The Poppy: A Cultural History from Ancient Egypt to Flanders Fields to Afghanistan

Traces the cultural history (and anthropology) of the Remembrance Poppy - and proposes that its true nature is as a cultural hybrid of the Opium Poppy and the Corn Poppy which enables those who participate in buying/wearing it to simultaneously remember and forget the loss of loved ones in conflict. The book traces the origins of the opium poppy from Antiquity to the present day, and shows how it became entangled with the corn poppy since the First World War, and how this conjunction has tragically reappeared in relation to the war dead of Afghanistan.