9 November 1918 " In New York City, a middle-aged spinster hurried to her gloomy basement office at Columbia university. Grey clouds scudded overhead and rain threatened. A spectacular future beckoned to the forty-nine- year- old schoolteacher. She would dedicate the rest of her life to healing the wounds.....within the hour she would invent one… Continue reading Poppies (Part 3)
Month: November 2020
Poppies (part 2)
War and pain, grief and remembrance had always been with us but the field and opium poppies had not yet been turned into the potent symbol of the Remembrance poppy. But it would, in the obscene horror of the first World War. The trenches which we are so familiar with from documentaries and films were… Continue reading Poppies (part 2)
Poppies (Part 1)
The corn poppy re-christened Flanders poppy and immortalised by John McCrae, has a weight of symbolism which seems too heavy for such a fragile dainty flower to bear. Anyone who has tried to make a poppy lady will attest to its delicacy. But as with its cousin, the opium poppy, they are both flowers of… Continue reading Poppies (Part 1)
Remembrance Day
Remembrance seems to be a particularly English sentiment. We are good at it, great at War Poetry, War memorials and remembering. In beautiful Ely cathedral there's a long list of names, handwritten in lovely script and they turn a page over every day, the roll of honour. The omnipotent poppy, because of a very poor… Continue reading Remembrance Day
English that grows 