The Fair Botanists: Could one rare plant hold the key to a thousand riches?
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The Fair Botanists: Could one rare plant hold the key to a thousand riches?
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Elly Griffiths' The Crossing Places features an overweight, cat-loving detective who lives on the Norfolk coast. Like so much new crime fiction the setting is as much part of the point as the plot, writes stpauli: Ian Parsons has spent several years living permanently in Extremadura and now splits his time between his native county of Devon and his beloved vulture landscape, where he leads bird tours introducing people to the birds and the area he clearly loves.
The Fair Botanists: Interview with Sara Sheridan The Fair Botanists: Interview with Sara Sheridan
We were so pleased to see you add in your passion for perfume in The Fair Botanists. Can you tell us more about what you love about perfume creation? In the summer of 1822, amasses of trees seem to move through Edinburgh town centre, ready to root themselves in the new, sumptuous Botanical Gardens. Mr McNab runs the glorious gardens and is especially proud of the rare Agave Americana aloe that looks set to flower – an event which only occurs once in a century. Elizabeth, newly widowed and ready for a new adventure, arrives at the house of Clementina, her late husband’s aunt. She is soon drawn towards the beauty and allure of the Botanical Gardens and as a keen artist she positions herself as the flower’s official portrait maker. Belle Brodie is a high-end courtesan who has a secret passion for botany and the art of perfume creation. She hopes to create the perfect love potion that will cement her fortune. Will the Botanical Gardens give both women a fresh sense of purpose? Or will their secrets lay them exposed and bare?And there is more we have to endure as we also have far less water now to help nurture our trees – just as the climate is in crisis. The Israelis, who control 85% of our water, regularly cut off our supplies. Yet Israel has built up water reserves for 30 years.
Sara Sheridan’s The Fair Botanists Is History Made Sensual
I have been giving talks across the country to tell people how our goods are ethically and environmentally sourced. We are selling through a British company, Zaytoun, which is Arabic for olive. Tippermuir Books Ltd is a book publisher based in Perth. Established in 2009, Tippermuir seeks to add to the cultural life of Scotland by publishing interesting and worthy books in English and Scots. Our strength is our smallness and love of the writte … Doha Asous is an olive farmer from a village near Nablus in the occupied West Bank. She is in Britain for Fairtrade Fortnight to talk about agriculture in Palestine and to promote local produce – olives and their oil, as well as other typical foods, such as dates. Here she describes life in her village during the recent violence between Palestinian locals and Jewish settlers.I’ve always been an equal rights campaigner. I think writing Where are the Women? in 2018 radicalised me though! I knew many of the stories I told already, even I was blown away by the scale on which we have forgotten female achievement over the centuries simply because we have consistently neglected to properly memorialise it. Inserting over a thousand women’s stories into our real life environment (both rural and urban) was an absolute honour – even if the monuments were mostly imaginary. In Fair Botanists one of the big pleasures was creating a world where women were included, so when someone reaches for a book I made the decision that the writer would be female (and not only Jane Austen, thank you!), if a market gardener were to be consulted, it was a woman, if a song were sung, it was written by a woman. Because it’s not that women didn’t do these things and weren’t known in their own time – it’s only that we’ve forgotten! The first person narrative that Lee espoused has become so ubiquitous that the ever-perceptive stpauli was surprised to find a crime debut told through a third person, present tense narrative. Expecting to be irritated by it, she found herself pleasantly surprised to the extent of recommending it as a good holiday read. Perfume is a big part of my world so it was genuinely fun writing directly about that – though there are always smells in my novels, this time I got to the nub of the thing! And yet I feel encouraged being in Britain to tell people about our produce, and give them some insight into our way of farming. It’s the summer of 1822 and Edinburgh is abuzz with rumours of King George IV’s impending visit. In botanical circles, however, a different kind of excitement has gripped the city. In the newly-installed Botanic Garden, the Agave Americana plant looks set to flower – an event that only occurs once every few decades.
Review of ‘The Fair Botanists’ by Sara Sheridan – Just
Your work always shines a light on women’s stories that history has overlooked. How have these stories shaped your thinking about our shared history? Thank you that’s very nice of you to say. I’m just starting another novel set slightly later – in the 1840s and mostly in Glasgow. It’s about an early female photographer – a fictional one but she is based on a real-life character. One of the things I’m interested in just now is the differences between Edinburgh and Glasgow and where those differences came from. So far, the research for this book has been a bit of an odyssey! I’m really enjoying it, particularly looking at the female gaze from its inception in photography.Her first book, Truth or Dare, featured in the Sunday Times Top 50 and was nominated for the Saltire Prize. In 2015 Sara was named one of the Saltire Society’s 365 most influential Scottish women, past and present. She sits on the Committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland and is also on the board of the UK-wide writers’ collective ‘26’, taking part in the acclaimed 26 Treasures project in 2010 at the V&A, in 2011 at National Museum of Scotland and in 2012 at the Children’s Museum, Bethnal Green. The whole of Edinburgh waits with baited breath for the American aloe plant to flower. The fate of the characters rests on the successful outcome of the plant. Mr McNab up to his knees in debt is relying on the sale of the aloe’s seeds to feed and clothe his family. Miss Brodie whose current ladies bathing oil is a roaring success at the apothecary; is relying on the aloe’s flowers as the secret ingredient to the success of her new love potion. Elizabeth is relying upon the aloe’s blooms to symbolise and herald hope and happiness for her future. Add into the mix the impending arrival of King George III, everyone pulls together to try to make the visit triumphant and perhaps bring fresh, new and much needed investors to the Botanical Gardens. So when I created the character of Belle Brodie she was a high-class courtesan but she had the same fascination as I do for smell. Though her interest is in whether she can manipulate people’s behaviour through scent. And yes you can! This tied in with the Georgian fascination for potions – like magic. In fact in 1824 in Edinburgh there was a real-life case of two shop boys who mixed a ‘love potion’ and gave it to a girl. It’s not an uncommon story though looking at that case, it seems more like a ‘rhohypnol’ episode than the grand plan that Belle undertakes. You love the research process for your novels. Was there anything you learned during your research for The Fair Botanists that surprised you? Congratulations on the publication of The Fair Botanists. Could you tell us a little more on what you wanted to explore in writing this story?
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