Search results for ""pimpernel press ltd""

In 1953 pioneering journalist Anne Scott-James started to write a weekly column for the Sunday Express newspaper. ‘The Anne Scott-James Page’ set the bar for a new way of writing. Scott-James perfected the art of the short, sharp column – and many of the topics she covered are equally on-trend today. She cogently expressed her views on men, children, fashion, beauty, food, interiors, travel, and anything else that took her fancy. Political opinions might be squashed between thoughts on eyebrow tweezing and a piece on swimsuit lines. Scott-James was a great believer in entertaining her readers, and her columns are sharp, witty, to the point, often very funny, sometimes very moving. In Hold the Front Page! a selection of the Sunday Express columns is brought together with a commentary by her daughter, writer Clare Hastings, and with photographs from the Scott-James/Hastings family albums and drawings by Osbert Lancaster, Scott-James’s third husband, to provide a fascinating insight into the 1950s – and into the public and private life of one of the most celebrated columnists of the twentieth century.

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‘London was but is no more!’ In these words diarist John Evelyn summed up the destruction wrought by the Great Fire that swept through the City of London in 1666. The losses included St Paul’s Cathedral and eight-seven parish churches (as well as at least thirteen thousand houses). In After the Fire, celebrated photographer and architectural historian Angelo Hornak explores, with the help of his own stunning photographs, the churches built in London during the sixty years that followed the Great Fire, as London rose from the ashes, more beautiful – and far more spectacular – than ever before. The catastrophe offered a unique opportunity to Christopher Wren and his colleagues – including Robert Hooke and Nicholas Hawksmoor – who, over the next forty years, rebuilt St Paul’s and fifty-one other London churches in a dramatic new style inspired by the European Baroque. Forty-five years after the Fire, the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711 gave Nicholas Hawksmoor the scope to build breathtaking (and controversial) new churches including St Anne’s Limehouse, Christ Church Spitalfields and St George’s Bloomsbury. By the 1720s the pendulum was swinging away from the Baroque of Wren and Hawksmoor, and it was James Gibbs' more restrained St Martin-in the-Fields that was to provide the prototype for churches throughout the English-speaking world - especially in North America – for the next hundred years.

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If you’re already an avid collector of flea market finds, or eager to start a vintage business, or you simply enjoy the beauty of time worn objects, Michelle Mason’s hands-on approach to collecting will help inspire your finds, offer ideas on how to showcase your keepsakes and equip you with insider knowledge to get you to the markets and start building your collection. With a focus on popular vintage items and decorative antiques Love Vintage has sections on favourite places to source stock in the UK and France, how to curate your collection, plus help with setting up a vintage business and purchasing tricks and tips and advice from experts in their field. Shop Talk shares insights from 8 dealers in the UK and France. Combined with recommendations on what to look out for and who to follow this book will arm you with all you need to get started and more.

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“I’m not dead yet,” writes Clare Hastings to her daughter, Calypso, who will one day inherit Clare’s beloved cottage garden in the Berkshire Downs. “In fact I woke up this morning feeling quite chipper. I glanced out of the window . . . and thought about you. And felt a frisson of panic. What if I were to be struck down before elevenses on the B4009? I realized that I needed to leave you a handbook about the garden. For you the countryside is a pathway from the car park to the door, to be completed on the run. But I’m not giving up.” The daughter of writer and gardener Anne Scott-James, Clare too was a latecomer to gardening, daunted by Latin names and nervous around plants. Then she realized she wasn’t and never would be a ‘proper plantsman’ and that it didn’t matter. Since then she has explored the joys of gardening and now after many years’ experience of her own cottage garden, Clare shares her gardening life notes with Calypso.

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When it comes to deciding the most tragic British artist of the 20th century, Cyril Mann (1911-80) must be a contender. Mann made a number of genuinely innovative breakthroughs and certainly had the potential to become one of the most important figurative painters of his time. Yet, struggling with mental health problems, Mann had an unerring instinct for turning each moment of promise into bitter disappointment. In 1959, Renske van Slooten fell in love with Mann who was more than twice her age. Renske was convinced she discovered a genius and she promised to dedicate her life to him as muse, model and money earner. Their struggles quickly threatened to overwhelm them. The Girl in a Green Jumper is not only an enthralling story set against the backdrop of 1960s London, but it also charts in detail the struggles an artist goes through, both creatively and financially. Renske also gives fascinating insights into the way that Cyril's painting technique evolved over time.

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This beautiful boxed-set contains three long out-of-print and influential books by the great British humourist, Sir Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986) - Pillar to Post, the story of architecture through the ages, first published in 1938 and described by Gavin Stamp as 'One of the most influential books on architecture ever published'; Homes Sweet Homes, a history of architectural interiors and a sequel to Pillar to Post, was first published in 1939, and Drayneflete Revealed, first published in 1948, which traces the development of one particularly typical (invented) English town.

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After publishing Scent Magic, an acclaimed memoir of plants, gardens and scent, Isabel Bannerman couldn’t leave the subject alone. ‘I came across the star-nosed mole, an adorable and preposterous creature with a highly specialized sensory-motor organ, while writing about the riches of the soil kingdom … and, somewhat mole-like … as I was trying to write about the impossibility of writing effectively about smell, I began to nose around for great writers’ solutions to this problem. How and how much have writers considered the lilies of the field and how they smell. I began grazing on literature and gathering in my stores of quotes.’ In reviews of Scent Magic, Isabel was lauded for ‘putting into words what so much escapes language. With a wonderful range of reference and allusion, it's nothing less than poetry... (Evening Standard)’. And in this anthology, with her beautifully written linking passages bringing carefully chosen quotations together with her dramatic, powerful and mysterious plant images, she evokes the scented garden through poetry and prose spanning millennia, from Ovid to Proust, Milton to George Eliot, and Emily Dickinson to Alice Oswald.

