Title : An English Rose
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An English Rose
I mentioned Jan Struther yesterday - as well as hymns, she is also the author of the famous wartime story "Mrs Miniver".This film, starring the fragrant Greer Garson, was released 75 years ago - July 1942.
It is the story of a true English Rose, whose peaceful resistance to the Nazi threat "did more for the Allies than a flotilla of battleships", according to Winston Churchill. The film won 6 academy awards.
If you have never seen it, you've missed a real treat of classic British wartime cinema!
And an American rose grower, Jackson & Perkins introduced a hybrid tea rose, called the Mrs Miniver Rose - large, scarlet and strongly fragrant, which had been first bred in Southern France at the nurseries of César Chambord.
But that was all 75 years ago - and many now dismiss the film as a sentimental tear-jerker, or a propaganda piece. Well yes it is those things - but it is still a cracking film with some clever and thought provoking scenes, challenging the popular attitudes to war, and to the appearance of foreigners on British soil.
Four years ago, a gardener in Devon called Orlando Murrins set himself the challenge of finding a Mrs Miniver rosebush for his garden. Jackson & Perkins dropped the variety from their catalogue years ago. British rose growers [Austins, LeGrice, Harkness etc] could not help. Murrins put out an appeal [how useful is the Internet?] and Becky Hook in France directed him to a collection in the former East Germany, the Europa Rosarium near Leipzig.
But the Mrs Miniver Rose was not among their 8300 varieties - their last bush perished in the frosts of 2012. There was apparently one bush known to exist in a private garden. Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Jan Struther's granddaughter, stepped forward to join the campaign. Finally after various setbacks, Martin Briese, a friend of Becky Hook was able to procure a couple of cuttings from the private garden. He was appalled by the Brexit vote, but graciously agreed to send the cuttings to Orlando.
At last Mrs Miniver is blooming in a pot in Orlando's rooftop garden in Exeter.
The Mrs Miniver Rose has been rediscovered!
What a great story - read more about the rose here
Other bizarre Miniver trivia;
A race horse called The Miniver Rose was the top seller at Tattersall's December Sales, going for 550,000 guineas.
Miniver Rose is the name of a self-catering holiday cottage in Aberlour, Scotland
A sequel to the original film was made in 1950, called The Miniver Story - but I have never seen that one. Interestingly, in the original film, her son Toby was played by Christopher Severn, but in the sequel by an 11 year old James Fox [brother of Edward, father of Laurence, uncle to Emilia...yes, that family of Foxes]
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