--- title: "Orwell’s Roses: A beautiful meditation on writing and truth" description: "I would like to write that Orwell’s Roses is one of the most architecturally imaginative and beautiful books I have ever read. That’s true. But I also know that – despite the parasitic nature of the systems human beings have constructed to satisfy our needs – our species does have an exquisite capability for imagination and invocation and that our civilisation is replete with beautiful writing, past and present." type: "NewsArticle" publisher: "Daily Maverick" site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za" section: "BOOK REVIEW" author: "Mark Heywood" author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/markheywood/" canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-07-22-orwells-roses-a-beautiful-meditation-on-writing-and-truth/" published: "2026-07-22T07:00:00" updated: "2026-07-23T07:00:00" lang: "en-ZA" word_count: 1430 --- # Orwell’s Roses: A beautiful meditation on writing and truth > I would like to write that Orwell’s Roses is one of the most architecturally imaginative and beautiful books I have ever read. That’s true. But I also know that – despite the parasitic nature of the systems human beings have constructed to satisfy our needs – our species does have an exquisite capability for imagination and invocation and that our civilisation is replete with beautiful writing, past and present. By Mark Heywood · Published 22 July 2026, 09:00 SAST · Updated 23 July 2026, 09:00 SAST ## Key points - Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell's Roses beautifully intertwines George Orwell’s reflections on writing, truth and nature, showcasing a lesser-known side of the iconic author. - The book begins with Orwell planting roses in 1936, leading to an exploration of their political and historical significance, from colonialism to totalitarianism. - Solnit connects beauty with ethics, using roses as a metaphor for resistance, inviting readers to rethink the deeper meanings behind everyday objects. - With a mix of personal narrative and political inquiry, the book urges a renewed appreciation for human connection and compassion in challenging times. ## Content Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit is an outstanding work of writing and thought. At its core it’s about writing and a writer, it’s about George Orwell’s views on writing and the importance of truth. Yet in it, Solnit’s own writing reaches all the high standards set by Orwell and more. He would have been proud of the association. The first lines often make a book; think of “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”. Or, “As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me”. Orwell’s Roses opens like this: “In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” In 1936, in his rented cottage in Wallington, near Cambridge in England, George Orwell/Eric Blair planted roses in his garden. He wrote about this, almost in passing, 10 years later in an eccentric little essay called [A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray](https://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/vicar/english/e_vicar). The essay recalled how in 1936 he had bought “some sixpenny rambler roses from Woolworth’s which I had planted before the war”, forgotten about them, but had recently been surprised by their growth on a return to the cottage. Orwell recalls receiving “an indignant letter from a reader who said that roses are bourgeois, but I still think that my sixpence was better spent than if it had gone on cigarettes or even on one of the excellent [Fabian](https://fabians.org.uk/about-us/our-history/) Research Pamphlets”. The writer is most well known for his sparse depictions of the totalitarian state and society in 1984, so a love of/for roses and nature might seem counterfactual to what we think we know of the man; quite the opposite. It was the love of nature that motivated his political thought and activism. Solnit returned to the Wallington cottage circa 2019 and found some of the roses still growing. She also found roses on his [grave](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/george-orwells-grave). ### An exploration of the political history of roses From this simple beginning the book follows a river of thought, tracing down tributaries, tracking down ideas, going with the flow and occasionally the counter-flow, finding a way back to the main theme. Part of what I love about it is that rather than being a drear and dogmatic analysis, that puts readers off by paragraph three, a type of writing loathed by Orwell and still characteristic of most left writing (Orwell hated and castigated sloppy writing in several of his [most-loved essays](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/)), the book takes roses, a thing associated with love (and death), and uses that famous flower as the starting point for an exploration of the political history of roses, entwining it with Orwell’s own journeys and thought, and then tying it all to the present conundrums and contradictions of life in the end times. From a launch pad of a tangle of roses in a faraway garden we venture into a reflection of the occurrence of roses in literature and resistance: the famous labour movement song [Bread and Roses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N22OuupuKwc). We meander, but in a very intentional way, into what roses mean to humans and in nature. From thoughts on flowers Solnit shows it is possible to find a fresh lens on colonialism, slavery and the gardens of the English aristocracy; Stalinism (he force-bred lemons); and the conflict between [Lysenkoism](https://ethos.lps.library.cmu.edu/article/id/560/), its offshoot [Lamarckism](https://www.britannica.com/science/Lamarckism) and the conflict with [Nikolai Vavilov](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikolai-Vavilov) (who was killed on Stalin’s orders too soon to become an -ism). Nature versus torture, as it were. In a similar vein we retrace Orwell’s own compulsive journeys (and the writing they gave rise to) to Wigan Pier, Paris and Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. [Against numbness: How to keep compassion in a time of war and disconnection Against numbness: Keeping compassion in a time of war and disconnection November 2, 2023 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/c8OFv7iu9OxrSra6JJz2L178zdA=/450x0/smart/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG-7314.