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There is no shortage of books on how to look after houseplants but no one has shown us how and when and why these plants came to be in our homes. Catherine Horwood’s combination of social history, plant history and the history of interior design explains why, as Flanders and Swann sung in the 1950s, ‘the garden’s full of furniture / and the house is full of plants.’ In this fascinating book we learned how potted plants are as much subject to fashion as pieces of furniture. For the Victorians, it was the aspidistra in the front parlour, the Edwardians loved a palm, and, for today’s millennials, no home is complete without the ubiquitous fiddle-leaf fig. This book show that there is little new when it comes to plants in the home. In the mid-18th century, Wedgwood created a market for special bulb pots and in the 1950s, some of Terence Conran’s earliest designs were for houseplant containers. Across the ages, the choice of potted plants has been influenced by the layout of houses, the levels of dirt and pollution and the equipment to hand. Now, with so much choice, we seem happy to treat houseplants as disposables. This book gives a better understanding of the miracles that were once achieved with indoor plant displays, inspired by Sir Hugh Platt’s 1608 vision of a garden ‘within doores’. This new edition has been revised with new material added to bring the history of the houseplant and its massive explosion in popularity right up to date.

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Frank and Marjorie Lawley have spent almost 40 years at Herterton House, a 16th century farmhouse on the Wallington Estate, near Cambo (birthplace of Capability Brown) in Northumberland. When they leased Herterton from the National Trust in 1976, the Lawleys took on a series of derelict farm buildings. This highly original and personal book describes in detail how, with patience and passion, they restored Herterton House and created an exquisite and unique garden. As well as discussing the practicalities involved, it also describes the influences and the lifetime of thinking behind their achievement. Within its mere acre, the garden at Herterton House provides more visual interest and more interesting plants (plants you can also buy from its small nursery) than many gardens twenty times its size. It also stimulates visitors to think about what plants to use and how to use them, about the history of English gardens, about the relation of the past to the present and about the relation of a garden to the landscape around it. This stunning book records and celebrates Frank and Marjorie's achievement over four decades at Herterton House. With photographs by Val Corbett and an introduction by Charles Quest-Ritson.

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The product of many years’ research by Susan Palmer, archivist to Sir John Soane’s Museum, At Home with the Soanes paints a detailed picture of the social and domestic life at Nos 12 & 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, in the early 19th century – how the buildings were heated, the servants’ daily duties, what meals were cooked, wines purchased and teas drunk – even the fate of the family’s pet dog. Family life with two children – in many ways as difficult as modern offspring – is brought vividly to life and the below-stairs relationships of the servants are poignantly recorded. The evening social whirl of visits to theatres and supper parties is chronicled, and the description of seaside holidays on the Kentish coast, when Margate was in vogue, portrays the social niceties of promenades and dances. Originally published in 1997, At Home with the Soanes has been updated to include the latest discoveries that have come to light during restoration of the house and re-designed to include over 100 illustrations, mostly in colour, from the extensive Museum archive, including photographs of the newly-recreated ‘lost’ private apartments. At Home with the Soanes offers a fascinating insight into this London family’s life, both upstairs and downstairs.

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Christopher Lloyd, icon and iconoclast of the gardening world, was born at Great Dixter, in East Sussex, in 1921 and died there in 2006. In the years between he developed the garden at Dixter into a mecca for plantsmen and a hub of ideas and connections that spread throughout the world. And from the 1930s almost until his death he was also photographing the garden, recording it in intimate detail as it changed and developed. A carefully chosen selection of Christopher's photographs is published here, the majority for the first time. They are juxtaposed with images from the Lloyd family's earliest days at Dixter, and with photographs taken by Carol Casselden and others of the garden as it is today.

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If John Fowler was – in the words of the late Duchess of Devonshire – the Prince of Decorators, and Nancy Lancaster undoubted doyenne of English country house style, Imogen Taylor was their crown princess. She joined Colefax and Fowler in 1949 and was for many years John Fowler’s trusted assistant. John – and Nancy – had total faith in Imogen’s ‘perfect taste’, and when John retired in 1971 he passed on to her all his clients – who ranged from HM The Queen, through duchesses and film stars, to ladies of the night. From this time until she retired in 1999 she was, along with Tom Parr, the firm’s principal decorator. Over the years she extended the clientele she had inherited from John and developed her own subtle, comfortable and charming version of English country house style. In this unique combination of social history and style bible, Imogen Taylor brings a sharp eye and ready wit not only to decorating style but also to the social history of the latter part of the twentieth century. Here you will learn about how fabric walling was done, how the famous ‘twelve different whites’ were applied, how to oil gild, how the passementerie was made for Buckingham Palace and Windsor, about Bessarabian carpets and trompe l’oeil painting and Nancy Lancaster’s broderie anglaise lamp shades, ‘like a child’s skirt or a ball dress’. You will also find the Duchess of Windsor dismissing the Duke (‘David, you’re not needed − go and buy some brushes or something’), Dolly Rothschild’s iron bed (‘like a school or hospital bedstead’), Harry Hyams’ reluctance to sign cheques (‘It’s like spilling my own blood!’), John Fowler in a tantrum yelling at the Duchess of Cornwall (she was a girl assistant at the time, not a client), Imogen being summoned to Howletts because ‘a young Siberian tiger, who had been in bed with Aspinall and his wife, had ripped down the silk hangings on the inside of their canopy bed.’

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Sir John Soane's Greatest Treasure describes one of the most important antiquities ever found in Egypt – the beautiful calcite sarcophagus of the pharaoh Seti I. Re-discovered in 1817 in the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings by the flamboyant explorer Giovanni Belzoni, the sarcophagus now resides in Sir John Soane's Museum in London's Lincoln's Inn Fields. Leading Egyptologist John H. Taylor outlines the life of Seti I, the background to the creation of the sarcophagus, the excitement surrounding its re-discovery and the fascinating story of its journey to London and its acquisition by Sir John Soane. At the heart of the book is a fully illustrated interpretation of the complex imagery and hieroglyphic inscriptions which cover the delicately carved surfaces of the sarcophagus. The book also includes an essay by Helen Dorey on the celebrations held at the Museum to welcome the arrival of the sarcophagus of Seti I in 1825. Sir John Soane's Greatest Treasure is published to mark the 200th anniversary of the re-discovery of the sarcophagus in 1817, and to accompany a major exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum, opening in October 2017.

