Celebrated plantsman Roy Lancaster's birth on 5th December 1937 was the start of something big for plants and horticulture. His chance find of a Mexican tobacco plant in a local allotment brought him fame as a Bolton schoolboy and sowed the seeds of his future career. This book is the story of his adventures as he sees tropical plants for the first time in the jungles of Malaya, meets Roberto Burle Marx at his garden near Rio de Janeiro, and hunts for pitcher plants in North America. Well-known for his encylopedic botanical knowledge and for introducing many popular garden plants, Roy is also a consummate story-teller and wise philosopher. His acute sense of life's comic moments, spirited sense of adventure and respect for the natural world make this a remarkable read.

This book successfully combines a most enjoyable and detailed account of the well-known author's many journeys through China. First and foremost, Travels in China provides a practical assessment of the plants that are either of ornamental merit or botanical interest to gardeners in the West. Roy Lancaster describes some 1,000 different plants in their natural habitat and provides an eminently readable account of a fascinating country, its people, and the plants that have enriched the gardens of Europe and North America. Hundreds of Lancaster's own attractive and colourful photographs are reproduced, interspersed with fascinating descriptions and anecdotes from his travels. This is a book about plants from a country so rich in variety that there are 50% more species on one mountain in China than there are in the whole of the British Isles. Indeed, the wide range of climatic conditions in a country as vast as China makes this book relevant to all gardeners, be they from Norway or Spain, the United

`Parrot was very angry indeed. He was also very wet. Although he had heard the cry to abandon ship, and had even seen the sailors jumping into the lifeboat, before he could jump in too, the huge, towering wave swept him spluttering and squawking over the side.' After this dramatic start, Parrot, a bird who has forgotten how to fly having spent most of his life on perches or human shoulders, has to learn how to survive in a wide open and at times dangerous sea. But he is not alone, a handful of other animals share his shipwrecked fate and place their trust in him to see them through. Parrot Takes Command is a delightful book full of adult relationship themes covered at a child's level. It is funny, a little dangerous and is beautifully illustrated.