Orwell's Roses

'This book is brilliant because it is true, and because it rescues Orwell from a kind of dourness and seriousness, and gives him back his humanity and yes, his Englishness' James Rebanks

’This an enchanting book, as powerful in its arguments as it is enjoyable to read. From a surprising close-up of George Orwell planting three Woolworth roses, Solnit pans to a bracing new vista of the man and his fierce political aesthetic, taking in the injustices of the rose industry and lying Soviet science as she goes. Brilliant’ Lisa Appignanesi

‘This elegant rambling rose of a book muses on Orwell with all Rebecca Solnit’s luminous intelligence and trademark optimism. If “Orwellian” has become synonymous with darkness and oppression, she opens up his life affirming love of gardening, of wild nature and life’s physical pleasure, his antidote to the grim puritanism of ideologues’ Polly Toynbee

‘I so loved this book. It unfolds like the petals of a rose — the political rose, the personal rose — and enacts its subject in the ethics of its beauty and the grace of its resistance’ Jay Griffiths, author of Why Rebel

'There is nothing more political than a garden, and Rebecca Solnit brings Orwell’s life and writing vividly alive through his quiet determination to love the surface of the earth. Orwell’s Roses shows how intimately aesthetics is intertwined with ethics, and in doing so, Solnit has given us a truly beautiful book' Alex Christofi, author of Dostoevsky in Love

'We all know what Orwell hated but Solnit pays attention to what he loved. Orwell’s Roses is an ingeniously fresh and unpredictable take on his life and times, and the values he held dear' Dorian Lynskey