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-11-02-against-numbness-how-to-keep-compassion-in-a-time-of-war-and-disconnection/) ### A rose factory A rose is a flower. Simple. Or so I thought. However, Solnit helped me to think about flowers in a way I have never done before. In one of the most moving sections of Orwell’s Roses we go with Solnit to the rose factories in Bogota, Columbia, that supply the American rose market. To me, a “rose factory” feels like an oxymoron. But having read Solnit’s account I look at the roses I have on my living room table, yellow and orange, in a different light. I wonder where they come from and under what conditions they were grown. I still love the light and colour they bring to the room, the way they open and expand, the shades of their short vase-life, their short march from bloom to decay. But I also see into them and beyond them, following Solnit’s argument that “Beauty is not only formal, and it lies not only in the superficial qualities that are appealing to the eye or ear; it lies in patterns of meaning, in invocations of values, and in connections to the life the reader is living and the world she wants to see”. ### The suppression of free thought Her outer journeys through history, horticulture and geography are literary handles that Solnit uses to open doors into an examination of dictatorial and democratic methods for the suppression of free thought. A compelling few chapters explore the essence of beauty and lying, leading Solnit to conclude that “\[A\] beauty in which ethics and aesthetics are inseparable, this linguistic beauty of truth and of integrity as a kind of wholeness and connectedness, between language and what it describes, between one person and another, or between members of a community or society, is the crucial beauty for which \[Orwell\] strove in his own writing”. Old questions in new bottles. Bottles, which instead of evoking déjà vu, bring delight and freshness, and simple pleasure in the act of reading and admiring the writer’s art. Eventually, Solnit brings her disquisition on roses full circle. Her analysis of 1984 turns it inside out, reading it not as a prophetic story of spartan austerity, the invasiveness of totalitarianism, but as a thing of and about the resistance inspired in one man, Winston Smith, who clings on to both the inner values and outer manifestations of beauty. This was something Orwell was simultaneously doing in real life; as he wrote 1984, this time it was not men in planes flying overhead, but the tuberculosis bacilli inside that wracked his body but not in his imagination or his passion. And so he ground out this final book. A book that is a touchstone by which we try to understand our 2026 world. Finally, one paradox Solnit finds in Orwell’s writing is that in his self-effacing way Orwell always returns political commentary to himself; to the thoughts, emotions, feelings that were catalysed by the experience of living. [Read more The importance of being empathetic: Remembering George Orwell January 21, 2021 ![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/aRG1ewZnPTUc6IO10crgYLK-vtg=/450x0/smart/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/MC-Orwell-1.jpg)](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-01-21-the-importance-of-being-empathetic-remembering-george-orwell/) ### On connections Here is what reading Orwell’s Roses meant to me in June 2026. It reinforced my feeling of the importance of connection; of retaining not just a vague awareness of our five original senses, but an acuteness in listening, seeing, touching and even tasting and smelling; of paying attention to the seconds in the day; the details of living, to “scrupulousness even in small matters”; to what artistic polymath [Nick Cave calls](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-10-10-art-beauty-death-reflections-on-nick-caves-new-book/) “the little miracles nestled in the ordinary”. As Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay [Why I Write](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/): “So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.” As I put the finishing touches to this essay an owl hoots in the pre-dawn. I believe it’s the physicality of being, the meshing of brain and body into soul, that will guide what/whether we think and how to act in an age that brings unprecedented challenges to our humanity. It is our [kinship with the non-human](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-12-03-kinship-with-the-nonhuman-reflections-on-bike-riding-and-being/), the recovery of our senses (literally) that will decide whether we continue to be monsters to each other and the Earth; or whether we (re)discover understanding, compassion and community. When/if we do, we can set about rearranging our societies on the basis of cooperation and love. **DM** *Mark Heywood is a social justice organiser and writer. He publishes a monthly newsletter, News from JAH, available [here](https://www.justiceandactivismhub.org/) on Substack.* *[Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit](https://www.wordsworth.co.za/products/orwells-roses) is available at a retail price of about R255.*