Miranda Seymour

Herbal History

A Little History of British Gardening

By

Chatto & Windus 342pp £15.99 order from our bookshop

Tales of the Rose Tree: Ravishing Rhododendrons and Their Travels Around the World

By

HarperCollins 308pp £20 order from our bookshop

One of the stars of Jenny Uglow’s previous book, The Lunar Men, was Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus, author of a remarkably fanciful and elaborate scientific poem, ‘The Botanic Garden’, and of a hefty tome on the science of gardening and agriculture. Dr Danvin was also a keen promoter of hothouses: his own was eighty-two feet long and provided him with melons, cucumbers and grapes, but not, he reluctantly admitted, pineapples.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'One of the best aspects of Kaufmann’s book is its optimism' Here's @BurlM11's review of @epkaufm's Whiteshift. ,
    • Whom did Picasso label a 'bristly pig'? Read Rosalind P Blakesley's review of The Collector by Natalya Semenova to… ,
    • Alexandra Gajda on Anna Beer's new biography, Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh ,
    • Mark Lawson reviews @jonathancoe's Middle England - The Rotters' Club for our Brexit age. ,
    • 'Behind every book that is published lies ... a haunted landscape, populated by the ghosts of things written and ex… ,
    • 'We once more live in a great age of dragon invention' Here's Tom Shippey on Martin Arnold's The Dragon ,
    • RT : Man at the q&a part of the book panel: Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't s… ,
    Follow Us