Rosa ‘Fighting Temeraire’

For many years the rose has been one of my most frequently returned to subjects. In particular, I have been drawn to the David Austin English rose variety, ‘Fighting Temeraire’.

The story begins when I was small. On one of the walls of my family home, my dad kept a print of the J.M.W. Turner painting ‘The Fighting Temeraire’. It is an evocative painting, one which tells the story of the death of a fighting sail powered ship, alongside the new dawning of the steam age. The ship herself had been alongside the much celebrated ‘Victory’ at the Battle of Trafalgar, and yet here she is being taken away by a steam driven tug set against a blazing sunset to be broken apart.

The rose was named for the ship and as both my father and my husband have served in the merchant and Royal Navy respectively, to me it fills a sense of purpose and completes my narrative.