Eliza Acton ‘The Real Mrs Beeton’

Elizabeth “Eliza” Acton (17 April 1799 – 13 February 1859) was an English cook and poet, who produced one of the country’s first cookbooks aimed at the domestic reader, rather than professional cooks or chefs: Modern Cookery for Private Families. This introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times with each recipe. It included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts. Isabella Beeton’s bestselling Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861) was closely modelled on it. Delia Smith is quoted as calling Acton “the best writer of recipes in the English language”. Modern Cookery long survived her, remaining in print until 1914.

Life

Acton was born in Battle, Sussex in 1799, the eldest of the five children of Elizabeth Mercer and John Acton, a brewer. The family returned to Suffolk shortly after her birth, and Eliza was raised there. When she was seventeen, she co-founded a girls’ school with a Miss Nicholson in Claydon, near Ipswich. This remained open for four years, until Eliza Acton left due to poor health. She spent some time in France after this.

After returning to England, her first collection of Poems was published in 1826, mostly on the theme of unrequited love. The book was moderately successful, and was reprinted a few weeks after its first issue. She subsequently wrote some standalone, longer poems, including “The Chronicles of Castel Framlingham”, which was printed in the Sudbury Chronicle in 1838, and “The Voice of the North”, which was written in 1842 on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s first visit to Scotland.

Acton’s best-known work Modern Cookery for Private Families was first published in 1845. It was the result of several years of research, undertaken at the prompting of Longman, who had published her Poems. Many of the recipes came from her friends. Modern Cookery quickly became a very popular work, appearing in several editions and remaining a standard cookery book throughout the rest of the century. The book was immensely influential, establishing the format for modern cookbook writing, by listing the exact ingredients required for each recipe, the time needed, and potential problems that might arise. This was a novel departure from previous cookbooks, which were less precise.

Shortly after the publication of Modern Cookery, Acton relocated to Hampstead, London, where she worked on her next and final book, The English Bread Book (1857). Alongside recipes, this contained a scholarly history of bread-making, which included Acton’s strong opinions on some contemporary baking practices. This work was significantly less successful than Modern Cookery, and was only reprinted in 1990.

Acton, who suffered from poor health for much of her life, died in 1859, at the age of 59. She was buried in Hampstead.

Works

•                Poems (London: Longmans, 1826)

•                “The Chronicles of Castel Framlingham” (poem, was in the movie Sudbury Chronicle, 1838)

•                “The Voice of the North” (commemorative poem about the first visit of Queen Victoria to Scotland in 1842)

•                Modern Cookery for Private Families (London: Longmans, 1845)

The English Bread Book (1857)

 

Jane Grigson

Various personalities…Mandatory Credit: Photo by Martyn Goddard/REX (761533m) Jane and Sophie Grigson Various personalities

Jane Grigson (née McIntire, 13 March 1928 – 12 March 1990) was an English cookery writer.

She was a long-time food columnist with The Observer, and won awards for her cookery books including Vegetable Book (1978) and Fruit Book (1982). She was made Cookery Writer of the Year in 1977 for her book English Food.

Life and writings

Heather Jane Mabel McIntire (later Jane Grigson) was born in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, and brought up in Sunderland, County Durham, where her father George Shipley McIntire was Town Clerk. She attended Sunderland Church High School and Casterton School, Casterton, Westmorland, then went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English. On graduating from university in 1949, she spent three months in Florence, Italy. After working in art galleries, she went into publishing, joining George Rainbird’s company in 1953 as a picture researcher for the encyclopedic People, Places, Things and Ideas. The editor of the book was poet and critic Geoffrey Grigson (1905–85), whom she later married, becoming his third wife. Grigson subsequently worked as a translator, winning the John Florio prize in 1966 for her work with Father Kenelm Foster on the translation of Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments (1966).

Grigson’s growing interest in food and cooking led to the writing of her first book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967), which was accorded the unusual honour for an English food writer of being translated into French. Elizabeth David read the book and was impressed by it, and recommended Grigson as a food columnist for The Observer, for whom she wrote a column from 1968 until her death in 1990. Her long-lasting association with the newspaper produced some of her most successful books, such as Good Things (1971) and Food With the Famous (1979). In 1973, Fish Cookery was published, followed by The Mushroom Feast (1975), a collection of recipes for cultivated, woodland, field and dried mushrooms. She received both the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award and the André Simon Memorial Fund Book Award for her Vegetable Book (1978) and for her Fruit Book (1982), and was voted Cookery Writer of the Year in 1977 for English Food.

