A Little Book
of Latin
for Gardeners
How did the delphinium get its name? Which parts of the body lend their names to auriculas and orchids? Who are the gentian, lobelia and heuchera named after? Why are nasturtiums and antirrhinums connected? What does an everlasting pea have to do with Indian miniature paintings?
These are some of the questions answered in Peter Parker’s adventurous exploration of the mysteries of Botanical Latin.
About Peter Parker
Peter Parker is the author of two books about the First World War, The Old Lie and The Last Veteran; biographies of J.R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood; Housman Country; and A Little Book of Latin for Gardeners. He edited (and wrote much of) A Reader’s Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel and A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers and is an advisory editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He has written about people, books, art, architecture and gardening for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines and is currently compiling an anthology for Penguin of gay life in London from 1945 to 1967.
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“A formidable biographical debut”
Spectator
“If Ackerley had chosen a biographer himself he could hardly have done better”
New York Times
“Meticulous and elegantly written…a splendid biography”
Listener
“One of those rare biographies that makes you want to laugh and cry by turns; though strictly factual it has the teeming interior life and narrative sweep of a good novel”
Financial Times