Here’s a book co-authored by one dead woman and one living one. Sarah Raven is the second wife of Adam Nicolson, grandson of Vita Sackville-West. In 1930 Vita bought Sissinghurst, the ruins of a great 16th-century house, and with her husband Harold Nicolson created the world-famous garden. Tell me the old, old story. Vita died in 1970, and in 1983 Adam’s mother published a similar volume, co-authored ‘by Vita Sackville-West and Philippa Nicolson’; and there are several other good books about the making of this garden.
So here is yet another well-illustrated hommage, from an intimate perspective, to Vita and to her gardening style. It is basically a compilation of large chunks from Vita’s gardening articles written for the Observer between 1946 and 1961. These were collected in several volumes, most of them reissued in recent years. The linking commentary by Sarah also incorporates extracts from other writers’ books about the garden.
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The volume is given structure by grouping the articles according to theme or topic, and there is quite a lot of Sarah’s own autobiography included in passing, with accounts of her planting choices and preferences.
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