Grigson died in Broad Town, Wiltshire, on the eve of her 62nd birthday. Her daughter Sophie Grigson (born 1959) is also a cookery writer and broadcaster.

Writing style

In her obituary for The Independent, Alan Davidson wrote:

Jane Grigson left to the English-speaking world a legacy of fine writing on food and cookery for which no exact parallel exists…. She won to herself this wide audience because she was above all a friendly writer… a most companionable presence in the kitchen; often catching the imagination with a deftly chosen fragment of history or poetry, but never failing to explain the “why” as well as the “how” of cookery.

Like her contemporary Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson’s books are known for their witty and sometimes extensive digressions on the history of ingredients and recipes. For example, the introduction to the chapter on pears in her Fruit Book  contains a description of:

poire d’angoisse, which was originally an instrument of torture (a pear-shaped metal contraption was pushed into people’s mouths and then expanded). Poires d’angoisse were called after this abomination, as they were sharp in the mouth too (hay was put into the cooking water in an attempt to soften the flavour). In the 13th century streets of Paris, sellers went round shouting “poires d’angoisse crier haut” which was I suppose a grim reminder of the connection, “Cry loud the pears of anguish”. The phrase “to swallow the pears of anguish” means to suffer humiliations and distress.

She is also frequently opinionated and acerbic in her opinions about foods she does not like. In her Vegetable Book, she says, for example, of the beetroot:

We do not seem to have had much success with the beetroot in this country. Perhaps this is partly the beetroot’s fault. It is not an inspiring vegetable, unless you have a medieval passion for highly coloured food. With all that purple juice bleeding out at the tiniest opportunity, a cook may reasonably feel that beetroot has taken over the kitchen and is far too bossy a vegetable.

Her books also often frequently contain personal recollections of culinary habits in Northumbria, Wiltshire and Touraine.

Legacy

The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) has created the Jane Grigson Award in her honour.

Her personal collection of books on food and cooking forms the core of the Jane Grigson Library, housed at Oxford Brookes University.

It is alleged that it was Grigson who first popularised the idea that if a mussel’s shell does not open during cooking, it is in some way unhealthy, and should not be eaten. However, this is now held to be a misconception, albeit an extremely popular one: after the idea was published in a book of Grigson’s in the 1970s, it was mentioned in 90% of all cookery books by 1990. It is now thought that the opposite is in fact true, and that if a shell remains closed after the cooking process, a mussel has less chance of being “off” than if it opens.

The Jane Grigson Trust was set up in her memory on 3 April 1991, as an educational charity. In March 2015, in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death, the Jane Grigson Trust set up an award for new food writers, the Jane Grigson Trust Award, to be awarded for the first time in March 2016.

Books

•                Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (Michael Joseph, 1967)

•                Good Things (1971)

•                Fish Cookery (1973)

•                English Food (London: Macmillan, 1974; with illustrations by Gillian Zeiner; an anthology of English and Welsh recipes of all periods chosen by Jane Grigson, for which she was voted Cookery Writer of the Year. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1979 (ISBN 0 33326866 0), and later editions were issued by Ebury Press with a foreword by Sophie Grigson)

•                The Mushroom Feast: A Celebration of All Edible Fungi With Over 250 Recipes (1975)

•                Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book (1978) (for which she received the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award)

•                Food with the Famous (1979; Grub Street, 1991; vignettes of 11 historical figures – John Evelyn, Jane Austen, Marcel Proust and others – with recipes for their favourite dishes)

•                Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book (1982) (awarded the André Simon Memorial Fund Book Award)

Other books

•                The Best of Jane Grigson’s British Cookery

•                The Best of Jane Grigson’s Desserts

•                The Best of Jane Grigson’s Soups

•                Book of European Cooking, Jane Grigson’s

•                Cooking Spinach

•                Cooking with Exotic Fruits and Vegetables

•                Dishes From the Mediterranean

•                The Elle Cookbook

•                The Enjoyment of Food (an anthology)

•                The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy

•                In Celebration of Chives

•                The International Wine and Food Society’s Guide to Fish Cookery

•                The Observer Guide to British Cookery

•                The Observer Guide to European Cookery

•                The World Atlas of Food

•                Preface to An English Flavour by Patricia Hegarty

 

India : The Red Fort Delhi, A Bucket List Must …

The Red Fort was the residence of the Mughal emperor of India for nearly 200 years, until 1857. It is located in the centre of Delhi and houses a number of museums. In addition to accommodating the emperors and their households, it was the ceremonial and political centre of Mughal government and the setting for events critically impacting the region.

