The Rose

The rose. No other flower has come close to capturing the western imagination in quite the same way. Tulip fever may have flared fiercely and suddenly in seventeenth-century Europe. The Madonna lily may match the white rose for its symbolic purity. But no other flower fascinates like this mysterious flower. In its very ambiguities lies the blood of Christ with the sweat of Muhammad, the sacred and the profane, life and death, the white rose of chasitity and the red rose of consummation.

In The Rose, Jennifer Potter sets out on a quest to uncover the life of a flower which has been admired by different cultures in different countries across the centuries. She discovers what it is about the rose that has driven people to distraction, where the roses of today originated and how they propagated and spread.

From Greek and Roman empires, through Europe, the Middle East to China, Jennifer Potter's search unfolds across the world, enriched by fabulous historical characters, literary evocations and man's perpetual love of this unique flower.

“Lavishly filled with beautiful paintings from the whole span of Western history... A fascinating story... a seductive pedigree beast.' The Times '”

'Lavish, lushly illustrated... Ambitious... richly kaleidoscopic... Jennifer Potter has succeeded in uncovering just why the rose has insinuated itself so tenaciously into the consciousness of every age and corner of the world.' Kate Colquhoun, Sunday Times

Jennifer Potter is the author of three novels and three works of non-fiction, Secret Gardens, Lost Gardens and, most recently, Strange Blooms, which was described by The Sunday Times as 'a tour de force'. She reviews regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at King's College, London.

The rose. No other flower has come close to capturing the western imagination in quite the same way. Tulip fever may have flared fiercely and suddenly in seventeenth-century Europe. The Madonna lily may match the white rose for its symbolic purity. But no other flower fascinates like this mysterious flower. In its very ambiguities lies the blood of Christ with the sweat of Muhammad, the sacred and the profane, life and death, the white rose of chasitity and the red rose of consummation. In The Rose, Jennifer Potter sets out on a quest to uncover the life of a flower which has been admired by different cultures in different countries across the centuries. She discovers what it is about the rose that has driven people to distraction, where the roses of today originated and how they propagated and spread. From Greek and Roman empires, through Europe, the Middle East to China, Jennifer Potter's search unfolds across the world, enriched by fabulous historical characters, literary evocations and man's perpetual love of this unique flower.

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