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Isabel and Julian Bannerman have been described as ‘mavericks in the grand manner, touched by genius’ (Min Hogg, World of Interiors) and ‘the Bonnie and Clyde of garden design’ (Ruth Guilding, The Bible of British Taste). Their approach to design, while rooted in history and the classical tradition, is fresh, eclectic and surprising. Designers to the highest in the land, they have made gardens for the Prince of Wales at Highgrove, Lord Rothschild at Waddesdon Manor, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk at Arundel Castle in Sussex, John Paul Getty II at Wormsley in Buckinghamshire, the great walled garden at Houghton, home of the Marquess of Cholmondeley, and they designed the British 9/11 Memorial Garden in New York. ‘Their work of grand architectural gestures, of mock ruins and oaken temples has made them famous. But it is the houses and gardens they have made for themselves that … eclipse any of these aristocratic delights’ (Mary Keen, Daily Telegraph). Their garden at Hanham Court near Bath was acclaimed by Gardens Illustrated as the top garden of 2009, ahead of Sissinghurst. When they moved from Hanham it was to the fairytale castle of Trematon overlooking Plymouth Sound, where they have created yet another magical garden. Landscape of Dreams celebrates, in the Bannerman’s inimitable, evocative, humorous and highly personal style, the imaginative and practical process of designing, making and planting all of these gardens, and many more.

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How to grow and harvest an abundant supply of edible ingredients from your garden

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‘To see a meadow in bloom is a great delight – it’s alive and teeming with life, mysterious, dynamic . . .’ So Christopher Lloyd began his much-admired instructive and celebratory account of meadows, first published in 2004. Few people knew more about meadow gardening than Lloyd, who spent much of his long life developing the flowering tapestries in his garden at Great Dixter, creating scenes of great beauty and a place of pilgrimage for lovers of wildflowers and wildlife. In Meadows he imparted that lifetime’s learning, exploring the development and management of meadow areas, explaining how to establish a meadow in a garden setting, describing the hundreds of beautiful grasses, bulbs and perennials and annuals that thrive in different meadow conditions and detailing how to grow them. Lloyd's classic text remains at the heart of this new book, which also includes – as well as much stunning new photography – an extensive introduction by Fergus Garrett, Lloyd's head gardener.

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Almost all the books that have been published on plant hunting focus on the so-called ‘golden age’ that ended with the death of Frank Kingdon Ward in 1958. One might be forgiven for thinking that plant hunting itself came to an end in 1958. On the contrary, there have been more new plant introductions in the past thirty years than ever before. This book tells the stories of the modern-day plant hunters – such pioneering adventurers as Mikinori Ogisu, Dan Hinkley, Roy Lancaster, Ed de Vogel, Lin Yu-Lin, Michael Wickenden and Claire Scobie. The author also examines the search for medicinal plants and the work of scientific institutions, both of which have been largely ignored, and considers such developments as the effect of habitat destruction on plant loss and plant diversity.

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Do you remember those unexpected, gloriously lazy days of childhood, where time seemed to stretch out forever? Zoë Lake is passionate about making such days happen for today's children. Zoë loves creating something out of nothing and planning mini adventures with her persistently dancing daughter - maybe building a mighty fort, getting artistic with a camera or paintbrush, or perhaps cooking up tasty treats for tea. In Adventures at Home she shares 40 brilliant ways to fill your family's days with fun, without spending much money or leaving your home, by engaging with nature and your immediate environment. All you need is a bit of time and imagination to create memorable moments together – indoors and out – that will stay with you for a lifetime.

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Virginia Woolf, figurehead of the Bloomsbury Group and an innovative writer whose experimental style and lyrical prose ensured her position as one of the most influential of modern novelists, was also firmly anchored in the reality of the houses she lived in and those she visited regularly. Detailed and evocative accounts appear in her letters and diaries, as well as in her fiction, where they appear as backdrops or provide direct inspiration. Hilary Macaskill examines the houses that meant the most to Woolf, including: 22 Hyde Park Gate, London – where Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 Talland House, St Ives, Cornwall – the summer home of Virginia’s family until 1895 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London – the birthplace of the Bloomsbury Group – Virginia lived here from 1904 to 1912 Hogarth House, Richmond, London – where the newly married Woolfs set up home and founded the Hogarth Press Asheham House, East Sussex – the summer home of the Woolfs, 1912-1919 52 Tavistock Square, London – a return to Bloomsbury, the heart of London Monk’s House, Rodmell, East Sussex – where Virginia lived from 1919 until her death in 1941

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In Setting the Scene leading garden designer George Carter describes his own work over the past thirty years and puts it in the context of the teachings of the great eighteenth-century landscaper Humphry Repton. The result is a series of pithy lesson that will be invaluable to any garden designer, or garden owner. Rich in both inspiring ideas and practical advice, Setting the Scene shows how successful gardens are designed and made. Following the pattern set by Repton in his revered Red Books, Carter takes us through the process in meticulous detail, leading us from the initial site plan to the glory of the finished garden, and illustrating each chapter with photographs and plans of gardens from his own portfolio, ranging from small urban gardens to large country estates, the world over.