The Red Fort, constructed by Shah Jahan, was built as the fortified palace of Shahjahanabad, capital of the fifth Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, in 1648. Named for its massive enclosing walls of red sandstone, it is adjacent to the older Salimgarh Fort, built by Islam Shah Suri in 1546. The imperial apartments consist of a row of pavilions, connected by a water channel known as the Stream of Paradise (Nahr-i-Behisht). The Red Fort is considered to represent the zenith of Mughal creativity under Shah Jahan. Although the palace was planned according to Islamic prototypes, each pavilion contains architectural elements typical of Mughal buildings, reflecting a fusion of Timurid, Persian and Hindu traditions. The Red Fort’s innovative architectural style, including its garden design, influenced later buildings and gardens in Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab, Kashmir, Braj, Rohilkhand and elsewhere. With the Salimgarh Fort, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007 as part of the Red Fort Complex.

The Red Fort is an iconic symbol of India. On the Independence Day of India (15 August), the Prime Minister of India hoists the national flag at the main gate of the fort and delivers a nationally-broadcast speech from its ramparts.

Kirstenbosch : Cape Town, From An Almond Hedge Was Born This Stunning And Internationally Famous Botanical Garden ….

 

Kirstenbosch is a famous botanical garden nestled at the foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town. (It is on the eastern slopes of the mountain, not on the northern side normally depicted in the standard tourist snapshots). (Kirstenbosch should not be confused with the similarly named suburb of Kirstenhof which lies some 10 km to the south.)

The garden is one of nine National Botanical Gardens covering five of South Africa’s six different biomes. When Kirstenbosch, the most famous of the gardens, was founded in 1913 to preserve the country’s unique flora, it was the first botanical garden in the world with this ethos. Furthermore, what makes the Gardens so famous worldwide is that (with minor exceptions) only indigenous plants are cultivated.

The garden includes a large conservatory (The Botanical Society Conservatory) exhibiting plants from a number of different regions, including savanna, fynbos, karoo and others. Outdoors, the focus moves to plants native to the Cape region, highlighted by the spectacular collections of proteas. Kirstenbosch enjoys great popularity with residents and visitors. From the gardens several trails lead off along and up the mountain slopes and these are much used by walkers and mountaineers. One of the trails, up a ravine called Skeleton Gorge, is an easy and popular route to the summit of Table Mountain. This route is also known as Smuts’ Track after Prime Minister Jan Smuts who used this route regularly. On the slopes above the cultivated parts of the garden a contour path leads through forests to Constantia Nek to the south. The same contour path can be followed to the north for many kilometres and it will take the hiker past the Rhodes Memorial to the slopes of Devil’s Peak and beyond.

Kirstenbosch regularly exhibits Zimbabwean stone sculptures in the gardens. Many of the artists are associated with Chapungu Sculpture Park in Zimbabwe.

In summer, a popular series of outdoor concerts are held in the gardens on Sunday evenings.

History

In 1660, by order of Jan van Riebeek, a hedge of Wild Almond and brambles was planted to afford some protection to the perimeter of the Dutch colony. Sections of this hedge, named Van Riebeek’s Hedge, still exist in Kirstenbosch. The hedge is a Provincial Heritage Site. The area of the botanical garden was used for the harvesting of timber during this period.

The Kirsten part of the name is believed to be the surname of the manager of the land, J.F. Kirsten, in the 18th century. The bosch part of the name is a Dutch word for ‘forest’ or ‘bush’.

The handover of owenship of the colony to Britain in 1811 wrought changes in the use of the Kirstenbosch area. Two large land grants were made, with a Colonel Bird building a house, planting chestnut trees, and probably establishing a bath (still extant) fed by a natural spring. The Ecksteen family acquired the land in 1823, and it later came into the possession of the Cloete family (a well-known Cape lineage). It was under their stewardship that the area was farmed more formally, being planted with oaks, fruit trees and vineyards.

The land was thereafter purchased by Cecil John Rhodes in 1895. After this point, the area became run-down, with large groups of pigs feeding on the acorns and wallowing in the pools. The famous Camphor Avenue was planted in 1898.

The land now occupied by the Kirstenbosch Gardens was bequeathed to the Nation by Cecil Rhodes, who died in 1902.

