Andrea Wulf

Review Guardian: The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765-1820, edited by Neil Chambers

The Guardian, 25 August 2007: In 1761, the 18-year-old Joseph Banks inherited several estates in Lincolnshire, providing him with a substantial income for the rest of his life. After he finished his studies at Oxford, he moved to London where he became a member of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. He spent much of his time in the damp reading room of the new British Museum, where he studied the herbaria of Britain's greatest plant collectors, utterly obsessed with botany and the workings of the natural world.

It was this preoccupation that distinguished Banks from other men of his class, prompting him to exchange his comfortable life for the hardship and danger of the most daring voyage that the British had ever undertaken. Unlike his peers who toured the ancient treasures of Europe, Banks reputedly said "every blockhead does that. My Grand Tour shall be one around the world". And so, in August 1768, Banks boarded Captain Cook's Endeavour. For the following three years, he lived in a windowless cabin that was no bigger than a modern king-size bed, with a diet of pickled cabbage, insect-infested biscuits and the occasional dog stew. During that time, he collected 3,600 species of plants in Tahiti, Australia and South America - 1,400 of which were new to English botanists.

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Review Guardian: Mrs Cook’s Book of Recipes: For Mariners in Distant Seas by John Dunmore

The Guardian, 11 August 2007: Captain James Cook was the most intrepid and successful explorer of the 18th century. He circumnavigated the globe three times, penetrated deep into the empty South Pacific and claimed Australia's east coast for Britain before he was killed in Hawaii in 1779. His wife Elizabeth hardly saw him as his explorations kept him away from their London home for many years at a time. While she waited she thought of the exotic places and embroidered the most beautiful map, which depicted the routes of her husband's voyages.

Mrs Cook's Book of Recipes: For Mariners in Distant Seas is a whimsical little book that imagines the food, including stewed albatross, roasted breadfruit and turtle soup, that Elizabeth might have served her husband.
As the title suggests, this is not a book for cooking at home - many of the ingredients would be difficult to obtain unless you are willing to kill your neighbour's pet to try out the dog broth. However, as British city dwellers today are apparently never further than five metres away from a rat, you might want to try this recipe: "First catch your rat, then singe over a flame to rid the skin of any furry cover. Remove the tips of the paws to rid the animal of its claws, wash the body in water and gut it, setting the entrails aside. Stamp the rat in a stone mortar till the bones are well broken and crushed as you might when preparing a cock ale and if you see them throw away the teeth."

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