T. C. Smout is Historiographer Royal in Scotland.

Christopher Smout is, in my opinion, the best environmental historian in Britain; indeed, he practically invented the term. He is worth being read by every conservationist, not just for his specialist knowledge, but also because he is extremely readable. It ought to be a commonplace view that, as he asserts, environmental problems can be understood properly only from a historical perspective.

• Acknowledgements; List of Maps, Figures and Tables; List of Illustrations; Introduction; Chapter One: The Environmental Historiography of Britain; Chapter Two: The Highlands and the Roots of Green Consciousness; Chapter Three: Exploiting Scottish Semi-natural Woods, 1600-1990; Chapter Four: The Pinewoods and Human Use, 1600-1900; Chapter Five: The Atlantic Oakwoods as a Commercial Crop in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries; Chapter Six: Bogs and People in Scotland since 1600; Chapter Seven: Energy Rich, Energy Poor: Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, 1600-1800; Chapter Eight: Improvers and the Scottish Environment: Soils, Bogs and Woods; Chapter Nine: Trees as Historic Landscapes: from Wallace's Oak to Reforesting Scotland; Chapter Ten: The Alien Species in Twentieth-Century Britain: Inventing a New Vermin; Chapter Eleven: Modern Agriculture and the Decline of British Biodiversity; Chapter Twelve: History, Nature and Culture in British Nature Conservation; Chapter Thirteen: Environmental Consciousness; Select Bibliography.