The Fair Botanists: Could one rare plant hold the key to a thousand riches?

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This is a great question. I suppose historical fiction is an exciting vehicle to explore our own time. You can’t understand where you are or make good decisions about where you’re going if you can’t see where you’ve come from. So it’s that. Good historical fiction allows you to make that connection on a visceral level – it’s a time machine.

And those she created are, for the most part, just wonderful. The omniscient narrator, who dips in and out of the minds of many characters – reminiscent of narrators from novels of the Regency era – means that we get to know many characters from the inside out. Elizabeth is a compelling lead, and Belle is a riot, from start to finish. Johann is a dashing hero, easily the equal of any Jane Austen hero and I’d even say surpassing some of them with his gentle, kind ways. If you come to The Fair Botanists for the history, or for the names that you recognise, you should be aware that you will come away having fallen completely in love with Elizabeth, Belle and Johann.

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With royal characters, love stories, courtesans who make potions, literary figures and a plant that only flowers once every century, it’s safe to say that I was left wanting more from this book. If you like beautiful language and slow, relaxing books with beautiful botanical details, however, then perhaps this may suit you better. This is based on a real-life event, which took place between 1820 and 1823, when the garden's many plants, bushes, flowering shrubs, aloes and cacti were transported to its current location. Putting aside the fact that we didn’t need to know what Mhairi had for breakfast (or the manner in which her breakfast is served – this description goes on for a while), she is also currently not breaking her fast. That happened in the past, and thus should be past tense – a simple change from ‘has’ to ‘had’ would go a long way in making this passage feel less awkward to read. Maybe this is just my own preference, or maybe it’s an editing error, but this and other tense-awkward passages happen multiple times throughout the story.

I was trying to remember all those women," says Sheridan. "Often in historical fiction, people go immediately to the names you will recognise and largely they are male. In short, if you found this review to be over-long and dragged-out, then you will find The Fair Botanists to be just as bad. Despite the ceaseless descriptions of everything and everyone and the abundant amount of research that’s gone into it, The Fair Botanists is ultimately a dull, uninteresting read with neither substance, charm, nor intrigue. Reading this book feels like trying to eat tissue paper – bland, pointless, and ultimately forgettable. The pace of this book is excellent and held well throughout the book – even with the more exciting goings on that occur later on. It’s doesn’t trample on ahead at a rate of knots so you get lost in the plot, but equally it isn’t slow and difficult to get through. It didn’t take very long for the paths of the characters to cross – which is something I like in a book where there are many characters and stories. I always find them much richer when they are integrated and play out together, rather than being read separately and eventually coming together towards the end. We also follow the happenings at the Botanical Gardens, where a huge aloe is about to bloom. The keeper of the collection had promised the seeds to Kew for his own advancement; the head gardener has sold the seeds to pay his debts; our courtesan, Belle, wants the flowers to add to her love potion; and our artist, Elizabeth, is drawing the flowers. Meanwhile Edinburgh awaits the visit of the mercurial King George III.In Great King Street Mr Graham’s man enters the bedroom and wakes the master. The Graham’s keep separate rooms, with the lady housed in larger accommodation to the rear where a mahogany four-poster is upholstered in sky-blue, fringed damask. Mr Graham sleeps in his dressing room on a single bed with a window to the street. He visits Mrs Graham once a month for they have been married for many years and he does not like to impose. This arrangement is of his choosing and is entirely acceptable to him.