An outstanding study of an ancient craft, landscape and community from a unique new voice

'An excellent, beautifully written book' Patrick Galbraith, Sunday Times 'A rich and hugely enjoyable celebration of the local, the vernacular and traditional ... a beautifully written craftsman's memoir' Daily Mail Thatched roofs are like living organisms: each one a web of repair, replacement and alteration, shaped, dressed and re-moulded by every pair of hands that works on it. Thatching is one of the world's oldest crafts - an ancient trade that roots us in nature, as Tom Allen discovered when he quit an office job to become an apprentice in Devon. Now a master of the trade, in On the Roof he goes in search of its history and future, meeting fellow thatchers, from the son of a lobster fisherman who thatches with a dune grass in the Hebrides, to a Syrian refugee who found peace among the seagrass roofs of Denmark, to one of the first women to master Japan's 5,000-year-old thatching tradition. Eye-opening, beautifully told and revealing a tradition hand-shaped over centuries, On the Roof is a story of how we live with the land and how we have chosen to treat it.

"This well written blend of travelogue and paean to an ancient craft is beguiling" - Country Life

"Hugely enjoyable - Tom Allan is a real craftsman and a superb storyteller" - Waterways

"Tom Allan writes easily and appealingly, making his Thatcher's Journey one of discovery and delight. It had me entranced" - The Forager's Calendar

"On The Roof is a thoughtful appreciation of a British craft .. [an] excellent, beautifully written book" - Sunday Times

"A rich and hugely enjoyable celebration of the local, the vernacular and traditional ... a beautifully written craftsman's memoir" - Daily Mail