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.
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
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