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In the pieces brought together in Writing Home, Polly Devlin OBE, most bewitching of writers, covers subjects that range over her whole life and thought. She writes about places: about her childhood deep in the countryside of Northern Ireland (where, in the late 1950s, the first electricity poles looked ‘literally out of place’); her sudden transition, at the age of twenty-one, to Swinging Sixties London, where she worked for Vogue and became very much part of the scene (although – ‘it’s like being a provincial at Versailles’), on to New York, back to London, then to the English countryside, and to Paris, Venice, the world over – and always back to Ireland, London and New York. She writes about the people she has known, among them Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Peggy Guggenheim, Diana Vreeland (‘as fantastical as a unicorn’), Jean Shrimpton (‘she looks as though she sleeps in cathedral pews and sucks artichoke hearts for sustenance’), Princess Margaret (who came to dinner and did the washing up, ‘which I gabbled she didn’t need to – she looked at me frostily and the royal hands went back into the Fairy Liquid’). And she writes about the issues that have preoccupied her: about emigration, feminism (‘I grew up in a society where men were fundamental and women were secondary’), reading, writing, collecting, shopping, houses, dogs, rooks, hares, dreams, friendship and the kindness of strangers; about daughters and mothers; and about wishes . . .

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Leading landscape architect Kim Wilkie is revered for his unusual vision and his acute grasp of how people have moulded their environment over the centuries. This updated version of his classic book, Led by the Land, has been expanded to include fresh thoughts on farming and settlement and new projects, both huge and intimate, from the designs for new cities in Oman and England to the Swansea Maggie's Centre, and from plans for London's Natural History Museum grounds to the sculptural setting of a furniture factory in Leamington Spa. Wilkie has taken his genius to many parts of the world - including the United States, Chile, Russia, Transylvania, Italy, the Middle East, the very edge of the Arctic Circle, as well as the British Isles - but to each undertaking he brings the same approach of reverence for the land and the creatures that inhabit it. He does not impose his inspiration on it but interacts with it. He allows the land to lead him. Led by the Land ruminates on our species' place in the environment, the way past masters have fashioned it and the hopes for our future fruitful connections and offers not only a rich account of an unusual talent, but also an optimistic vision for our future.

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Winner of the Inspirational Book of the Year, Garden Media Guild Awards Ambra Edwards and Charlie Hopkinson explore, in words and pictures, the lives, visions and achievements of fourteen very different head gardeners. "Ambra Edwards's fascinating interviews show what diversity there is in British gardens. It's a book about people and how they tick - people who happen to be gardeners." - The Times "An informative and eye-opening delight." - Philippa Stockley, Country Life “The author, well-known for her sparky writing style and broad hinterland of interests, has interviewed 14 head gardeners in search of some answers, teaming up with the highly empathetic and skilled photographer Charlie Hopkinson to produce this visually appealing and revealing book about some remarkable people in horticulture… Nor is it hard to argue with her view that gardeners are undervalued by society, in status and reward. Let’s hope this brilliant book goes some way to redressing that.” - Ursula Buchan, The Garden

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In Freestyle Embroidery on Wool you will learn how to kickstart your creativity and become confident at making your own colourful and expressive designs using appliqué and embroidery on felted wool fabric. Using her own detailed and imaginative embroidery as examples Karin Derland teaches you how to go about creating your own designs using appliqué and embroidery on wool felt. Karin shares plenty of instruction and helpful tips on making colour choices, how to apply ribbons, mirrors and other accessories, making and using cardboard templates for appliqué shapes and how to combine different types of threads and stitches for best effect. Sketches, diagrams and detailed photographs of different types of embroidered pillows, cushions, cases and other items will give you a head start on creating and applying your own designs. The book also offers plenty of inspirational images through Karin's colourful embroidery that draws on both the Swedish and Indian traditions. These can be used as an inspirational library of ideas when creating your own work. How simple or complex a piece becomes is up to you and your own level of experience and personal choice. Although the emphasis is on developing your own expressive embroidery, some step-by-step projects are included to help build confidence before launching out on your own. This is wool appliqué embroidery at its best - free, beautiful and generous. A note on materials: The author recommends using kläde and vadmal, which are both types of Swedish 100% wool fabric of varying weight. They are made from woven fabric that has an even surface and processed so there is no visible weave. A good equivalent in the UK is a felted wool fabric such as Melton wool. Hobby felt containing polyester is not suitable.

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In late seventeenth century London two women, one white, one black, stake everything to prevent a manipulative mogul destroying them. Zenobia, born in poverty, grasps that her only hope of controlling her own life is to capitalise on her looks; Lily, brought to London on a sugar and slave ship as a ‘toy’, educated alongside her mistress but used by her master, lives as a kept woman. As their story weaves and folds through a murky and merciless London, both find themselves pitted against a ruthless man the world knows as John Crace. London's rich but festering possibilities as a rapidly-changing multinational city are breathtakingly painted, and pungent milieux ranging from plague pits to prisons to pastry kitchens – and Pickled Herring Stairs - are vividly brought to life.

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Artist and award-winning writer Philippa Stockley has designed, made and painted since childhood. Years as an impoverished painter made being frugal, ecological, and always recycling second nature. After buying a derelict small house, decorating it on a tight budget was top of the list. Stockley paints, sews, saws, cooks and mends. In Paint & Make she shares how she paints murals, floor coverings, panels and faux-effects, and makes soft furnishings, useful and decorative small shelves, organic polish, and home-made treats. With more than 300 original photos and drawings by the author, this beautiful and practical book shows you how to do the same. Where possible choose natural materials and reject needless plastics, aggressive chemicals, and waste. Making things yourself saves money, gives a unique result, and is satisfying and enriching. Careful use of precious natural resources is something to be proud of. Stockley shares projects from her own home to inspire you to create something unique and special in yours — without breaking the bank.

