Roy Strong

Thursday

Roy Strong

The quirkiest garden book Roy Strong has read in years

From our UK edition

Incredulity is rarely a word that crosses my mind when it comes to garden writing. This genre can, of course, be quite straight-forward and descriptive, like Miss Jekyll’s rather boring volumes. It can equally be wildly funny, as when Anne Scott-James and Osbert Lancaster hitch their respective wagons to horticulture and produce a spoof history. But where, oh where did Sam Llewellyn’s exotic aberration spring from? Is it fact or fiction? I don’t think I ever decided which. This is one of those books where you spend the whole time worrying less about what’s happening in the kitchen garden in spring and more on trying to work out what the hell is this place and who on earth is this man with a less-than-house-trained duchess in tow.

Saturday

Roy Strong

The Emperor’s real clothes

From our UK edition

Like Philip Mansel I am a passionate believer in the importance of trivia in history, or rather what most academic historians would regard as such. Years ago, at the close of the Sixties, I was the first chair of the newly formed Costume Society, in the main because I could keep the warring women gathered around the table from tearing each other’s hair out. That society has just celebrated its 40th anniversary and both it and the course on the subject at the Courtauld Institute signal that the topic at last has gained status. It is the one which first drew me to history when I was a child and thence to the study of Elizabeth I, history’s greatest monument to power dressing.

Saturday

Roy Strong

On the scent of the rose

From our UK edition

The Gardens at Hampton Court Palaceby Todd Longstaffe-GowanFrances Lincoln, £25, pp. 208, ISBN 0711223688 The Gardens at Hatfieldby Sue Snell, with an introduction by the Dowager Lady SalisburyFrances Lincoln, £25, pp. 192, ISBN 0711225168 In 1979 the first major exhibition on the history of British gardening was staged at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It was a landmark, signalling the emergence of garden history, already pioneered in part by the young Garden History Society (now in its 40th year), as a serious academic discipline. Since then the subject has become established within the realms of academe and a torrent of literature has followed.