The late blooming of a ‘saintly clergyman’

I TRUST not only that my ministry has been helpful, but also that many young people, and those not so young, will be inspired by The Concise British Flora to recognise and love the wild flowers, to roam over the moors and mountains and seasides, discovering for themselves the wealth of flowers in our beautiful country,’ wrote retired parish priest William Keble Martin in the autobiography he published in 1969, at the age of 91. In the last decade of his long life, Keble Martin found himself famous, admired and fêted. The Illustrated London News called him ‘this saintly clergyman’.

The reason for his late-in-life celebrity was an illustrated book, the genesis of which spanned more than half a century. became Britain’s top-selling book that year. It earned its author-illustrator an honorary doctorate from Exeter University and, in April 1967, the accolade of a series of commemorative stamps issued by Royal Mail.