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Voted ‘The Nation’s Favourite Garden’ in 2019 by garden visitors in conjunction with English Garden magazine and the National Gardens Scheme, featured in the 2022 Channel 5 series on ‘Great British Gardens’, and described by Country Life as a ‘Symphony of colour where flamingos mix with flowers’, the garden at Coton Manor, in Northamptonshire, is a dream and a joy – and the passion of owner and hands-on gardener Susie Pasley-Tyler. In this book, Susie Pasley-Tyler charts how her love of gardening was born at Coton and imparts what she has learned over the past thirty years of developing its many and varied sites, the discoveries that have come to her, the mistakes she has made (and how they were repaired), and above all the sheer delight to be gained from gardening. Andrew Lawson, pre-eminent garden photographer and colour guru, says, ‘Susie Pasley-Tyler’s passion for her garden is infectious. Perhaps there should be a health warning that this book will make you want to follow her example, and think again about your own garden.’ Experienced and novice gardeners alike will be encouraged and enlightened by Susie Pasley-Tyler’s account of being at the helm of one of the finest gardens in England.

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Beginning in the 1960s, John Brookes MBE (1933–2018) revolutionized garden design, with a new design philosophy and methodology that was rooted in the notion that gardens are about the people who live in them. Recognizing the demands of the contemporary lifestyle, he broke with previous labour-intensive garden design traditions and the emphasis on showcasing plants. Instead he promoted using gardens as extensions of the home. He introduced this notion in his 1969 book, A Room Outside, which also contained practical advice on materials, methodology, and planting. His approach was unprecedented and included the then-novel idea that people of all income levels could have designed, fashionable gardens tailored to their needs, low-maintenance, and beautiful. John taught and lectured around the world and, thanks to his energetic writing, teaching and media appearances, he became regarded as the ‘king’ and ‘godfather’ of garden and landscape design. How to Design a Garden is an informative and ultimately practical collection of his thoughts and advice selected from countless writings and lectures given to students, professionals and the public around the world. In addition to his teaching on how to design a garden, the book has two key themes – environmental sustainability and a focus on the local vernacular. They show how far ahead he was of his time and to what a great extent his teaching remains relevant to garden-makers today.

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Whether you are a beginner or more experienced, any stitching project, no matter how simple, can be enhanced by a well-chosen colour palette, however, many people are nervous or even scared of colour. Textile designer Karen Barbé regularly teaches embroidery workshops and knows first-hand the fears and frustrations of beginners - as well as accomplished crafters - when starting a new project. Karen makes choosing and creating colour palettes a fun and enjoyable part of the design process. Colour Confident Stitching is divided into three parts: Understanding Colour; Feeling Colour and Stitching with Colour. The first two sections guide the reader through colour theory as well as choosing and using colour more instinctively. Stitching with Colour includes five stiching projects that will encourage the reader to explore colour and build confidence through exercise and experiment. All colours are referenced to DMC floss colours. Inspirational photographs are accompanied by stitching illustrations and step-by-step photographs for the colour choosing process as well as stitching projects.

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The Sunday Times Gardening Book of the Year 2019 In Scent Magic, a book which is at once romantic and extremely practical, plantswoman, designer and garden-maker extraordinaire Isabel Bannerman immerses the reader in the luscious smells of the fragrant garden through a warmly written account of her year’s gardening; and combines this with an encyclopaedic reference work of the best aromatic plants to grow throughout the seasons. Whether evoking the freshly baked sponge smell emanating from wisteria, describing ‘Stanwell Perpetual’ as "the kind of rose that would taste of apricot and raspberries swirled together", or championing the magic of the Himalayan cowslip, "scented profoundly and deliciously like the dark vault of a Damascus spice merchant’" the glorious poetry of her descriptions is here joined with personal memories and a lifetime’s experience of gardening and plant cultivation.

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Julia Kay’s Portrait Party is an international collaborative project in which artists all over the world make portraits of each other and share them online. After years of exchanging portraits, tips and techniques within the group, in Portrait Revolution these artists are now sharing their art, their words, and their inspiration with everyone who is interested in or would like to get started with portraiture. Here you can find information on using different media, how to handle difficult portrait issues, and more. Portrait Revolution showcases 450 portraits by 200 artists, in a wide variety of media from oil painting to iPad art, watercolour to ballpoint, linocut to mosaic. There are a range of styles from realistic to abstract and interpretations by multiple artists of the same subject.

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A facsimile edition of the ‘little anthology’ of favourite poems compiled and illustrated by Rex Whistler in 1923. This is a personal collection, hand-written and embellished, by a young artist who had recently discovered poetry. Rex Whistler was just eighteen and in his first year at the Slade when he began to compile it, using an ordinary ruled exercise book to keep his handwriting straight. The poems are well known and well loved, the watercolours are enchanting. Every page shows Rex Whistler’s new-found delight in verse of a romantic kind: Keats, Marvell, de la Mare, Emily Dickinson, Shelley, Tennyson, Gray, Edith Sitwell and others. But, though serious about the poems, he could not, being Rex Whistler, deny himself flippancy on a title page, or in a pencilled comment added to Keats’ woebegone knight-at-arms. Whistler made this earliest of all his illustrated books for his own pleasure. It was first published, in an abbreviated edition, in 1981, almost sixty years after Whistler compiled it, and has long been out of print. This splendid new edition, an exact facsimile of the original, is alive with the youthful pleasure that first inspired the brightly coloured fantasies of 1923. A separate booklet includes Laurence Whistler's afterword to the 1981 edition, a new introduction by Hugh and Mirabel Cecil, and a note from the publishers describing the process of producing the facsimile.

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You step out of the back door into the garden. There may be a few birds flitting around, perhaps butterflies or bumblebees on the wing, but often the garden can seem very still. However, if you look beyond the superficial inactivity there is an ecological web of wildlife to explore, to understand and then to encourage more biodiversity. The Science of Garden Biodiversity: The Living Garden shows how data and science can help to dispel myths, such as that wildlife gardens are great for wildlife (and other gardens aren’t), that a garden fit for wildlife must be ‘wild’ and that you must grow native plants. It also provides an understanding of how diverse life can be in gardens and how gardens work. And along the way there are scientific ‘signposts’ to better wildlife gardening. Julian Doberski explains the role of 'small things' - microorganisms and invertebrates - that are fundamental to the ecological functioning of gardens. Learning more about the ecology of a garden helps us understand what makes a garden a refuge for wildlife and how following the science may lead to a more thoughtful and constructive approach to gardening, garden design and garden planting.

