Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History

Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History PDF Author: Adam Nicolson
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150401569X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
“A charming portrait of an ancient and beautiful house in Kent [and] a poignant and amusing portrait of the English class system.” —Simon Winchester From lavish palace for Elizabethan nobles to dreary jailhouse for eighteenth-century prisoners of war, from well-manicured country house for a string of landed families to weed-choked ruin, Sissinghurst, in Kent, has become one of the most illustrious estates in England—and its future may prove to be just as intriguing as its past. In the 1930s, English poet Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Harold Nicolson, acquired land that had once been owned by Vita’s ancestors. Together they created elaborate gardens filled with roses, apple trees, vivid flowers, and scenic paths lined with hedges and pink brick walls. Vita, a gardening correspondent for the Observer and a close friend of Virginia Woolf, opened Sissinghurst to the public. But the thriving working farm began to change after her death. Her son Nigel instituted sweeping changes, including transferring ownership of the estate to Britain’s National Trust in 1967 to avoid extensive taxation. For author Adam Nicolson, the grandson of Harold and Vita, Sissinghurst was always more than a tourist attraction; it was his home. As a boy, Nicolson hiked the same trails that Roman conquerors walked centuries before. With wistful imagination, fascination with natural beauty, and connection to the land, Nicolson has returned home to restore Sissinghurst’s glory. His journey to recreate a sustainable and functioning farm, despite resistance from the National Trust, makes for a compelling memoir of family, history, and the powerful relationship between people and nature.

Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History

Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History PDF Author: Adam Nicolson
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150401569X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A charming portrait of an ancient and beautiful house in Kent [and] a poignant and amusing portrait of the English class system.” —Simon Winchester From lavish palace for Elizabethan nobles to dreary jailhouse for eighteenth-century prisoners of war, from well-manicured country house for a string of landed families to weed-choked ruin, Sissinghurst, in Kent, has become one of the most illustrious estates in England—and its future may prove to be just as intriguing as its past. In the 1930s, English poet Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Harold Nicolson, acquired land that had once been owned by Vita’s ancestors. Together they created elaborate gardens filled with roses, apple trees, vivid flowers, and scenic paths lined with hedges and pink brick walls. Vita, a gardening correspondent for the Observer and a close friend of Virginia Woolf, opened Sissinghurst to the public. But the thriving working farm began to change after her death. Her son Nigel instituted sweeping changes, including transferring ownership of the estate to Britain’s National Trust in 1967 to avoid extensive taxation. For author Adam Nicolson, the grandson of Harold and Vita, Sissinghurst was always more than a tourist attraction; it was his home. As a boy, Nicolson hiked the same trails that Roman conquerors walked centuries before. With wistful imagination, fascination with natural beauty, and connection to the land, Nicolson has returned home to restore Sissinghurst’s glory. His journey to recreate a sustainable and functioning farm, despite resistance from the National Trust, makes for a compelling memoir of family, history, and the powerful relationship between people and nature.

Sissinghurst

Sissinghurst PDF Author: Adam Nicolson
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007240554
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Landscape architecture.

Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst

Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst PDF Author: Vita Sackville-West
Publisher: Virago
ISBN: 1405517956
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
From 1946 to 1957, Vita Sackville-West, the poet, bestselling author of All Passion Spent and maker of Sissinghurst, wrote a weekly column in the Observer describing her life at Sissinghurst, showing her to be one of the most visionary horticulturalists of the twentieth-century. With wonderful additions by Sarah Raven, Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst draws on this extraordinary archive, revealing Vita's most loved flowers, as well as offering practical advice for gardeners. Often funny and completely accessibly written with colour and originality, it also describes details of the trials and tribulations of crafting a place of beauty and elegance. Sissinghurst has gone on to become one of the most visited and inspirational gardens in the world and this marvellous book, illustrated with drawings and original photographs throughout, shows us how it was created and how gardeners everywhere can use some of the ideas from both Sarah Raven and Vita Sackville-West.

Sissinghurst

Sissinghurst PDF Author: Jane Brown
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Limited
ISBN: 9780297833505
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
The celebrated garden at Sissinghurst, created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, has an unsurpassed romantic atmosphere. This book records the garden in all its seasons and moods, as well as the hosts of special plants and the inventive planting schemes.

