From the gates of Paradise to the end of time, The One and Only Tree offers an extraordinary quest — a magical, millennia-spanning adventure built upon the most sacred object in the history of Christendom.From the bazaars of Jerusalem in the last years of the nineteenth century to the cloisters of Poitiers more than a thousand years earlier, through seven millennia of real and imagined time, this is the forgotten and forbidden legend of the True Cross — th...

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR‘An absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year’ Sunday Telegraph‘On nearly every page a random passage takes one’s breath away’ The TimesHave you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road?For two thousand years, the roads the Romans built have determined the flow of ideas and folkta...

‘Impossible to summarise and delightfully absorbing, Hadley’s book is comfortably the most unexpected history book of the year’ Sunday TimesA luminous journey through a thousand years of folklore and English history.Once upon a time in a Hertfordshire field, an ancient yew tree hid a dragon hunted by a giant named Piers Shonks. Today, the dragon and its slayer are the survivors of an 800-year battle between rural legend and national record,...

From the gates of Paradise to the end of time, The One and Only Tree offers an extraordinary quest — a magical, millennia-spanning adventure built upon the most sacred object in the history of Christendom.From the bazaars of Jerusalem in the last years of the nineteenth century to the cloisters of Poitiers more than a thousand years earlier, through seven millennia of real and imagined time, this is the forgotten and forbidden legend of the True Cross — th...

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR‘An absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year’ Sunday Telegraph‘On nearly every page a random passage takes one’s breath away’ The TimesHave you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road?For two thousand years, the roads the Romans built have determined the flow of ideas and folkta...

‘Impossible to summarise and delightfully absorbing, Hadley’s book is comfortably the most unexpected history book of the year’ Sunday TimesA luminous journey through a thousand years of folklore and English history.Hollow Places begins with a Hertfordshire dragon-slayer named Piers Shonks but soon draws us into the company of outlaws and stonemasons, antiquaries and champions. Full of wonder and always surprising, the story takes ...