Every page of this astonishingly beautiful ode to the citrus is a treat

There’s an episode of Yes Minister called ‘Equal Opportunities’. Minister Jim Hacker is under pressure to recruit more women to the civil service. The hunt is on for female mandarins. ‘Ah,’ says principal private secretary Bernard. ‘Sort of… satsumas?’ At this time of year, I can’t help thinking of Bernard as I hover in the Co-op over nets of tangerines, mandarins, clementines, satsumas and ‘easy peelers’, whatever they are. ’Tis the season for citrus. For oranges at the bottom of stockings, for Buck’s Fizz on Christmas morning, for smoked salmon blinis with slices of lemon, for Milanese panettone with candied parings of peel, and for J.C. Volkamer’s The Book of Citrus Fruits, an astonishingly beautiful reprinting by art publishers Taschen, too huge to fit down the chimney.

Johann Christoph Volkamer (1644–1720) was a Nuremberg merchant whose grandfather, Johann Volkamer, made a fortune in Italian silks. His father, Johann Georg Volkamer, was a natural historian, astronomer, physicist, botanist and president of the Imperial Academy of Natural History who called himself ‘Helianthus’ or ‘Sunflower’.