The history of the area as a botanical garden has its origin in Henry Harold Pearson, a botanist from Cambridge University who came to the Cape Colony in 1903 to take up a position as professor in the newly created Chair of Botany at the South African College (the predecessor of today’s University of Cape Town.) In February 1911, Pearson visited the area of Kirstenbosch by cart to assess its suitability as a site for a botanical garden. On 1 July 1913, the area was set aside for this purpose by the government of the Colony, with an annual budget of ₤1,000. There was no money set aside for a salaried director’s position, but Pearson accepted the position without pay. He lived in the gardens in difficult and reduced circumstances.

The task confronting Pearson was formidable. The area was overgrown, populated by wild pigs, overrun with weeds and planted with orchards. Money was tight, and the budget was supplemented by the sale of firewood and acorns. Pearson commenced work in the area of Kirstenbosch known as “The Dell”, planting cycads which are still visible there today.

Pearson died in 1916 from pneumonia. He was buried in his beloved garden, and his epitaph is still there today : “If ye seek his monument, look around”.

As of 1 September 2004, the National Botanical Institute has become the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI).

Chelsea Flower Show

In 2008, the Kirstenbosch exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show won a gold medal for the most creative display and the President’s Cup (a new award by the Royal Horticultural Society president Peter Buckley to his favourite stand). The 2008 exhibit was the 16th designed by David Davidson and Raymond Hudson, which established South Africa “as a front runner in horticulture”. The exhibit was entitled The Heat is On and featured an aloe dichotoma (also known as a quiver tree), which is being studied and monitored as an indicator of climate change. Dead and dying quiver trees were displayed alongside live specimens to illustrate how warmer temperatures have forced the species to migrate southwards. Kirstenbosch has won 29 gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show in 33 appearances.

 

The Chelsea Physic Garden London (Probably the only place legally growing Cannabis in Central London)

The Chelsea Physic Garden was established as the Apothecaries’ Garden in London, England, in 1673. (The word “Physic” here refers to the science of healing.) This physic garden is the second oldest botanical garden in Britain, after the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, which was founded in 1621.

This little gem of a garden is well worth a visit, it is a short walk from Chelsea Bridge and or Victoria Station.

Its rock garden is the oldest English garden devoted to alpine plants. The largest fruiting olive tree in Britain is there, protected by the garden’s heat-trapping high brick walls, along with what is doubtless the world’s northernmost grapefruit growing outdoors. Jealously guarded during the tenure of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, in 1983 the Garden became a registered charity and was opened to the general public for the first time. The garden is a member of the LondonThe Worshipful Society of Apothecaries initially established the garden on a leased site of Sir John Danvers’ well-established garden in Chelsea, London. This house, called Danvers House, adjoined the mansion that had once been the house of Sir Thomas More. Danvers House was pulled down in 1696 to make room for Danvers Street.

In 1713, Dr Hans Sloane purchased from Charles Cheyne the adjacent Manor of Chelsea, about 4 acres (1.6 ha), which he leased in 1722 to the Society of Apothecaries for £5 a year in perpetuity, requiring only that the Garden supply the Royal Society, of which he was a principal, with 50 good herbarium samples per year, up to a total of 2,000 plants.

That initiated the golden age of the Chelsea Physic Garden under the direction of Philip Miller (1722–1770), when it became the world’s most richly stocked botanic garden. Its seed-exchange program was established following a visit in 1682 from Paul Hermann, a Dutch botanist connected with the Hortus Botanicus Leiden and has lasted till the present day. The seed

exchange program’s most notable act may have been the introduction of cotton into the colony of Georgia and more recently, the worldwide spread of the Madagascar Periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus).

Isaac Rand, a member and a fellow of the Royal Society published a condensed catalogue of the Garden in 1730, Index plantarum officinalium, quas ad materiae medicae scientiam promovendam, in horto Chelseiano. Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal (1737–39) was illustrated partly from specimens taken from the Chelsea Physic Garden. Sir Joseph Banks worked with the Head Gardener and Curator, John Fairbairn during the 1780–1814 period. Fairbairn specialized in growing and cultivating plants from around the world.

Parts of this classic garden have been lost to “development” – the river bank during 1874 construction of the Chelsea Embankment on the north bank of the River Thames, and a strip of the garden to allow widening of Royal Hospital Road. What remains is a 3.5 acres (1.4 ha) patch in the heart of London.

The present chairman of the trust which operates the Garden is Sarah Troughton, Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire. Museums of Health & Medicine

People : Monty Don, Gardener, Designer & Artist, From Costume Jewellery to Jewel Garden….

