The White Birch is a wide-ranging history of the relationship between Russian art, landscape and identity, through the lens of the white birch, Russia's unofficial national tree. 'The White Birch may be an ostensible study of a single species of tree. But as shown, it's a lot more ambitious. Jeffreys positions himself as an obsessive slavophile and a blundering botanist, rather than a world authority on Russia. Who could be such a thing!? As a result one is very happy to enjoy this self-reflexive journey, some most erudite travel writing about a most fascinating land.'