Gardening at Sissinghurst

Gardening at Sissinghurst PDF Author: Tony Lord
Publisher: White Lion Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Describes design, development and maintenance of the garden at Sissinghurst created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson, one of the most visited in Britain.

Sissinghurst: The Dream Garden

Sissinghurst: The Dream Garden PDF Author: Tim Richardson
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
ISBN: 0711261636
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Step inside the world's most famous garden and understand the strength of its attraction in this beautiful and fascinating study. Since is was bought and transformed by writer Vita Sackville West and diplomat Harold Nicholson in the 1930s, this garden has captured imaginations with its unique and intricate design. This unforgettable garden of rooms is influential today for its design, its exuberant planting, and its effect on visitors as a complete garden experience. Author Tim Richardson explores its power and its magic, explaining the nuances of its evolution and shows how we can all enjoy it today. Beautiful photographs transport you to the National Trust property, showcasing it in all its brilliance.

Sissinghurst

Sissinghurst PDF Author: Adam Nicolson
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771051328
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
A fascinating account from award-winning author Adam Nicolson on the history of Nicolson's own national treasure, his family home: Sissinghurst. Sissinghurst is world famous as a place of calm and beauty, a garden slipped into the ruins of a rose-pink Elizabethan palace. But is it entirely what its creators intended? Has its success over the last thirty years come at a price? Is Sissinghurst everything it could be? The story of this piece of land, an estate in the Weald of Kent, is told here for the first time from the very beginning. Adam Nicolson, who now lives there, has uncovered remarkable new findings about its history as a medieval manor and great sixteenth-century house, from the days of its decline as an eighteenth-century prison to a flourishing Victorian farm and on to the creation, by his grandparents Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, of a garden in a weed-strewn wreck. Alongside his recovery of the past, Adam Nicolson wanted something else: for the land at Sissinghurst to live again, to become the landscape of orchards, cattle, fruit and sheep he remembered from his boyhood.Could that living frame of a mixed farm be brought back to what had turned into monochrome fields of chemicalised wheat and oilseed rape? Against the odds, he was going to try. Adam Nicolson has always been a passionate writer about landscape and buildings, but this is different. This is the place he wanted to make good again, reconnecting garden, farm and land. More than just a personal biography of a place, this book is the story of taking an inheritance and steering it in a new direction, just as an entrepreneur might take hold of a company, or just as all of us might want to take our dreams and make them real.

The Return of History and the End of Dreams

The Return of History and the End of Dreams PDF Author: Robert Kagan
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030738988X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Hopes for a new peaceful international order after the end of the Cold War have been dashed by sobering realities: Great powers are once again competing for honor and influence. The world remains “unipolar,” but international competition among the United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, and Iran raise new threats of regional conflict, and a new contest between western liberalism and the great eastern autocracies of Russia and China has reinjected ideology into geopolitics.For the past few years, the liberal world has been internally divided and distracted by issues both profound and petty. Now, in The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan masterfully poses the most important questions facing the liberal democratic countries, challenging them to choose whether they want to shape history or let others shape it for them.

The Way of Herodotus

The Way of Herodotus PDF Author: Justin Marozzi
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN: 0306816210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
An intriguing travel history exploring and evoking the world of Herodotus, with abundant commentary on the legacy and spirit of the "father of history" and the literary art he created.

Sea Room

Sea Room PDF Author: Adam Nicolson
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061238821
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
In 1937, Adam Nicolson's father answered a newspaper ad—"Uninhabited islands for sale. Outer Hebrides, 600 acres. . . . Puffins and seals. Apply."—and thus found the Shiants. With a name meaning "holy or enchanted islands," the Shiants for millennia were a haven for those seeking solitude, but their rich, sometimes violent history of human habitation includes much more. When he was twenty-one, Nicolson inherited this almost indescribably beautiful property: a landscape, soaked in centuries-old tales of restless ghosts and Bronze Age gold, that cradles the heritage of a once-vibrant world of farmers and fishermen. In Sea Room, Nicolson describes and relives his love affair with the three tiny islands and their strange and colorful history in passionate, keenly precise prose—sharing with us the greatest gift an island bestows on its inhabitants: a deep engagement with the natural world.