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Griselda Kerr has drawn on over 20 years of gardening knowledge and experience to create the book that she wishes she had had access to when, as a complete beginner, she started to revive the “dismal looking” plants in her garden - an indispensable, practical guide to how and when to look after more than 700 garden plants. No coffee table book this, it is designed for constant quick reference, to be used, perhaps as a stand-in for a knowledgeable friend, for advice on specific plants. Look up each plant in a specially formatted index spread across the year and a page reference will take you to a short, clearly written entry on what to do in a particular month - whether to clip, deadhead or divide, cut right down, feed, mulch or leave well alone. Each of these gardening techniques is also explained in a comprehensive glossary The Apprehensive Gardener is an attractive, durable, easy-to-use guide to plant care which will be referred to over and over again and will stand the test of time.

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Dogs have been at the heart of Country Life magazine ever since it was first published in 1897. The very first issue on January 8 featured the Princess of Wales with her borzoi, Alex. The second issue, a week later, went behind the scenes of the Prince of Wales’s kennels. Since then every type, from working dogs to pampered pets and champion pedigrees to mixed breeds have been included. There is no doubt that dogs, whatever shape or size, are at the heart of British country life. Posh Dogs features a selection of canines that have graced the pages of Country Life magazine from those early years to the present day. They have been chosen to select different facets of country life and whether ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ they are all equal in their owner’s eyes. Posh Dogs celebrates dogs in their element amidst the timeless beauty of the British countryside. The dogs of Downton Abbey garnered as many fans as the cast. The dogs featured in Posh Dogs are the real life incarnations of the Earl of Grantham's beloved labrador and all the other dogs of Downton. This is a must-have gift book for all dog lovers.

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Sara Ward has transformed her Victorian terraced house in London into an urban smallholding, 'Hen Corner'. Sara passionately believes that it’s possible to combine the benefits of urban living with some of the qualities associated with the country living dream: spending time with nature, producing and making our own food, sustainability and community, and in Living the Good Life in the City she shares some of the ways she and her family have brought city and country together, and shows that you, too, can make a difference to how you live and the food you eat. Divided into sections covering Make, Grow, Preserve, Keep, and Celebrate, Living the Good Life in the City is packed full of recipes, stories, tips and tricks including baking bread, making your own jam, pasta, sausages and cheese, keeping bees and livestock, preserving, foraging, harvesting and celebrating with food. Make explores our power and responsibilities as consumers and encourages us to start making food from scratch. In Grow – whether in a window box or allotment – Sara shares her experience of how to grow your own ingredients for the family table whilst Preserve is how to process your harvest to enjoy it all year round. In Keep Sara explores options for keeping chickens, bees and larger livestock, sharing the joys and responsibilities that come with that. Celebrate is about marking the highlights of the year with delicious recipes for family and friends. Finally, Inform brings together Sara’s best resources to inspire the reader to bring ideas into fruition.

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User-friendly and highly accessible, this is a practical, fully illustrated and inspiring guide to indoor gardening by self-taught plant enthusiast Jade Murray. Here you will find invaluable tips and advice for choosing, caring for and propagating houseplants. Having limited space is no barrier to indoor gardening. Many of these plants are perfect for small homes and space-saving ideas abound – eg vertical arrangements – whether hanging in a basket, bunched on a shelf, on a window sill or grouped on a ladder. Chapters include: the easiest houseplants to grow for complete beginners (including Chinese Money Plants and Dragon Trees) the best ‘diva’ plants for creating drama and conversation pieces (including String of Dolphins and Elephant Ear) air-purifying plants (from ferns and lilies to the Fiddle Leaf Fig) humidity-loving plants (including the Lipstick Plant and Asparagus Ferns) heat-resistant indoor plants (cacti and succulents) plants to help with pests (including Venus Fly Trap and Trumpet Pitcher) Throughout the book you will find: advice on where to best position plants in the home ideas for how to display them to best advantage, including vertical arrangements tips on soil mix, watering, feeding and trouble-shooting step-by-step photographs for plant propagation an at-a-glance summary of Jade’s ‘golden rules’ for success Jade firmly believes that plants can be restorative and therapeutic – a positive asset in any home or office. Her advice and enthusiasm shine on every page of this book – as do her glorious photographs.

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First published in 1942 (and retailing at 1s 6d) in response to the growing use of factory-made foods and essences, Wild Berries, Fruits, Nuts & Flowers demonstrated how tasty dishes could be made using the wild fruits and flowers of the countryside. Today there is a growing interest in foraging. People have become more connected with nature and are heading into the countryside and collecting edible plants, mushrooms and fruits. This is combined with an increasing desire to eat local seasonal produce in the interests of sustainability. This timely reissue of a classic of its kind is the perfect gift for the modern forager. It features 101 recipes for using wild berries, fruits, nuts, flowers, mushrooms and seaweed. Nothing is known about the original author, but this edition has a foreword by Barbara Segall, who suggested republishing this book.

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"A story of social change and the evolution of a neighbourhood, full of human interest and the richness and sadness of the passing of time – I loved the irrepressible character who combined the skills of barrister, chef and advertising genius, and the poor first owner with her aesthetic aspirations and her artwork – the kind of history we imagine for our houses (but not so fully), assembled from small relics and suggestions." - Margaret Drabble In a vivid blend of history and fiction, Clare Hastings tells the story of a house in London’s Little Chelsea – the house in which she lives – and its inhabitants, from 1873, when it was ‘topped out’, to the 1930s. Detailed in the census records and other sources, these very real residents – ranging from bodice-makers by way of booksellers (and a bigamist) to that glamorous, though unemployed, Irish barrister – are all now long gone, but their footsteps are etched into the floorboards at Finborough Road, and into the imagination of the author. In these pages, Clare Hastings’s warmth, humour and compelling storytelling bring them back to life.

