The Apple cover art

The Apple

A Delicious History

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The Apple

By: Sally Coulthard
Narrated by: Deborah Balm
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About this listen

 Bloomsbury presents The Apple: A Delicious History by Sally Coulthard, read by Deborah Balm.

Sin, cider and apple crumble… the 10,000-year story of the world’s most tempting fruit.

The Apple: A Delicious History takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, from the apple’s prehistoric beginnings in the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan to the explosion of commercial apple-growing in twenty-first-century China. Zigzagging across the centuries and straddling the globe, Sally Coulthard explores how the apple travelled along the Silk Road from Central Asia to Europe, appearing as an erotically charged symbol in Greek myth and poetry and even featuring in the shopping list of a senior Roman officer stationed on Hadrian’s Wall. She samples the cider that flowed from the emperor. Charlemagne’s orchards in the early Middle Ages, and relishes the crispness of the yellow sweeting, the first new apple variety to be cultivated in seventeenth-century America. And she discovers why, despite the existence of more than 7500 varieties of apple – from the ubiquitous Granny Smith to the purple-skinned Black Diamond of Tibet – only a handful of cultivars are available in modern supermarkets.

Amplified by mouth-wateringly appley recipes and the stories behind them, The Apple: A Delicious History embraces not only culinary, horticultural, social and commercial history but also age-old traditions in mythology, folklore and religion. It is the perfect gift book for gardeners and nature lovers – and for anyone who enjoys a drop of cider or a slice of apple pie.©2024 Sally Coulthard (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Food & Wine Gastronomy China

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Most relevant
Read this if you are curious about the wild origins of apples or ever wondered who was Granny Smith anyway.

Everything you ever need to know about apples

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I purchased this after buying the author's 'History of Sheep' as an alternative to white noise to help me get to sleep. Great content and gentle narration. I can easily listen to it over and over. It's both interesting, and it helps me to get to sleep. Win Win!

Apples for sleep

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