“It is a wine of virtuous power…”

I could have made this a list entirely of John Wyndham stories, and ten times longer too: I love his work. The short stories, mostly written for American pulps, are particularly good. ‘Wild Flower’ is more lyrical than most, and it is both beautiful and full of melancholy.

Collected in The Seeds of Time, Michael Joseph, 1956; new edition from Penguin, 2014