Helena Attlee, The Land where Lemons Grow

This is a book about the author’s travels in Italy in search of citrus fruit and its growers. The text is a mixture of botany, history and travel writing, with a sprinkling of recipes both historical and present-day (the former tend to be of the ‘don’t try this at home’ variety, and even the latter can involve things like 95% alcohol!) We learn just how many different fruits are grown in Italy, how they are grown, their part in local economies (sadly not what it was in many cases) and about some particular varieties. The author travelled widely in Italy, though inevitably there is more about the south, including Sicily (where lemons played a part in the rise of the Mafia).

Limonaia, Lake Garda

Former limonaia at Villa Lucia, Maderno (Lake Garda). Photo by reviewer, August 2020

I notice that the author is a contributor to magazines, and some of the chapters read as if they may have started as magazine articles, which may explain a certain amount of repetition of information between chapters (for example, details of the three original varieties of citrus fruit). The author’s research has been thorough, though I was puzzled by her insistence that English people think only oranges can be made into marmalade; local shops here sell marmalade made from other fruit, and someone must be buying it!

I was rather sorry that there were no photographs to illustrate, for example, some of the weirdly shaped fruit described, or the layout of groves. But if you love Italy and/or citrus fruit, you will enjoy this.

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