Flax health of linseed oil. Eventually, Flanders became the major center of the linen industry in the European Middle Ages. In North America, flax was introduced by the colonists and it flourished there, but by the early 20th century, cheap cotton and rising farm wages had caused production of flax to become concentrated in northern Russia, which came to provide 90% of the world's output. Since then, flax has lost its importance as a commercial crop, due to the easy availability of more durable fibres. Flax is grown for its seeds, which can be ground into a meal or turned into
The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River". "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage