‘Stealing joy’: the sadness and symbolism of the crime at Sycamore Gap

Many saw the beloved tree that Adam Carruthers and Daniel Graham cut down as a part of north-east England’s DNA“It was just a tree,” said a mystified Adam Carruthers, one of the two men who illegally cut down the tree at Sycamore Gap in the early hours of a stormy night nearly two years ago. “It was almost as if someone had been murdered.”Carruthers was right about the reaction to the felling. Many likened its loss to that of a good friend or relative. Its destructi