a rose for today... explored
...from the summer garden
I have just enjoyed 'Orwell's Roses' by Rebecca Solnit, who stresses that her book is not another biography of George Orwell but: "a series of forays from one starting point, that gesture whereby one writer planted several roses. As such it's also a book about roses..."
The book is dense with facts, one to dip into again, impossible to remember all. I already knew some of George Orwell's work - notably 'Animal Farm' read at school - but little about his personal life. Interesting that he took his pen name from the River Orwell in my native Suffolk and that his parents lived at Southwold, a beautiful coastal resort in that county.
Outside of his work, Orwell was a keen gardener, planting roses in 1936 at his cottage home in Wallington. In the latter years of his life, he retreated to Jura, a remote Scottish island, where he created and tended the garden of an isolated farmhouse. In late summer 1948 he wrote this in his domestic diary: "roses, poppies, sweet williams, marigolds full out, lupins still with some flowers...."
Rebecca Solnit inevitably often introduces quotes from Orwell's work. This one has just made me stop and think: "Our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have."
this post for December 28th, 2022
p.s. sincerest thanks for visits, comments and faves today on this post
a rose for today... explored
...from the summer garden
I have just enjoyed 'Orwell's Roses' by Rebecca Solnit, who stresses that her book is not another biography of George Orwell but: "a series of forays from one starting point, that gesture whereby one writer planted several roses. As such it's also a book about roses..."
The book is dense with facts, one to dip into again, impossible to remember all. I already knew some of George Orwell's work - notably 'Animal Farm' read at school - but little about his personal life. Interesting that he took his pen name from the River Orwell in my native Suffolk and that his parents lived at Southwold, a beautiful coastal resort in that county.
Outside of his work, Orwell was a keen gardener, planting roses in 1936 at his cottage home in Wallington. In the latter years of his life, he retreated to Jura, a remote Scottish island, where he created and tended the garden of an isolated farmhouse. In late summer 1948 he wrote this in his domestic diary: "roses, poppies, sweet williams, marigolds full out, lupins still with some flowers...."
Rebecca Solnit inevitably often introduces quotes from Orwell's work. This one has just made me stop and think: "Our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have."
this post for December 28th, 2022
p.s. sincerest thanks for visits, comments and faves today on this post