John Wyndham was born in 1903. After a wide experience of the English preparatory school he was at Bedales from 1918 to 1921. Careers which he tried included farming, law, commercial art, and advertising, and he first started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. During the war he was in the Civil Service and afterwards in the Army. In 1946 he began writing his major science fiction novels including The Kraken Wakes , The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos .
After reading this little horror you will toss your innocent geranium out the window. The triffids are gigantic plants, mysteriously arrived on earth, which take up their roots and walk, searching for men to kill. A terrible celestial incident, which permanently blinds the majority of people on earth, helps the belligerent blossoms in their work. William Mason, escaping blindness, teams up with a beautiful (sighted) girl and after mishaps and separations in a decaying and de-populated world starts a colony with other pioneers as the triffids lean wistfully against the fences. Fast, readable and triffid-ly chilling. (Kirkus Reviews)