Felled: The Killing at Sycamore Gap

This is the story of a crime that reverberated around the world. The victim is a tree. 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, 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.