Park life

Petrichor. Coined as recently as 1964 but redolent of Eden onwards, the word appears in neither of these volumes but they are suffused with it. In denoting that tang which arises after rain has fallen upon dry ground, petrichor can make a stroll through park or hillside headier than any parfumier’s establishment. Down the centuries, as people moved into populous cities, such relish of open, green space has become all the more acute, with one man’s wild meadow another’s ‘development opportunity’.

With a steadily lengthening shelf of books that are threnodies for seaside holidays, the Routemaster bus, vinyl records, the transplanted London Bridge and now public parks, Travis Elborough is becoming a latter-day Alan Bennett. Let loose in an array of reference libraries, he summons many a curious fact (such as fashions in beards) from the shelves, which makes for a rich narrative. Essentially chronological and based upon England, with excursions to Versailles and Manhattan, his study lights upon places as the emblem of an era.