Search results for ""author jean stone""

Late 1930s. When World War II was declared, Mavis Batey, previously studying German Romanticism, abandoned her studies to do her duty for her country. At Bletchley Park, Britain’s best kept secret, she became one of the first women codebreakers, a pioneer and a star, breaking codes vital to bringing peace. Mavis Batey, a unique biography, delves into the life of one of Britain’s best female codebreakers, taking the reader through the war and to the arrival of peace, when Mavis turned her attention from breaking codes to the conservation and preservation of gardens. Mavis became an important figure in conservation, becoming President of the Garden History Society, which, under her watch, became an academic society and campaigning force for the protection of landscapes, parks, and gardens of historic interest. She also lobbied Parliament, fighting threats of encroachment and misuse of land. Acts of Parliament were passed, English Heritage was established, and grants were introduced. Historic gardens became officially recognised as essential components of European culture and her National Register of Historic Gardens came to fruition. Mavis’s passion was writing and she wrote many books. Mavis was finally awarded the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal and the MBE for Services to the preservation and conservation of historic landscapes. Mavis never did retire: her final project was to inspire an American Garden Trail for Bletchley Park which she signed off just a few months before her death in November 2013.

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Exploration of the New World offered far reaching possibilities for the acquisition of new plants and for trees, but the impact that the introduction of plants from the New World had, and still has, on the English garden is frequently forgotten. Gardens and landscapes were transformed by an influx of American roots and through the past three centuries gardens have displayed important links with the United States of America. The ancestral homes of George Washington, the residence of the American Ambassador in London, the American Museum in Britain and Bletchley Park are of cultural and political importance. Many Dollar Princesses - American heiresses - took an active part in the aristocratic role of garden creation and ex-patriots too, continue to leave a legacy of beautiful gardens. Finally, the book includes memorial gardens of honoured Americans: Princess Pocahontas; Mohamet Weyonoman; John F. Kennedy; the Magna Carta Memorial built by the American Bar Association, and at Cambridge, the American Military Cemetery, dedicated to the American Armed Services. The American Spirit in the English Garden is unique in bringing together the story of the first influx of American plant species and an important collection of gardens influenced and/or created by Americans, reflecting social history and often overlooked links between Britain and the United States of America.

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“Written from the heart and without restraint, alive.”—The New York TimesVincent van Gogh, the great but tormented artist, bared his tortured yet ecstatic soul in his letters to his confidant and companion, his beloved brother Theo. These letters reveal the man behind such masterpieces as The Starry Night and The Bedroom—a desperate man whose quest for love became a flight into madness and for whom every day was a “fight for life.”Irving Stone, acclaimed author of Lust for Life and other remarkable biographic novels, has collected Vincent van Gogh’s fascinating letters to Theo. Here we see the great artist as a human being as well as a man with an appointment with destiny. Van Gogh is a man struggling with doubts and fears, beset by poverty and mental illness, but also a painter who dares to break all the rules of academic art to create priceless masterpieces never honored during his lifetime. He was part of the coterie of great artists of his day while as the same time an intimate of aging streetwalkers. These letters are outpourings of his soul that paint a vibrant self-portrait in words equal to the intensity and emotion his painting created. This is the personal story of a legend.

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