Isabella Tree
Isabella Tree, Lady Burrell (born 1964) is a British author and conservationist. She is author of the Richard Jefferies Society Literature Award-winning book Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm that describes the creation of Knepp Wildland, the first large-scale rewilding project in lowland England. The 3,500 acres (1,400 ha) wildland project was created in the grounds of Knepp Castle, the ancestral home of her husband, Sir Charles Burrell, a landowner and conservationist.
Early life[edit]
Tree attended Millfield School.[1] She was adopted by an aristocratic British family as a baby. She read Classics, following the advice of author Iris Murdoch and went the University of London.[2]
Career[edit]
From 1993 to 1995, Tree was, a travel correspondent at the Evening Standard.[3] In 1999 she was Overall Winner of the Travelex Travel Writers’ Awards for a feature on Nepal's Kumaris, or 'Living Goddesses' -‘High and Mighty’- for the Sunday Times.[4] As of 2022 she writes for the The Guardian and National Geographic Magazine.
Personal life[edit]
She married Sir Charles Burrell and lives at Knepp Castle in West Sussex. Her father was the son of Ronald Tree and a member of a well connected Anglo-American family active in politics and public life on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. She has two children, one of whom is called Nancy and researches rewilding at Oxford University.
Books[edit]
- Tree, Isabella (1996). Islands in the Clouds: Travels in the Highlands of New Guinea. Lonely Planet Publications. ISBN 9780864423696.
- Tree, Isabella (2001). Sliced Iguana. Bloomsbury USA. ISBN 1845114965.
- Tree, Isabella (2004). The Bird Man: The Extraordinary Story of John Gould. Barrie & Jenkins. ISBN 071262158X.
- The Living Goddess. 2014. ISBN 978-0143422549.
- Tree, Isabella (2018). Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 9781509805105.
- Tree, Isabella (2020). Second Nature. Granta. ISBN 9781909889361.
- Tree, Isabella (2021). When We Went Wild. Ivy Kids. ISBN 9780711262850.
- Tree, Isabella (2022). When The Storks Came Home. Ivy Kids Eco. ISBN 9780711272798.
- Tree, Isabella (2023). The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small. Bloomsbury USA. ISBN 9781526659293.
Awards[edit]
- 2023: Received a ZSL Silver Medal (Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm)[5]
- 2019: Shortlisted for Wainwright Prize (Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm)[6]
- 2018: Richard Jefferies Society Literature Award (Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm)[7]
- 2018: One of the top ten science books – Smithsonian Magazine (Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm) [8]
- Overall winner of the 1999 Travelex Travel Writer Awards[9][10]
- Shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award (Islands in the Clouds)[9]
- Awarded the CIEEM (Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management) Medal 2020[11]
- Awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Ness Award 2021[12]
References[edit]
- ^ "Notable Alumni". Millfield School. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
- ^ Blanchard, Tamsin. "Isabella Tree". thegentlewoman.co.uk. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
- ^ "Isabella Tree". rolfpotts.com. November 2003. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
- ^ "Biography". isabellatree.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
- ^ "Prestigious awards honour stars of conservation science | ZSL".
- ^ "Wilding". Wainwright Prize.
- ^ "Richar Jefferies Society & White Horse Bookshop Literature Prize 2018".
- ^ "Ten Best Science Books 2018". Smithsonian.
- ^ a b "Want to meet some wild, adventurous and inspiring women?". Chipping Norton Literature Festival.
- ^ Frances Mayes; Jason Wilson (2002). The Best American Travel Writing 2002. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 347–. ISBN 0-618-11880-2.
- ^ "CIEEM Medal Winners 2020 – John Hopkins & Isabella Tree | CIEEM". September 2020. Retrieved 13 August 2021.
- ^ "Royal Geographical Society – 2021 Awards". www.rgs.org. Retrieved 13 August 2021.
