{"id":70326,"date":"2017-10-29T13:30:20","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T06:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/life-in-the-garden-by-penelope-lively-review-green-fingers-silver-trowels\/"},"modified":"2017-10-29T14:04:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T07:04:47","slug":"life-in-the-garden-by-penelope-lively-review-green-fingers-silver-trowels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/life-in-the-garden-by-penelope-lively-review-green-fingers-silver-trowels\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively review \u2013 green fingers, silver trowels"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nDespite its strong focus on gardeners from the upper classes, Penelope Lively\u2019s horticultural memoir is a book to treasureWhen a really good book comes along, one of the things it does is to draw attention to the absence of such a book on your shelves before it arrived. I hadn\u2019t really thought much about the state of the once venerable art of garden writing until I read Life in the Garden. It brought home to me how few recent gardening books come anywhere close to its style, intelligence\u00a0and depth. I enjoyed Dan Pearson\u2019s A Year in the Garden; Alys Fowler is always worth reading; I couldn\u2019t care less about Monty Don\u2019s gormless retrievers, but he does write stylish if faintly patrician prose when describing Longmeadow. Other than these worthy exceptions, garden books have become, as Penelope Lively herself points out, nothing more than \u201cvehicles for lavish photography\u201d.Lively, now in her 80s, is the only author to have won both the Booker, for Moon Tiger in 1987, and the Carnegie medal for children\u2019s fiction, for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe in 1973. She has continued to write since her string of hits in the 1980s; 2009\u2019s Family Album was a memorably sharp novel of middle-class manners and last year\u2019s collection of short stories, The Purple Swamp Hen, garnered excellent reviews. In Life in the Garden, she has given us something quite new; rich and unusual, this is a book to treasure, as beautiful on the inside as its gorgeous cover and endpapers (all by the celebrated illustrator Katie Scott). Continue reading…
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\nSource : theguardian.com
\nRead more…Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively review \u2013 green fingers, silver trowels<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite its strong focus on gardeners from the upper classes, Penelope Lively\u2019s horticultural memoir is...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-property-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75ss1-iii","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":90953,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/life-in-the-garden-by-penelope-lively-review-a-rewarding-evocative-ramble\/","url_meta":{"origin":70326,"position":0},"title":"Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively review \u2013 a rewarding, evocative ramble","date":"June 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\r In this vivid meditation, the novelist traces her love of gardens from childhood in Egypt to London and through art and literaturePenelope Lively modestly admits she is \u201conly the most amateur gardener\u201d. And yet this delightful and very personal paean to gardens amply demonstrates her abiding love of\u00a0tending them.From\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":124270,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/poem-of-the-week-the-garden-by-nicholas-grimald\/","url_meta":{"origin":70326,"position":1},"title":"Poem of the week: The Garden by Nicholas Grimald","date":"January 17, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"\r A gentle sermon from a \u2018blissful plot\u2019 on the therapeutic joys to be found among its plants and flowers The GardenThe issue of great Jove, draw near, you Muses nine!Help us to praise the blissful plot of garden ground so fine.The garden gives good food and aid for leech\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":98780,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/secret-behind-the-new-walls\/","url_meta":{"origin":70326,"position":2},"title":"Secret behind the new walls","date":"September 29, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\r For Penelope Barr-Sellers and husband Toby Sellers, there was no question as to whether they would bring son Leo, now 13, back from London in time to start school in Auckland.\"We'd both loved our time over there and the fantastic...\r \r Source : nzherald.co.nz\/Property\r Read more...Secret behind the new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":123346,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/five-inspiring-books-about-gardens\/","url_meta":{"origin":70326,"position":3},"title":"Five inspiring books about gardens","date":"November 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Here\u2019s how to turn over a new leafWritten by the \u201cplantfluencer\u201d and rosy-cheeked prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Sarah Raven, this book is a playful invitation to garden on a truly small scale. \u201cIt is a calling out against what is small-garden dysmorphia, where gardens with lawns, sheds and even greenhouses are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":149686,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/better-to-work-with-a-garden-than-against-it-letters\/","url_meta":{"origin":70326,"position":4},"title":"Better to work with a garden than against it | Letters","date":"March 3, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Readers offer advice after Adrian Chiles shared his frustrations about getting his garden ready for springI sympathise with Adrian Chiles\u2019s struggles in the garden (What I have learned in my filthy, bloody, sisyphean quest to tame my garden, 26 February). The basic problem is that the classic English garden\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133738,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/the-danish-garden-slowly-comes-back-to-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":70326,"position":5},"title":"The Danish garden slowly comes back to life","date":"January 15, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Our Danish garden is busy with birds as we gather firewood. Midwinter at the Danish summerhouse means chopping wood and feeding birds. There may be binoculars. There will be pastries, books and walks.The wood is this year\u2019s cutting for the next winters\u2019 fires. The feeders give us joy, seeing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}