THERE can be few more immediately recognisable book jackets than that of , a book first published in 1965 (with later editions) which, I’m guessing, can be found on the bookshelves of many a reader. The jacket consists of one of the plates of watercolours in the book, depicting all the rose species to be found in Britain in the 20th century. Their names are so evocative: , which is Shakespeare’s ‘sweet eglantine’; , the burnet rose, found, the northern downy rose, most common in Scotland and the north of England. The appeal of the book jacket lies also in the way the illustrations are laid out on the page, suggesting that whoever painted them had a keen eye for composition as well as botanical exactitude.
