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Amazon.co.uk Review
Pavord's passion for the flower is evident from the opening pages of the book, as she scrambles across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip, whose discovery leads into Pavord's extraordinary history of this beautiful yet enigmatic flower. As with all the best love stories, Pavord's is told from the perspective of the tulip, from its adoption by the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul, including the downfall of Ahmed III in 1730, so indulgent was his desire for the flower, to the present cultivation of the flower by the Wakefield Tulip Society.
Along the way incredible stories of people's investment in the flower emerge, the result, as Pavord explains, of the unique feature of the tulip. Its variegated colours are produced by a small parasitic aphid, which weakens the plant, but produces its gorgeous colours. The Tulipomania which gripped 17th-century Europe was a form of futures trading, as people purchased tulip bulbs at increasingly inflated prices with the hope that they would flower into the most beautiful and kaleidoscopic colours imaginable. The Tulip is an extraordinary book, beautifully illustrated and offering a fascinating story of our obsession with the most ephemeral of objects; buying tulip bulbs will never be the same again! --Jerry Brotton
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But when Pavord strays outside the realms of horticultural history she displays an alarming lack of knowledge. It is, for example, woefully simplistic to state that Sultan Ahmed III forfeited his throne through his love of tulips; many political factors were far more important. Pavord misdates the vital first encounter with the flower by Ambassador Busbecq (which we're led to believ was one of the most important incidents in the whole history of the tulip) by four years. And she makes only the most cursory attempt to sketch in the historical background, whether it be in the Ottoman Empire, the United Provinces or England. In summary, this is a fine book for garden lovers, but one serious historians will find jejeune.
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