Gardens, history and a lot more

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Something to think about

‘A fine book’, Professor Laurie Taylor, Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4.

‘Gilson paints a delicious picture…’, ‘vivid’, Adrian Tinniswood, Daily Telegraph.

'Excellent', 'could prove an inspiration to anyone who wants to affect real change in the world', Tim Richardson, Gardens Illustrated.

'Fascinating', 'truly revelatory', Timothy Mowl, Country Life.

Ok so those words are not about me as such but about the book I wrote published last year by Reaktion Books called Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain.

It’s not only about standard tea roses, garden gnomes nor even privet hedges but is a social history of Britain in the first half of the 20th Century seen through the prism of the suburban garden for which the nation is famed throughout the world.

Seen as symbols of dull middle class conformity they may have been (then and now) but the gardens were actually weapons of renewal for a war weary country, viewed as heralding the possibility of a new egalitarian order.

Radicals such as the Sudell of the title saw access to land and fresh air as the right of all Britons not the privileged few. The debate that ensued was prime-time in a way it has never been seen since, about how we lived and our relationship with the land.

While Sudell and others may have lost the battle (look at London today for proof!) what they did and said hold lessons for us a century later.

That’s what I love about garden and landscape history. It weaves itself like honeysuckle through politics, culture and social history. Whether it's the gardens of Dunroamin’ or the exquisite Renaissance geometry of Villa D’Este there’s narrative to be uncovered, threads of political, economic and people history to follow.

A few years back fleeing a collapsing newspaper industry (more of this in a bit) I went way out of my comfort zone and took an MA in Garden and Landscape History at the Institute of Historical Research in London. Surprising myself I came away with a distinction and the kernel for the above book.

But more importantly, as a storyteller, I understood how deeply ingrained in our psyche landscape is. The negotiation with, or imposition on, nature is an essential part of what makes us human. When we get the balance wrong, as we are doing now, the costs will be felt for generations.

So I want Behind the Privet Hedge to address these issues and more but I want it to take different (garden) paths. I don’t want polemic. There’s enough of that elsewhere.

I will use my four decades of journalist training to tell new stories about land building and people.

So quickly to the boring bit. I’m an award-winning (isn’t everyone in the industry?!) journalist and newspaper editor of almost 40 years experience. I have edited The Scotsman, Belfast Telegraph, Portsmouth News and the Brighton Argus as well as holding senior positions and freelancing for a host of other UK titles. In 2014 I was the Overall Journalist of the Year in Northern Ireland for my leadership of the Telegraph.

The democratic deficit created by the collapse of journalism business models (and the short sightedness of its leaders) is real and happening now and I may touch on it now and again!

I am also an Associate Fellow of the School of Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex but let’s move on.

If anything this newsletter might just give you something to think about, agree or disagree with and maybe a new way of looking at sometimes very old things. I sure the wonks at Substack would call that a weak pitch for your cash.

But I’m going ahead anyway. I hope you will join me behind the privet hedge, up the crazy paving path, through the Betty Uprichard tea roses, past the ever watchful gnomes to a place where we can sit in the shade and have time for thought. Phew I warned myself not to do that but couldn’t resist.

Thanks for getting this far, Michael

PS. I’m actually now working on my next book about an alleged Nazi war criminal who fled to Britain after the Second World War and who I stumbled upon as a callow 22 year-old hack. Nazis and gardens? No link there I suppose. Although after Jonathan Glazer’s 2023 film The Zone of Interest I’m not so sure.

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