Sissinghurst, An Unfinished History: The Quest to Restore a Working Farm at Vita Sackville-West's Legendary Garden [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Adam Nicolson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2010

A bestselling author's passionate memoir about restoring life to one of the world's greatest gardens

Sissinghurst Castle is a jewel in the English countryside. Its chief attraction is its celebrated garden, designed in the 1930s by the poet Vita Sackville-West, lover of Virginia Woolf. As a boy, Adam Nicolson, Sackville-West's grandson, spent his days romping through Sissinghurst's woods, streams, and fields. In this book, he returns to the place of his bucolic youth and finds that the estate, now operated by Britain's National Trust, has lost something precious. It is still unquestionably a place of calm and beauty but, he asks, where is the working farm, the orchards, the cattle and sheep? Nicolson convinces the Trust to embrace a simple idea: Grow lunch for the two hundred thousand annual visitors.

Sissinghurst is a personal biography of a place and an inspiring story of one man's quest to return a remarkable landscape to its best, most useful purpose. Nicolson is an entertaining and charming writer and this book will capture fans of Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Nicolson, grandson of poet Vita Sackville-West and diplomat Harold Nicolson—best known, perhaps for being Virginia Woolf's lover—grew up in the 1960s at Sissinghurst, the ruined castle where Sackville-West created her renowned gardens in the 1930s. The author's father Nigel gave the estate to the National Trust in 1967, and when Nicholson came back to live there after his father, Nigel, died in 2004, he embarked on a campaign to revive a landscape that had forgotten its past. It's through this lens of love for its past and passion for its future that Nicholson relates the story of his quest, embedding it in a history of Sissinghurst, beginning in its origins in clay, forest, and pastures and the custom of Kent—a unique culture of self-reliant men and women who depended on the land rather than on a lord—following through its transformation into a prison for French prisoners of war in the 18th century and its 20th-century revitalization by Vita and Harold. Nicholson's love of language is equal to his love of the land, and his poetic prose evokes the richness of the landscape he strives to save. (May)
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Review

"In his quest to restore his family home of Sissinghurst to its rightful place as a working farm and productive part of the England's food web, Nicolson creates a flawless narrative of enchantment, a bricolage of impermeable clay, crumbling castles, tucked away wildwoods, civic inertia, medieval history and a haunting childhood, as magical a work of art as his grandmother Vita Sackville-West's white garden."
-Paul Hawken, Author of Blessed Unrest and The Ecology of Commerce

"To see Vita Sackville-West's legendary garden return to life as an edible landscape fills me with hope. Adam Nicolson's determination to restore a working farm in complete harmony with one of the world's most famous and beautiful gardens is faithful not only to the memory of his family but also to the memory of the land itself. Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History has all the elements of a wonderful drama, but ultimately its message about the importance of good stewardship of the land and of nourishing the community prevails. It is clear that like his famous grandmother, Nicolson is a scribe of The Land."
-Alice Waters, Founder of Chez Panisse and Author of The Art of Simple Food and many Chez Panisse cookbooks

"This wise and tender book, unsentimentally devoted to the story of one tiny corner of old England, should touch each one of us who loves the wild magic that is land, landscape and the creatures that live there. On one level Sissinghurst is a charming portrait of an ancient and beautiful house in Kent; on another a poignant and amusing portrait of the English class system at full gallop. Most important, though, it is a clarion call for the preservation of all that is good, sensible and environmentally prudent about the farming ways of old, a cry that will linger for a long, long while."
-Simon Winchester, Author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map that Changed the World, and Krakatoa

Praise from the UK for Sissinghurst

"Unusual, impassioned and lucidly written."
-Sunday Telegraph

"Excellent...A clear-eyed picture."
-Guardian

"A wonderful book."
-Financial Times

"An expert at conveying the 'stuff' of place, [Adam] Nicolson is equally good with people...As Nicolson understands, places tell us about the people who walked them and the dreams they pursued."
-Times Literary Supplement

