‘Whither the novel’ was a great dinner party topic in the 1960s. It is a question less aired these days, when novels come in strange and varied forms. From Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake, set in the 11th century andwritten in cod Olde Englisshe, to the versifying of Constantine Phipps (much chosen as ‘book of the year’), there is plenty to please us all.
Gardening books, however, have now reached the whithering stage. Samey, samey, samey is what they are, and this year even that most traditional of booksellers, Heywood Hill, has lamented the lack of anything new in the horticultural line. There are the inevitable huge picture books, the horticultural porn. The largest of these is Madison Cox’s The Gardener’s Garden (Phaidon £49.95, Spectator Bookshop, £44.95), which is so large I cannot carry it with one hand. It brims with pictures of gardens from all over the world.
George Plumptre’s The English Country House Garden (Frances Lincoln, £25, Spectator Bookshop, £20) shows examples of gardens which have often appeared in print, and I can pick it up at the same time as a cup of coffee.
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