hybrid of the eastern cottonwood, brought back from colonial Canada. The land was the Hardwick estate, whose apparently timeless tranquillity – like so much of the English countryside – masks a darker history. Yet Hardwick also tells another, quite different story.Over the following months, Hayes learns that its rolling hills and fertile valleys are on the front lines of a battle between ownership and belonging. Through a golden autumn, and the frosts and floods of winter and early spring, Hayes explores an estate that, acknowledging the colonial origins of its wealth, has become a haven for those who are both unable and unwilling to be part of a countryside geared towards profit at any cost. Living and working among this extraordinary community of farmers and craftspeople, Hayes contemplates what we have lost in England, as our sense of kinship with the land, and the deep knowledge that arose from it, was destroyed.Yet, Hayes suggests, if we can learn from the cultures we have exploited, and from the tentative roots being put down in this radical Oxfordshire estate, perhaps we can start to unpick – and even re-enchant – our relationship with the land. The Medicine Tree is a singular act of storytelling and recovery: of giants, gods, witches, trees, horror and hope, of entanglement, reparation and solidarity.© Nick Hayes 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
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