Non Fiction Authors From England

"The is an evergreen shrub, with fine glossy leaves: the honey-breathing blossoms, as Evelyn terms them, come out in May; they are numerous, but very small, and are very grateful to bees. It is a native of Europe and , and was introduced into this country in 1629."

"is thought to make the best , and its soot is a good lamp-black for printers' ink. The leaves are good fodder for horses, kine, sheep, and goats; and the seeds are the favourite food of the ."

"... queen Elizabeth ... is said to have planted an with her own hand at , in which she was brought up when an infant. It went always by her name, and I remember it a stately flourishing tree, except that the top was decayed. It stood at the upper end of , near where the turnpike now is, and was boundary of the parish on the north side. It was felled, to the great regret of the neighbourhood, on the 11th of November 1745, and sold for a , by lord of the manor."

"All Europe, and the temperate parts of the vast , abound with . The , which is little regarded in warmer climates, is used for a variety of purposes in the bleak and barren , and in other northern countries. ... In the it affords a dye. en cloth boiled in water, and afterwards in a strong decoction made from the green tops and flowers of this plant, becomes of a beautiful orange-colour. Brettius relates, that a kind of ale brewed from these young tops was much used by the : and it is said to be still an ingredient in the beer in some of the Western Isles. In many parts of Great Britain s are made of this Heath; and it is an excellent fuel. The flowers are either a kind of rose-colour slightly tinged with purple, or they are quite white. Bees collect a great quantity of honey from them."

"The , from the esculent quality of the s, which, in times of scarcity, are frequently eaten by the poor in the south of France, ground, and made into bread: some eat them fresh like nuts; they are sweet, and very different from our s. This Oak was cultivated by in 1739."

"says that the gum-resin, called ', is supposed to be the incense formerly used by the ancients in their religious ceremonies, though not the substance known by that name in shops. It is much employed by the Roman Catholics in their chapels, for similar uses: when burned, it diffuses a very fragrant smell. This olibanum, or true frankincense, has been supposed to be the produce of the , but that plant does not afford any resin. The olibanum now sold in the shops is the produce of the ."

"The is most appropriately named, for, in addition to the pensive drooping appearance of its branches, it is common to see little drops of water, which stand like fallen tears upon the leaves. The willow will grow in any but a dry soil, but most delights and best thrives in the immediate neighbourhood of water."

"Bess Kent is an enigmatic figure. We know she wrote voluminous letters, in which she laid her heart bare, but few have survived. We know that she wrote at least three books — two about flowers and trees and one for children, and that she planned to write another — but we know little about how she conducted her research, or how long these books took her to write. In the late 1810s and early 1820s she attempted to wean herself off , but there is little to indicate when she first developed this addiction. She made at least one suicide attempt and threatened to make others, but the circumstances surrounding them are a matter of conjecture."

"Parrots were not designed to live in houses. They are noisy and destructive and suffer probably more than any other animal when kept in an unstimulating environment. They need constant interaction, either with a human or another parrot, to keep them happy and healthy. Keeping a parrot is so much more demanding than keeping a dog or cat. Alas, the fact that many owners have failed, and failed miserably, is evidenced in the growing number of parrot refuges. They are filled with feather-plucked or phobic parrots whose former owners had no idea of their emotional needs."

"Parent-rearing keeps the pairs occupied for weeks or months, according to the species. They need the occupation. Rearing reduces the monotony of the days and weeks and years which have little to distinguish them. Boredom and lack of stimulation is a very real problem for the more intelligent species. Many s enjoy family life and most "owners" obtain a lot of enjoyment from seeing family groups in an . (And I do mean an aviary and not a little suspended cage where close confinement can result in aggressive encounters.)"

"This is an almost unique case of how a can be endangered by trade without specific demand. It was literally unknown in until only five years ago. There was always a local trade, within the and islands, the only places where it occurs. These islands form a chain from northern to in the Philippines. Then suddenly, hundreds of birds were captured and exported. In 1992 about 1,000 were captured, at least 700 of which were exported. In that year, at least 200 died from disease and neglect at the premises of one dealer in Jakarta. I saw dozens crowded together in the cages of a dealer in Singapore. This would have been appalling whatever the species."

"... Colombia has one of the highest, if not the highest, number of bird species within its shores of any country worldwide: currently believed to be 1,875 (Compare that with just over 300 species found in the UK!). This high number is attributable to its unique location and to its . It is the only country in that has an Atlantic and a Pacific coast and it is also unique in stretching from to the . Three mountain ranges of the magnificent occupy the western part of the country; in the east the habitats vary from lush and flat s to sandy desert. Given this variety of s, it is not surprising that Colombia has the second or third highest number of parrot species worldwide, a total of 52. This is exceeded by Brazil with about 72 species and possibly by Australia with 52 or 53 species. (These numbers could be revised at any time as DNA research often indicates that a particular species is, in fact, two species.) There is a sad statistic connected with Colombia's 50 plus parrot species: at least 12 are in imminent danger of extinction."

