🎉   Please check out our new website over at books-etc.com.

Seller
Your price
£9.99
Out of Stock

A Rum Affair

A True Story of Botanical Fraud

By (author) Karl Sabbagh
Foreword by Adam Nicholson
Format: Paperback / softback
Publisher: Birlinn General, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Imprint: Birlinn Ltd
Published: 20th Jun 2016
Dimensions: w 125mm h 190mm d 17mm
Weight: 230g
ISBN-10: 178027386X
ISBN-13: 9781780273860
Barcode No: 9781780273860
Trade or Institutional customer? Contact us about large order quotes.
Synopsis
In the 1940s, the eminent British botanist John Heslop Harrison proposed a controversial theory: that vegetation on the islands off the west coast of Scotland had survived the last Ice Age. His premise flew in the face of what most botanists believed - that no plants had survived the 10,000-year period of extreme cold. But Heslop Harrison had proof - the plants and grasses found on the isle of Rum.Harrison didn't anticipate, however, an amateur botanist called John Raven, who boldly questioned whether these grasses were truly indigenous to the area, or whether they had been transported there. This is the story of what happened when a tenacious amateur set out to find out the truth, and how he uncovered a most extraordinary fraud.

New & Used

Seller Information Condition Price
-New
Out of Stock

What Reviewers Are Saying

Submit your review
Newspapers & Magazines
'An exciting scientific detective story' * Times Literary Supplement * 'A breezy ride ... informative and amusing' * Washington Post Book World * 'a truly ripping yarn involving night-time landings, threats and intimidation, and at the heart of it something rather sad - a scientist, clearly of great talent, who had overstepped the mark in helping 'proof' along' * Bottle Imp * 'one of the best books we have read in quite some time. Reading this book is like reading an extremely well written fictional thriller. Karl Sabbagh has done an amazing job unearthing the background to what happened, and drawing out the wider implications for science in society' * Undiscovered Scotland *