James has suggested a topic for the Flange - Biography.
His top three (in reverse order) are:
Sally Festing - Gertrude Jekyll
John Dixon Hunt - William Kent
Kate Colquhoun - A Thing In Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton
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Ooh, surely Jennifer Potter's wonderful book on the Tradescants; Strange Blooms; the curious lives and adventures of the John Tradescants. Wonderfully written, thick with anecdotes, historically engaging and ultimately rather poignant. As you can probably tell I loved it.
I also want to know when James is writing his auto. It would surely be a bestseller and probably one of the most entertaining (but I bet also heartbreaking) books of recent times. Come on Hat, get to it!
I would add, without hesitation, Nicola Shulman's excellent "A Rage For Rock Gardening"
I think I raved about it in a blog post once.
It is the informative and entertaining story of Reginald Farrer, who seems almost like an horticultural version of Kenneth Williams.
Simply a great read.
I could go on and on about The Brother Gardeners by Andrea Wulf which is a group biography of Linnaeus, Philip Miller, Thomas Fairchild, Daniel Solander, etc. But I think I already have, a bit too much. It's beautifully written. It depresses me all these people who write really well WHEN ENGLISH ISN"T EVEN THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE
Having spent a few months trailing in the wake of Graham Stuart Thomas, I'm poised to order his 'Recollections of Great Gardeners'. 60 gardeners for the price of 1 including Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West.
What do you think?
Sadly garden biography's a branch (ha ha) of the genre I've yet to explore - looks like it's a rich seem though...
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