"I can't emphasize enough how important parent-rearing is, because by hand-rearing we are denying s their birthright unless it is possible to wean them with ... other birds of their own species."

"The ix. of July, at sixe of the clocke at night, in the Isle of Thanet besides Ramesgate in the Parish of Saint Peter under the Clift, a monstrous fish or Whale of the Sea did shoote himselfe on shore, where for want of water, beating himselfe on the sands, he dyed about sixe of the clocke in the next morning, before which time he roared, and was heard more than a mile on the land. The length of this Fish was two and twenty yards, the nether jaw twelve foote the opening, one of his eyes being taken out of his head, was more than sixe horse in a cart could draw, a man stoode upright in the place from whence the eye was taken, the thicknesse from the backe whereon he lay, to the toppe of his bellie (which was upward) was fourtéene foote, his tayle of the same breadth, betwéene his eyes twelve foote, thrée mē[n] stood upright in his mouth, some of the ribbes were xvi. foote lō[n]g, his tong was xv. foote long, his liver two cart loade, into his nostrels any man might have crept: the oyle being boyled out of the head was Parmasitie, the oile of his body was whitishe, and swéete of taste."

"Human nature puts people on a pedestal and we like having someone to look up to."

"When the credit crunch came, it seemed like a perfect storm."

"An excellent teacher and a brilliant botanist with a wide range of interest, encouraged students to explore and record the , and awarded a gold medal annually for the best (collection of pressed plants)."

"because I'm from a family where food was a very important and enticing temptation. But I didn't enjoy it much at home. Only when I left I enjoyed it, when it wasn't prepared by my mother. I became a compulsive eater – it was gluttony. Before I was born again."

"Selecting the best eating plan to help you lose weight is very much down to the individual."

"I think mine is more acceptable, it rolls off the tongue better. But it certainly reduces the whole area. More from the seat than the hips, to be honest."

"No one diet is more popular than another. It is all down to personal preference."

"It is important for us to find a form of exercise we enjoy so that we keep doing it."

"My heart goes out to the staff affected, and we are talking to them today to try to work out how best we can help them"

"I wasn't sorry to lose my SAGG [Slimming and Good Grooming organisation] back in the 80s"

"It'd been a very fraught involvement. I'd worked very hard, my first marriage was wrecked. I gave everything and I got gallstones."

"The advent of the internet, internet shopping and mobile phones all mean that we can run our lives without moving around as much as we used to. I really don’t know where it will end unless people take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing."

"I did more classes around the county and it just grew"

"But everything is for a reason and through suffering gallstones I discovered the hip and thigh diet. I think the Lord put his hand on me. That I discovered low fat, I honestly believe came from the Lord. I can't deny that. I was chosen to spread the word."

"The Hebrew name for is , meaning 'sweetness', from which we get the . Myrtle also symbolizes love. Its use in s may have come from ancient Greece and Rome or from the . There is a tradition that the sprigs of myrtle in the bouquet should be planted in the newly weds' garden and if they root then the marriage will be a success."

"The spectacular works in this book, all exemplars from Dr Shirley Sherwood's incomparable collection of contemporary botanical art, highlight an artistic practice that infuses accuracy with artistry, and deep love of plants, to create new works that rank with the greatest of the eighteenth and nineteenth century."

"Undoubtedly the major edible —, , , , elephant yam, and —could play a more important part in the food production and economies of countries if they received more attention from s and agronomists."

"There are only three s in which date back to the 17th century: (1621), (1670) and the (1673). (, the country's only other Royal Botanic Garden, began in 1759.)"

"It went from talking about how to make the most of yourself to actually doing some exercise"

"It's a day which the team and I have worked incredibly hard to try to avoid but the board and I believe that this is the most responsible course of action to take."

"The wonderful thing is that most of my class have been coming to me for at least 30 years, if not 40 years."

"A next big step forward was the building of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery by my family. It opened in the in 2008, and stands next to the Marianne North Gallery. Since then there have been over 50 exhibitions, always with some contributions from my collection and Kew's archives. I had been commissioning and acquiring paintings since 1990 and by 2018 had more than than a thousand works from artists working all over the world. Another milestone was that by 2018 we counted over one million visitors to the Shirley Sherwood Gallery. It has become the central focus of botanical art in the world today and the footfall has increased dramatically."

"One of the hardest things when our company went into administration was that someone else could use my name."

"Hungarian minstrels boarded the train at , played vigorously for more than two hours and finished with the ', with the chef singing a vociferous solo. The passengers were received by at his new . managed to arrange an exclusive interview with him, which he glowingly recounted in '. After the euphoria of the inaugural trip the settled into a regular routine."

