Brian Mathew was born in Limpsfield, a village in Surrey, England. His parents encouraged both Brian and his sister to look after small garden plots allocated to them. He records that as his father was a very successful vegetable gardener, his own interests were more in ornamental plants. An early encounter with Helleborus orientalis may have laid the foundations for a later monograph on hellebores. He was educated at the localgrammar school. After leaving school he spent his compulsory military service in the Royal Air Force, engaged in a then secret project involving Britain's atomic bomb. When his service was finished, a family friend and enthusiastic gardener suggested he should attend the horticultural school run by the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley. Entry required three years prior work experience. Through the offices of the family friend he was taken on at the nearby Birch Farm Hardy Plant Nursery, run by the Ingwersen family. Having acquired the necessary work experience, he moved on to the RHS horticultural school. At the time the rock garden was cared for by Ken Aslet, well-known to alpine garden enthusiasts, and botany was taught by Chris Brickell, with whom Mathew later collaborated. He met his wife, Margaret Briggs, at this time; she was Brickell's secretary. In 1963, using a Bowles Scholarship travel grant, he organized a five-month plant hunting expedition to Iran. Many bulbs were collected, the areas visited being particularly notable for Crocus, Fritillaria and Iris. Subsequent trips to Turkey and the Balkans also focussed on bulbs, but also hellebores. These expeditions convinced Mathew that his interests lay more in botany than horticulture, and he found employment in the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Initially he worked in the tropical African section, but soon moved to the newly formed petaloid monocot section. His subsequent career at Kew was largely based on this group of plants, particularly the families Iridaceae, Liliaceae sensu lato and Amaryllidaceae. In 1973, he published the first of his many books on bulbs or bulbous genera, Dwarf Bulbs. He has written that "ith my combined interest in horticulture and taxonomy, I have tried to pitch my publications at a level which will to some extent appeal to a wide audience in both fields." Dwarf Bulbs was followed in 1978 by The Larger Bulbs, and a revision of the former work was published as The Smaller Bulbs in 1987. Between 1973 and 1992, he was the author or co-author of nine books on bulbs generally. In addition, he produced monographs of the genera Daphne, Iris, Crocus, Lewisia, and Helleborus in addition to contributing accounts of various families or genera to at least nine different floras, and producing over 200 papers in botanical and horticultural journals. This prodigious output of scholarly and more popular works lead to two awards at the beginning of the 1990s. In 1991, he was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour, by the Royal Horticultural Society. In 1992, he was awarded the Herbert Medal by the International Bulb Society – only one recipient is honoured worldwide each year. He continued to write, with some 13 authored or co-authored books published between 1993 and 2005, many on bulbs or bulbous genera, such as Lilies : a romantic history with a guide to cultivation or The Cyclamen of Turkey. More recently he contributed to a book on Epimedium and other herbaceous Berberidaceae and to one on the genus Sorbus. He was awarded an MBE in the 2005 New Year Honours.
Awards and honours
Victoria Medal of Honour, awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society, 1991
Herbert Medal, awarded by the International Bulb Society, 1992