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1 edition (May 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670021733
• ASIN: B004KAB72Q
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #893,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Look at Sissinghurst, July 3, 2010

By 

Linda Mathieu - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sissinghurst, An Unfinished History: The Quest to Restore a Working Farm at Vita Sackville-West's Legendary Garden (Hardcover)

I bought this book when planning a trip to the Kent area of England with a visit to Sissinghurst on my list. I found it charmingly written and loved the author's stories of his growing up there. I was a little disappointed that not more was written about the famous gardens being unaware of the TV special shown in England on his desire to return to the old way of farming on the grounds outside the gardens. In the end I did learn some about the gardens and what it was like to grow up there and quite a bit about farming and how it is done now. I wish I had read the book before my visit as I would have known what to look for and would have eaten there, and also have visited the nearby church. I think this book is great for someone planning to visit Sissinghurst but if you want a more indepth look at the gardens, you won't find it here.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic writing, August 15, 2010

By 

avidreader (Hartford, ct) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sissinghurst, An Unfinished History: The Quest to Restore a Working Farm at Vita Sackville-West's Legendary Garden (Hardcover)

Ahhh what a pleasure to read..this author's sense of time and place is beautifully wrought. One day I hope to visit Sissinghurst, well known for it's beautiful garden. But this book is about what lies beyond the garden...to the farm that once brought people, crops and animals together in harmony. The author brings about his vision of restoring the farming that was discontinued due to commercial market competition and fertilization methods. The history of his family is not gone over with any detail, just bits here and there which really makes you want to learn more about Vita Sackville-West herself. I love the poetic way that he writes and recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the idea and practice of organic farming and restoration, but more importantly a story about bringing one's dream into fruition.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unfinished history, but finally a good start, November 21, 2010

By 

SusieQ (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sissinghurst, An Unfinished History: The Quest to Restore a Working Farm at Vita Sackville-West's Legendary Garden (Hardcover)

I value Adam Nicolson's thorough description of the efforts he and his family have taken to bring farming back to Sissinghurst, and thereby fold the past into the present - making a working farm and orchards a part of Sissinghurst again in conjunction with the famous garden, which at least to my mind could only add to its lustre. The resistance that Adam encountered to this idea from its conception - the outright rudeness of Sissinghurst's employees (so much for British reserve!), the years it's taken to get the plan going, and the necessity of explaining his reasons over and over to so many people including mocking journalists and other commentators - seems totally ridiculous. The National Trust and the residents and employees of Sissinghurst are extremely lucky that he didn't just throw up his hands and say, the hell with it. (But I don't think the grandson of Vita Sackville-West would ever back down from a challenge.)

I admired the detailed history of Sissinghurst and the Kentish Weald that the author provides, although I must admit these portions of the book are not quite as interesting to me as are his interactions with the National Trust personnel and overcoming the prejudices of the Sissinghurst employees to a working farm close to the gardens, and incorporating the farm's produce into the restaurant's menu. My preference was for those sections of the book that discussed the tenant farmers of V. Sackville-West's and Harold Nicolson's time and beyond, than, say, the section of the book that discussed the residents of Sissinghurst during its Tudor period.

Aside from this, what I think I will also remember about this book is learning about the unhappy life of Nigel Nicolson. The author provides some vignettes of his famous father that were quite surprising to me, as I thought, as most outsiders might from Nigel Nicolson's books and his television appearances, etc. -that his life was quite full and satisfactory. This was not so, unfortunately, and I feel so very sorry that he was never quite able to find a "liveable" middle ground *outside* of his famous parents' lives, and that he suffered deeply from depression. The picture Adam provides of his withdrawn father (an emotional and physical withdrawal that Nigel recognized and regretted, but was seemingly unable to change in himself) is a chilling one. However, it's not presented unsympathetically, which proves his son's generosity and forgiveness. I hope Adam will give us more in a memoir of his father, or participate in a biography, as there appears to be another layer to Nigel's life story which is only touched on here.