The Surprising Life of Constance Spry

Author: Sue Shephard
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330536109
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description
Fascinating ... to be eagerly devoured’ Clarissa Dickson-Wright Most people today, if they have heard of her, associate Constance Spry with the cookery book bearing her name. But Connie was much, much more than the author of a bestselling cookery book. She was deeply unconventional, extremely charming and very determined; Spry’s life took her from the back streets of Victorian Derby to running a hugely successful business as the florist of choice for the highest of high society, organizing the flowers for royal weddings and indeed for the Queen's coronation. She endured a violent first marriage, had a lesbian affair with a cross-dressing artist and was a pioneer for working women at a time when few women had careers. Sue Shephard tells her extraordinary story with insight, wit and flair. 'Riveting.’ Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall ‘Makes you fall utterly in love with its subject’ New York Times Magazine ‘Reveals with the greatest skill and sympathy an extraordinary person - complicated, driven, sometimes secretive but gifted and artistic to an nth degree. What a story.' Elizabeth Buchan

The Surprising Life of Constance Spry

Author: Sue Shephard
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9780230741812
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
Those of us who recognize the name think only of recipes, but her story is in fact that of a profoundly unconventional women, who went from a poverty stricken childhood to the height of London society, taking in a career as rich and varied as it was unusual for a woman of her era.

The Constance Spry Cookery Book

Author: Constance Spry
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
ISBN: 1909166103
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 1127

Book Description
One of the all-time great cookbooks receives a lavish update and remains an essential resource and inspiration for cooks of all levels. One of the greatest cookbooks of all time, The Constance Spry Cookery Book remains an essential kitchen bible: astonishingly informative, supremely practical, and constantly at-hand for countless home cooks and future top chefs for over fifty years. With over a thousand pages filled with recipes, cooking history, and miraculous tips, this indispensable resource has now been updated and elegantly redesigned with specially commissioned how-to line drawings. Cooks of every level will find invaluable information on kitchen processes, soups and sauces, vegetables, meat, poultry, game, cold dishes, and pastry making. This timeless treasure is “a monument to ‘civilised living’ . . . If you can’t find a recipe for something anywhere else, it will be in Constance Spry” (The Guardian). “Cookery is vast, detailed, and lovely. The purpose of the book was to take the knowledge of culinary professionals and write it in a form that British housewives could understand and use. It was, and it remains, the British cookery [and cooking] bible.” —Cooking by the Book

Seeds of Fortune

Author: Sue Shephard
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408837749
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Book Description
For over a century, and across five generations, the Veitch family pioneered the introduction of hundreds of new plants into gardens, conservatories and houses and were amongst the foremost European cultivators and hybridisers of their day. The story begins in 1768 when a Scotsman called John Veitch came to England to find his fortune, starting out as a gardener for the aristocracy. Realising that horticultural mania had begun to spread throughout the social classes, John's son, James, opened a nursery in Exeter and began to send some of the first commercial plant collectors into the Americas, Australia, India, Japan, China and the South Seas. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Veitch's had become key figures within the gardening establishment, involved with the Royal Horticultural Society from its beginnings and the great Chelsea Flower Show. Combining an historian's eye for detail with a flair for storytelling, Shephard charts the fortunes of one family and through them tells the fascinating story of the modern English garden.

Flower Decoration

Author: Constance Spry
Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers, Limited
ISBN: 9780897333788
Category : Flower arrangement
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"House and Garden has recently called Constance Spry "the first superstar florist": her heyday in England lasted from the late 1920's through the '50s, during which she arranged flowers for Elsie de Wolfe, for Wallis Simpson's wedding to the Duke of Windsor, and for Elizabeth II's coronation. But what will most endear her to today's American flower lovers is her propensity for breaking rules." "Unorthodox arrangements in alternative containers were her trademark; she fearlessly utilized anything of beauty. "Perhaps," she writes, "a leaf from the vegetable garden attracts your attention, or a spray of ripe fruit. You don't stop to think that this material is labelled, so to speak, 'for eating'; you realize it is decorative, and that is enough; it suits your purpose and you use it."" "Decrying "tame vases of flowers", she mixed blooms - a fairly daring practice in her day - in order to achieve "the thrill of the beholder" that the Dutch and Flemish achieved with their still-lifes. She reacted most of all against the imposition of arbitrary rules on an activity she felt should be spontaneous and alive. She felt "strongly that the art of flower arrangement should be a means of self-expression for everyone and that nobody should be afraid to express his feeling for color and line through this medium."" "Flower Decoration reveals Constance Spry to be an English rebel with a cause and a chatty style. This, her first book, has been long out of print: it will be greeted with appreciation by today's sophisticated gardeners who, along with everyone interested in home decor, will love what HG has called her "lush, funky style". The time has come to reintroduce Constance Spry to America."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Flower

Author:
Publisher: Phaidon Press
ISBN: 9781838660857
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Takes readers on a journey across continents and cultures to discover the endless ways artists and image-makers have employed floral motifs throughout history. Showcasing the diversity of blooms from all over the world, Flower spans a wide range of styles and media - from art, botanical illustrations, and sculptures to floral arrangements, film stills, and textiles - and follows a visually stunning sequence with works, regardless of period, thoughtfully paired to allow interesting and revealing juxtapositions between them.

Pickled, Potted, and Canned

Author: Sue Shephard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743255534
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Explains how the development of food preservation techniques changed world history.

Tom's Midnight Garden

Author: Philippa Pearce
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780192717771
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
"Tom is not prepared for what is about to happen when he hears the grandfather clock strike thirteen. Outside the back door is a garden, which everyone tells him does not exist."--Page 4 de la couverture.

Storm in a Flower Vase

Author: Anton Burge
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780573114045
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Book Description
Storm in a Flower Vase is a fascinating and compelling new drama by Anton Burge, author of the hit play Bette and Joan. Set in London in the 1930s, the play explores the early careet of Constance Spry, founder of the celebrated business Floral Decorations that supplied floral arrangements to the upper ranks of society.

My Mother, the Psychopath

Author: Olivia Rayne
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473558816
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
What do you do when the person you’re meant to trust the most in the world is the one trying to destroy you? ‘When people met her they thought how lovely she was, this attractive woman with a beautiful laugh. But she was one person in public and another behind closed doors. Who would she be today? The loving mother? The trusted teacher? The monster destroying my life?’ Olivia has been afraid ever since she can remember. Out of sight, she was subjected to cruelty and humiliation at the hands of the one person who should have loved and protected her at all times – her mother, Josephine. While appearing completely normal to the outside world, Josephine displayed all the signs of being a psychopath – unbeknown to her daughter until adulthood – and Olivia grew up feeling scared, worthless and exploited. Even when she found the courage to cut ties, her mother found new ways to manipulate and deceive, attempting to destroy her life with a vicious campaign of abuse. Now Olivia has come to terms with her past and gives a fascinating, harrowing and deeply unsettling insight into what it’s like growing up with a psychopathic parent.