WHEN I THINKabout Rebecca Solnit’s remarkable book, Orwell’s Roses, the image of a kaleidoscope comes to mind. As the dictionary defines the term, it’s a delightfully diverse and unpredictable sequence of sights and events.
Her starting point is the garden Orwell created at his cottage in the Hertfordshire village of Wallington in 1936, recording how he planted apple trees and roses. When Rebecca went to see what had happened to this garden more than 70 years later, she found the apple trees gone, but the roses blooming prodigiously.
George Orwell’s gardening prowess was a surprise to me, I’m ashamed to say. When researching my book on working-class gardeners, I came across a 1974 interview with the son of a publican in Southwold in Suffolk. In the early 30s, his father…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2022