Felled
The Killing at Sycamore Gap
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Putman Publishing
Published:22nd Oct '26
Should be back in stock very soon
'Sharp and insightful' The Times
'A brilliantly singular voice' Benjamin Myers
'Brilliant. Honest, humane and profound' David Whitehouse
'[An] unflinching study of male desperation. Really bastard good' Joel Morris
'An unforgettable book' Will Storr
'A true crime masterpiece for the twenty-first century' Alex Niven
'A terrific book ... its fantastic' Richard Herring
For more than a century, the tree at Sycamore Gap stood along Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. Planted in the nineteenth century, it became an iconic local landmark. It was immortalised in the 1991 film Robin Hood starring Kevin Costner, which transformed it into a symbol of the North East. One night in September 2023, two men – Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers – cut it down, prompting a manhunt and trial that played out through global headlines and an ensuing huge media outcry that took on a whole life of its own.
Felled is about who these men are, why they cut this particular tree down and why the world felt so strongly about it. It is a portrait of two men who existed in the cracks; men who perhaps did not have the chance to compete on a level playing field; and how society was quick to condemn them when they were charged with felling the tree. It is a story about collective grief and outrage and of what we prioritise in our stories of loss and punishment. It examines the wider reaction to the felling by the British public and asks, concurrently, whether society – all of us – did enough to give these two men hope.
Andrew Hankinson is an award-winning writer and the author of You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat], which won the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and was recently used for a production at the Royal Court, with Andrew as artistic adviser. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, The Sunday Times, FT, the Guardian, the Telegraph, GQ, Esquire, the Spectator and Wired. He was the only journalist to attend every day of the trial and sentencing of Graham and Carruthers.
'A terrific book ... it's fantastic ... I love the way he comes at a subject. It's journalism, it's memoir and it's beyond that ... I don't think anybody else could write this' -- Richard Herring
'A great idea for a book' -- Adrian Chiles * BBC Radio 5 Live *
‘[Hankinson’s] a haunting long-form feature writer. The whole piece is an eerie and compelling telling of how these two misfit loners with a chainsaw – as well as the author trying to understand them – are both a little lost’ * The Critic *
'[Felled] is about the two men who destroyed the sycamore tree but it's bigger than that, it's about loss, it's about grief and it's about men who have somehow failed ... it's incredibly compelling, he's such a good writer' -- Jason Hazeley * Oh God, What Now *
'Hankinson is a great chronicler of madness. A writer on a par with the true crime godhead Gordon Burn ... His reporting is sharp and insightful ... his snark is poised and judicious' -- Sarah Ditum * The Times *
'Like Gordon Burn and David Peace before him, Hankinson finds a metaphor for the marginalisation of the English North and its subjects – himself included – in one of the darkest, strangest, most tragi-comic episodes in recent memory. But his clipped, contemporary prose style is all his own. This is a true crime masterpiece for the twenty-first century: sensitive to the absurdities of its narrative, alive to the anxieties of the age, and in the end more addictive than doomscrolling' -- Alex Niven, author of New Model Island and The North Will Rise Again
'Andrew Hankinson is a brilliantly singular voice capable of getting to the heart of real-life subjects in original ways most writers are simply incapable of. Felled may be about Sycamore Gap but like the concentric lines in a severed trunk it tells a hidden and much more deeply rooted story: that of men, class, justice, loneliness, The North and much more besides. Give him all the prizes please' -- Benjamin Myers, author of The Gallows Pole
'Brilliant. Honest, humane and profound. Andrew Hankinson is a fantastic writer. Nobody else could tell the story of a tree in a way that so reveals something about us all' -- David Whitehouse, author of About a Son
'Read this in a single sitting and I think I need a bit of thinking time now. Raw and stark and baffled by the hollow, tinny strangeness of it all. Basically another unflinching study of male desperation to put alongside his other books. Really bastard good' -- Joel Morris
'Agonising, profound and beautiful, Hankinson has written an unforgettable book about what failure does to men' -- Will Storr, author of The Science of Storytelling
ISBN: 9781917923941
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
178 pages