Simon Parkin The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad

The winner of the 2023 Wingate Literary Prize brings a fascinating and moving untold story of the Leningrad scientists who, whilst the city was under siege in 1941, risked everything for the future of humanity and faced the choice between distributing the contents of the world’s first seed bank to the starving population, or preserving them in the hope that they held the key to ending global famine. Parkin is a writer and journalist for magazines, newspapers and websites. He is contributor to The New Yorker, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Talking to Julia Wheeler