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From back-of-an-envelope list to flower-filled paradise - Brilliant and Wild: A Garden from Scratch in a Year gives even the most inexperienced gardener the chance to create a beautiful and wildlife-friendly outdoor space - from nothing - in just twelve months. Award-winning photographer, Jason Ingram, followed the author over the course of a year, as she created the garden shown in the book for her sister. This highly practical book provides new gardeners with step-by-step instructions on how to create a low-maintenance, wildlife-friendly perennial garden that will bloom within months and be fully established within a year.

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Thomas Hennell (1903–45) said his aim was to ‘surprise his subject’ – to capture the transient quality of the moment. In watercolour he found his perfect medium, producing work which was, as his fellow artist Edward Bawden said, ‘fully expressive and technically perfect’. During an idyllic childhood in rural Kent Hennell discovered his love of the English countryside. He explored its fields, farms and woods, and later, travelling on a rusty old bicycle, developed an appreciation of England’s traditions and crafts. Much of his work records the countryside in a state of change, imbuing his sense of loss with poetic intensity. In the early 1930s, Hennell suffered a severe breakdown and later described the three years he spent in mental hospitals in his memoir The Witnesses (1938), an astonishing document in a period when stigma still attached to mental illness. Hennell’s remarkable talent for friendship survived his years of mental turmoil. Jessica Kilburn’s new biography brings Hennell the man vividly to life through extracts from his letters to friends and personal accounts by people who knew him. As this richly illustrated book shows, the artist’s final years were exceptionally productive. In 1943 Hennell was appointed an official war artist, yielding commissions in Iceland and northern Europe. After the pastoral evocations of inter-war England, his portrayal of war’s brutality is shocking: devastated French towns, emaciated prisoners of war. At the war’s end, Hennell received a final posting to the Far East. Tragically, he was caught up in the struggle for independence in Java and in late October 1945 disappeared in circumstances which Jessica Kilburn recreates more fully than in any previous account. Thomas Hennell was born into a remarkable generation of English artists that included Eric Ravilious, John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Barbara Hepworth. His peers regarded him as one of their finest creative talents; Jessica Kilburn’s sensitive and deeply researched new biography restores this unjustly neglected artist to his rightful place in the history of twentieth-century English art.

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The Lindsays of Balcarres began with the rediscovery of some dusty photograph albums at the home of the author’s late father in Fife. The wealth of images within, unexplored for over eighty years, provided the perfect way to present the fascinating untold stories of the people who had been brought up at Balcarres. The Lindsay family, which traces its roots back to the time of Charlemagne, almost lost everything after siding with the Stuarts for two hundred years, but fortunate marriages, colonial endeavours and the industrial revolution enabled them to create a new fortune and in 1848 successfully reclaim their position as the Premier Earls of Scotland. This renewal coincided with the birth of photography in the 1840s, which encouraged the family to capture moments of their leisure pursuits and other enthusiasms and the part they played in the events of their time. The collection also serves as a social history, recording the rapidly changing industries they were involved in and the relationships with their staff on which their way of life depended. The reader will encounter a gallery of colourful characters, including Elizabeth Lindsay, who married the 3rd Earl of Hardwicke in 1782 and became Vicereine of Ireland; her great-nephew, Robert, who joined the Guards at the outbreak of the Crimean War and carried the Queen’s Colours to the heights of Alma, earning him the first of two citations for the Victoria Cross; and his brother-in-law, Alexander, the 25th Earl of Crawford and his polymath son Ludovic, who together rebuilt the family library, Bibliotheca Lindesiana, into one of the world’s finest. Some of the earliest daguerreotypes in the family archive point to the enduring affinity that would develop between photography and the country house. It was the perfect medium for a family so deeply involved in both fine art and the latest technology. Ludovic Lindsay’s painstaking restoration of these remarkable family photographs and archival research mean that a chronicle of his forebears’ lives, told through over three hundred hitherto unpublished images, is for the first time possible.

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Rebecca John was born into a family of painters, the most famous among them being her grandfather, Augustus John, and her great-aunt, Gwen John. And the last thing she wanted was to become a painter herself. So how did this happen? In Thinking the Plant she traces the path that led to her beautiful botanical watercolours. She takes us through her childhood – the cottage in the Cotswolds ‘where I first became intensely aware of nature in its wild state’, her grandfather’s home at Fryern Court in Hampshire and her parents’ London house, both of them forever associated in her mind with ‘growing things’; the Fine Jewellery course where ‘I learned to draw – and to concentrate on things close up’, her days as a picture researcher and her growing delight in botanical paintings. Rebecca John was in her thirties when she began to ‘make tentative pencil studies of flowering plants’. In 1994 she enrolled for the new Botanical Painting course at the Chelsea Physic Garden. Soon after, she began to spend more time at her mother's cottage in Wales where she could work close to nature. She achieved recognition as an artist when she was in her 50s. Drawing on contemporary diary entries and notes Thinking the Plant is a unique record, illustrated with Rebeccca John's exquisite watercolours.

