About the Author

SIR ROY STRONG is a well-known historian and garden writer, lecturer, critic and columnist and a regular contributor to television and radio programmes. He was Director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1967 to 1973 and of the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1974 to 1987. In 1980 he was awarded the prestigious Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg in recognition of his contribution to the arts in the UK. He has published a number of highly acclaimed books. Sir Roy lives in Hereford, where, with his late wife, Julia Trevelyan Oman, who died in 2003, he designed one of England's largest post-war formal gardens. He now works full-time as a writer and broadcaster. CLIVE BOURSNELL is a renowned photographer of architecture, gardens, landscapes and, above all, people. He turned to photography as the culmination of a career which included classical ballet and working as a woodsman, a farmhand, a miner and prospector and a mountaineer. He lives in London. His other titles for Frances Lincoln are Covent Garden (9780711228603), Covent Garden: Then and Now (9780711233553), Houses of the Lake District (9780711231610) and Window-box Allotment (9780711231733).

Reviews

"beautifully produced ... thought-provoking."

"ebullience, spiky wit, optimism and creativity ... all shine through in his text."

"the photographs, refreshingly for a garden book, show as much energetic destruction as patient construction."

'an inspiration and delight''this refreshing book challenges preconceptions about illustrated garden books ... were you to accept the invigorating challenge to edit your own plot, you'd take courage from this minutely detailed record of the transition from tranquility to raw chaos and back again.""the photographs, refreshingly for a garden book, show as much energetic destruction as patient construction.""a fine record of the transformations wrought by love and labour, and a reminder that change, courage and clarity are essential, in gardens as in life.""ebullience, spiky wit, optimism and creativity ... all shine through in his text.""beautifully produced ... thought-provoking."