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BOOK By Sutherland Lyall The Arcadian Friends: Inventing the English Landscape Garden. By Tim Richardson. Bantam Press, 2007. £25
Tim Richardson used to be Country Life's gardens editor, so you know what you're getting with The Arcadian Friends. It's primarily about the intricate social and political connections of those who commissioned and sometimes helped design English landscape gardens from the Glorious Revolution of 1689 up to the mid-18th century. That cut-off point marks the rise of Capability Brown and English landscape's subsequent descent into the 'dangerous excitements of the Picturesque [which] soon faded. Their gardens were meaningless - at least compared with what had gone before.'
So if you are seeking a scholarly exposition of the development of English landscape design, forget it. Instead of...