Andrea Wulf talks about gardens as windows into the politics, culture and science of a nation, why Alexander von Humboldt’s name belongs alongside Darwin, Einstein, and Newton; and how a group of young Germans in the small town of Jena introduced Romanticism and changed the world as we know it.

Andrea is an historian who was born in India, grew up in Germany, and now lives in the UK. In London, where - for the first time - she was exposed to the English obsession with gardening, her response was to co-write a book about it. Twenty years later, she’d tackled nature, astronomy, exploration, and 18th century philosophy.

Her books include This Other Eden, The Brother Gardeners, Chasing Venus, Founding Gardeners, The Invention of Nature, and Magnificent Rebels. She is a winner of the Costa Biography Award, the Royal Society Science Book Award, and many other international awards. 

Andrea’s recommended reads:

Juli Zeh

Stefan Zweig

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