Christopher Lloyd

Christopher Lloyd's Garden Flowers is an extensive and opinionated summary of a lifetime's gardening experience. He sets the stage by explaining what perennials are and what their particular advantage is in the garden, a wonderful first glimpse at his design theories. The introduction continues with inspirational, practical, and blunt ("A plant has no business to be dull in company -- same with humans.") advice on planning and planting a garden. After a dig at botanists' penchant for renaming families, he leaps directly into his assessment of Acanthus in the course of his alphabetical journey to Zigadenus. Lloyd touches on large and small genuses, both common and obscure. He describes the height and habit of the plants, garden situations in which they have worked well for him, and any pests or diseases that they are particularly susceptible to. The photos demonstrate the imaginative combinations Lloyd has described and the true versatility of perennials.

All flowering plants, observes the noted horticulturist Christopher Lloyd, have limited blossoming seasons, which are often quite short. And many of the plants with the most beautiful blooms have the dullest or least attractive leaves. Therefore the character of a garden depends to a large degree on foliage plants - everything from trees to grasses - that last throughout the summer, and sometimes throughout th eyear, and that are grown primarily for their foliage.

Christopher Lloyd's clematis nursery at Great Dixter is justly famous. Here in a new edition of the book first published a decade ago he describes his experience.

This new edition of Lucy Wooding's Henry VIII is fully revised and updated to provide an insightful and original portrait of one of England's most unforgettable monarchs and the many paradoxes of his character and reign. Henry was a Renaissance prince whose Court dazzled with artistic display, yet he was also a savage adversary, who ruthlessly crushed all those who opposed him. Five centuries after his reign, he continues to fascinate, always evading easy characterization. Wooding locates Henry VIII firmly in the context of the English Renaissance and the fierce currents of religious change that characterized the early Reformation, as well as exploring the historiographical debates that have surrounded him and his reign. This new edition takes into account significant advances in recent research, particularly following the five hundredth anniversary of his accession in 2009, to put forward a distinctive interpretation of Henry's personality and remarkable style of kingship. It gives a fresh portrayal of Henry VIII, cutting away the misleading mythology that surrounds him in order to provide a vivid account of this passionate, wilful, intelligent and destructive king.