WIN: Our book of the month 'Anthology of Flowers'

The botanical bible covers no less than 50 beautiful blooms. But if you’re looking for a quick-reference guide, catalogued in order of species, you’ve come to the wrong place.

Anthology of Flowers is a visual and poetic celebration of botany that comes from the heart, not the head. Rather than adopting a ‘flowers by numbers’ approach, it offers a more fluid structure that has a beautiful synergy with its subject.

Paying homage to classical Victorian botanical illustrations, Maxted has perfectly captured the beauty and antiquated charm of traditional Victorian botanical illustrations in his sensitively drawn floral portraits. The exquisite nuances of detail, form, colour and texture are at once realistic and romanticised.

“Many have photographed flowers in the past, of course, but I wanted to try and create an illustration of a flower in a photograph,” said Maxted of his work.

Thumbnail-sized images of the flowers have also been displayed together so readers can see the relative sizes, all captioned with traditional typewriter font to add to the visual charm of these pages.

The poetry of flowers

Dividing the flowers into seven sections – Folkloric, Medicinal, Emotional, Edible, Wild, Exotic and Toxic – author Jane Field-Lewis offers a brief cultural history of each bloom, alluding to its etymology, literary references, and folklore traditions. But writing with a sense of passion and curiosity, tinged with humour and an eye for the absurd, there is nothing of the dry textbook here.