"When chosen for their color and texture, herbs need not look out of place among other s. Popular garden plants, such as , s, s, and are easily accommodated in a ."

"Onc. Barkerii.—A remarkably handsome dwarf Orchid from Mexico; the flowers are very large; the sepals and petals rich brown barred with yellow; the lip a bright yellow, about an inch and a half across. It produces its branching spikes of flower during the dull months of winter, which greatly enhances it value, and it lasts six weeks in bloom."

"In the of Linnæus mosses were placed among the . It is true that the various parts of their are so small as only to be fully examined by the help of a , but the flower and fruit as a whole may on most species be easily seen."

"are among the most beautiful of Orchids, many of them uniting every good quality that a plant can possess,—rich, evergreen, and regularly-curved foliage,—a graceful habit,—flowers of peculiar elegance. ... These plants are of easy culture, and if properly attended to are seldom out of order. They are found in the hottest parts of India and other warm countries, growing on the branches of trees, generally on such as overhang streams of water; and to grow them in anything like perfection, the climate in which they grow wild must be imitated as nearly as possible."

"The finest example of a tropical conservatory we ever saw is the one at , the property of , at the time we saw it the plants were in excellent condition, reflecting great credit on Mr. Speed, the head gardener; the fine s and s give it a splendid tropical effect, and the beauties of all are considerably enhanced by a gallery, which thus enables the visitor to inspect the plants above and below, and no large plant house should be erected without a structure of this kind."

"In the order of the universe we find that the use of mosses is primarily to other and more . They are spread at the roots of trees, and by their depth keeps the warmth about them in winter, and the moisture in summer, which are necessary to their growth. But when they grow on their trunks and branches, mosses injure trees, by clogging their breathing pores. We next find that mosses are useful to the insect tribe, countless numbers of which find homes among their branches, and roam about in their shades as in mighty forests, and look with their thousand eyes upon the wonders of their gauzy leaves, and sun their wings of purple and gold, and burnish their shining armour upon the polished columns of their urns. Over her nest the constructs a dome of moss; and ascending higher yet, we find the bird's nest "built of wool and hay and moss.""

"Though there is discord between revolutionary agrarianism and collectivism, they are alike in opposition to the uniform teaching and tradition of the Catholic Church on the lawfulness of private ownership of income-yielding property, whether it be named "land" or "capital". And they are alike in opposition to the ideal of all great statesmen from Solon to Leo XIII, namely, flourishing populations of small farmers or peasants."

"Julia Blackburn, who lives in , became interested in in the wake of her husband ’s death in 2013. Makkink was a Dutch artist (he made the sinister phallic murder weapon in ), and there was something magnetic about the idea of this vanished territory that had once connected their two homelands. A magpie anyway, eyes to the ground, always turning up oddities, she’d become fascinated by the immense age of the worked flints and fossilised bones she kept finding in the eroding cliffs of beach, a place where “things … often appear magically out of nowhere and then vanish with an equal magic”."

"Of course, was an eccentric, and his life story reads like something invented by Edgar Allan Poe with a certain amount of help from Richard Jefferies, but we have always needed the eccentrics to point the way. It was Waterton who warned the Americans, for example, of the ultimate cost of their profligate destruction of their forests. It was Waterton who fought against the beginnings of pollution in the Industrial Revolution. It was he who turned the grounds of into a , even maintaining trees with holes in them in which birds could nest and building a special bank for s."

"In 1812, when he was retreating from the blood and confusion of Moscow and the disastrous , Napoleon had remarked that there was only a single step separating the sublime from the ridiculous. From moment that he was deposited on , until the day when his body was finally removed from the island twenty-five years later, the sublime and the ridiculous were often so closely intertwined that it was impossible to separate the one from the other. The servants and companions who were with him on the island still treated him with all the fear and respect that was owing to an , but the more they bobbed and bowed in Napoleon's presence and tried to maintain the illusion of , the more rigidly they need to shut out any mirror reflection of what they were doing and how they looked while they were doing it."

"The author’s father, , was “a poet and an alcoholic”; her mother, Rosalie de Meric, a painter and an exhibitionist. Both parents were breathtaking narcissists and dirty fighters. Until they divorced, when Julia was 13, they scrapped loudly and vigorously. Rosalie would often thrust Julia in front of her to act as a shield from her husband’s fists. Once a punch missed and hit the child. “So sorry darling,” Thomas said. “No blood I hope?”"

"In order to try to see what Goya saw, I have visited the places he knew well: the village of his childhood, the farmhouse where he stayed with the , the cities of , Madrid, and, finally, . In my mind's eye I can look across the landscapes that he once travelled through. I can walk the same streets, I can gaze out of the window of the house in which he was born and the house in which he died. Maybe that is another way of meeting a a man who died."