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The perfect book to dip into as you swat that bloody mosquito and ponder your first G&T of the day.
Did you know that tonic water was originally consumed as a digestive? And that quinine, the bitter tasting alkaloid that flavours tonic water was first mixed with brandy, rum or wine, rather than gin as the common belief states. Just the Tonic reveals the colourful history and truth behind the myths of this everyday drink.
Authors Kim Walker and Mark Nesbitt take us on a journey from the discovery of quinine, an antimalarial extract from the bark of the cinchona tree that soon became a tool of empires, to the origins of gin and tonic and its rise and fall and rise again to current popularity.
The book also includes cocktail recipes inspired by historical events, and is beautifully illustrated throughout with archival posters, advertisements, photographs and botanical art.
Kim Walker trained as a medical herbalist, and now specialises in the history of plant medicines. She is currently working on a PhD on cinchona at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Royal Holloway, University of London. She is on the committee of the Herbal History Research Network, the British Society for the History of Pharmacy and is a member of the Association of Foragers. She is the coauthor of The Handmade Apothecary (Kyle Books, 2017) and The Herbal Remedy Handbook (Kyle Books, 2019).
Mark Nesbitt is curator of the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and his research centres on botany and empire in the nineteenth century, and on the history and current day management of botanical collections. He is the co-author of Curating Biocultural Collections (Kew Publishing, 2014) and The Botanical Treasury (Andre Deutsch, 2016). Mark is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London.