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Dachshunds are everywhere. Walk down any fashionable metropolitan street today and you will be tripping over little sausages. They are the dog du jour: compact enough for city living yet feisty enough for a good country walk; cute but clever and independent. Advertising campaigns, aprons, Christmas decorations, Instagram accounts from Canada to Japan to Australia are all peppered with them. They have a universal appeal and come in two official sizes: standard (between 7 kg and 14.5 kg) and miniature (under 5 kg), with lots of 'unofficials' in between; three types of coat: smooth, long-haired and wire-haired; and myriad variations of colouring. By the writer's reckoning there are more than 150 varieties that will pass muster with the UK Kennel Club. In this book, Caroline Donald shares her experience of life with a dachshund: what to look for and what to avoid, how to train and how to look after them. Included too are reports from dachsy homes: from Crusoe the Celebrity Dachshund in Canada (3m Facebook followers, 800k on Instagram), River the Mini Dachshund on the Gold Coast in Australia (139k followers on Instagram), to the Dixter dachshunds; Greta the puppy belonging to landscape designer Catherine Fitzgerald, her husband the actor Dominic West and family and Willow, the elegant long-haired English cream belonging to Claire Waight Keller, artistic director of Givenchy and designer of Meghan's wedding dress. There are also stories of artists' dachshunds, including Picasso's Lump, Andy Warhol's Archie and Amos and David Hockney's Stanley and Boodgie; and royal dachshunds (Queen Victoria's, the Kaiser's, Princess Margaret's). New to the breed or old hand, there’s more than a titbit or two to get your teeth into.

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Improbable Pioneers follows the lives of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford (1766-1839), and Georgina Gordon (1781-1853), from their very different childhoods. In the course of their unlikely marriage they became closely involved with the scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment, the wonders of Romantic art and poetry and the key figures of both worlds. The two of them set out to explore the expanding worlds of both science and art, becoming improbable pioneers in politics, art and architecture, agriculture, botany and horticulture. Beyond this, Georgina shared her love for the places and people of the Highlands not only with her husband but with a young artist, Edwin Landseer, whose images of the Highland landscape are some of the most popular paintings of British art. Landseer became a central figure in the lives of the Bedfords. He is also at the centre of an enduring mystery: was he the Duchess’s lover – and the father of one of her children? This book not only follows the public and private lives of the Duke and Duchess, it also sheds light on the historic events of the time and captures the sheer excitement of the new discoveries of the Romantic age.

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In 2013 designer and illustrator Michelle Mason co-founded Mason & Painter, a vintage emporium on Columbia Road, in east London, a street famed for its Sunday flower market. Michelle’s inspiration for Flower Market: Botanical Style at Home is the wide variety of seasonal plants and flowers available right outside her shop. Buying locally and in tune with the seasons is at the heart of her philosophy Using salvage and reclaimed objects, vintage glassware and ceramics as props and backdrops, Flower Market is brimming with texture, pattern and exciting and inspiring ways to group and display flowers, plants and succulents. In Flower Market: Botanical Style at Home Michelle draws on her design experience, playing with shape, colour and composition to create stunning combinations showing how to make the most of fresh flowers and bring botanical style into the home.

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Topiary, knots and parterres come in many guises, from the grand and imposing to the humble and folksy. In this book Caroline Foley − with the aid of diarists, writers, wits, designers, gardeners and garden owners − traces their story through the centuries and across the world. Starting from the topiary of patrician Rome, she moves through the paradise gardens of Islam and the medieval hortus conclusus to the formal parterres of Renaissance Italy, the more elaborate broderies of the royal French gardens, the complicated conceits of the Tudors and the geometry of the Dutch school. She takes a wry look at the eighteenth century, when many fine formal gardens were scrapped in favour of the English landscape movement (which, in fact, was no less artificial). In the nineteenth century there was a revival of parterres filled with tender bedding plants. Green architecture returned with the Arts and Crafts movement, and the twentieth century saw a joyful resurgence of the topiary peacock and other such conceits, the arrival of the Japanese minimalist school, the cult of the venerable sagging hedge, cloud pruning and the emergence of the cool crisp lines of modernism. German perennial planting, juxtaposed with sharply cut linear hedges, has provided a clever solution to the modern requirements of high style, low maintenance and attention to the environment and to labour costs. Of late a new type of formality has emerged among designers and landscape architects, involving wild-looking prairie planting set off by large-scale sculptural topiary. As Caroline Foley points out, ‘Serious or frivolous . . . topiary always has character and presence. While wonderfully impressive when it takes the form of an immaculate battlemented bastion, it has poetry and possibly even greater charm when it is overblown and blowsy with age. Either way, it will always be a win-win proposition.’

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Woburn Abbey: The Park and Gardens tells a fascinating story that illuminates both the history of English landscaping and the highs and lows of an aristocratic family that has been at the centre of British life for more than four centuries. Drawing on the enormous quantity of material available in the Woburn archives – as well as historic images preserved in the Abbey itself, and stunning newly commissioned photographs – landscape designer and historian Keir Davidson shows how the park and gardens developed, following the individual tastes of the owners as well as wider trends in gardening and landscaping. The Russell family has been in possession of Woburn Abbey since 1547, when Henry VIII gave the former monastery to John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford. The ambitions (and passions) of more than one duke have caused financial embarrassment from time to time, but Woburn has survived impulses to sell and periodic neglect. The 5th Duke, following the fashion set at Versailles by Marie-Antoinette, built a Chinese-style dairy where ladies could play at being dairymaids. In 1810 the 6th Duke commissioned Humphry Repton to create a ‘Menagerie’ for exotic birds; by the end of the century the collection had expanded to include bison, wallabies and wild horses (setting a precedent for today’s Safari Park). These animals had to be cleared from the airstrip created in 1928 by Mary, the ‘Flying Duchess’, for take-off and landing on her record-breaking flights. Over the centuries many gardens have been built at Woburn, and on the Russell estates in London and around the country, for successive dukes and duchesses. Almost all of the important figures in English landscaping – from Isaac de Caus to George London and Henry Wise, Charles Bridgeman and Humphry Repton – worked for the family at one time or another. In our own day, a ten-year programme of restoration of Repton’s Pleasure Gardens initiated by the present Duchess is under way. When this is finished, in 2018, the result will be one of the most complete Repton pleasure grounds anywhere in the world. Keir Davidson brings the whole enthralling story to life, engaging the reader with historic gardens that are not simply part of a lost past, but can be experienced in all their glory today.

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