Montagu Denis Wyatt “Monty” Don (born 8 July 1955) is an English television presenter, writer and speaker on horticulture, best known for presenting the BBC television series Gardeners’ World.

Early life

Monty Don was born in Berlin, to British parents, Denis T. K. Don, a career soldier posted in Germany, and Janet Montagu (née Wyatt). Both parents died in the 1980s. Don has a twin sister, an elder brother David, and two other siblings. His twin suffered a broken neck in a car crash, aged 19.

Both his paternal grandmother and grandfather were Scottish, through whom he is descended from the Keiller family of Dundee, inventors of chip marmalade in 1797. Meanwhile, on his maternal side, he is descended from the Wyatts, who were a prominent dynasty of architects.

Don was educated at three independent schools: Quidhampton School in Basingstoke, Hampshire, Bigshotte School in Wokingham, Berkshire, and at Malvern College in Malvern, Worcestershire, a college he hated. He then attended a state comprehensive school, the Vyne School, in Hampshire. He failed his A levels and while studying for re-takes at night school, worked on a building site and a pig farm by day. During his childhood he had become an avid gardener and farmer. He determined to go to Cambridge out of “sheer bloody-mindedness”, attending Magdalene College, where he read English and met his future wife Sarah.

Career

In the 1980s, Don and his wife formed a successful company that made and sold costume jewellery under the name Monty Don Jewellery. The collapse of the company in the early 1990s prompted him to embark on a career in writing and broadcasting. He has written about the rise and collapse of their business in The Jewel Garden, an autobiographical book written with his wife. “We were lambs to the slaughter and we lost everything, […] we lost our house, our business. We sold every stick of furniture we had at Leominster market,” he wrote. He was unemployed from 1991 to 1993.

Don’s first TV work came as the presenter of a gardening segment on breakfast show This Morning. He featured as a guest presenter for the BBC’s Holiday programme. He went on to present several Channel 4 land and gardening series: Don Roaming, Fork to Fork, Real Gardens and Lost Gardens, and wrote a regular weekly gardening column for The Observer between February 1994 and May 2006. Don had never received formal training as a gardener. He commented, “I was – am – an amateur gardener and a professional writer. My only authority came from a lifetime of gardening and a passion amounting to an obsession for my own garden.” He is a keen proponent of organic gardening and the practice of organic techniques, to some extent, features in all of his published work. The organic approach is most prominent in his 2003 book The Complete Gardener.

Don was the main presenter on BBC Two’s Gardeners’ World from 2003 to 2008 succeeding Alan Titchmarsh. He was the first self-taught horticulturist presenter in the show’s 36-year history, stepping down only after suffering a minor stroke. After viewing figures for Gardener’s World fell below two million for the first time in 2009, in January 2010, changes were announced to the programme in an attempt to entice viewers back. In December 2010, it was announced that Don would be returning to the programme as lead presenter for the 2011 series, replacing Toby Buckland. Reaction to the announcement was divided on the programme’s blog. Since March 2011 he has been presenting the programme from his own garden (called Longmeadow) in Herefordshire.

Don featured in the BBC programme and book, Growing out of Trouble, in which several heroin addicts manage a 6-acre (24,000 m²) Herefordshire smallholding in an attempt at rehabilitation. He also presented Around the World in 80 Gardens (BBC Two 27 January – 30 March 2008) and in December 2008, narrated a programme about the cork oak forests of Portugal, for the BBC’s natural history series Natural World. He presented My Dream Farm, a series which helped people learn to become successful smallholders (Channel 4, January 2010) and Mastercrafts, a six-part series for BBC Two, which celebrated six traditional British crafts. He has twice been a panellist on the BBC’s Question Time (February 2009 and March 2010) and his family history was the subject of the fourth programme in the seventh series of the BBC genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? (August 2010). In April 2011 Don presented Italian Gardens, a four-part BBC2 series which was accompanied by the publication of a book.

In late 2008 Don became President of the Soil Association and is a Patron of Bees for Development Trust.

In 2013, Don presented an episode of Great British Garden Revival.

Personal life

Don and Sarah married in 1983 and have three children. The couple lived in Islington, North London while Don pursued postgraduate study at the London School of Economics, worked as a waiter at Joe Allen restaurant in Covent Garden and later as a dustman, and completed two unpublished novels. Meanwhile Sarah trained as a jeweller.

Don has written of his struggle with depression since the age of 25 and Seasonal Affective Disorder. He describes in his memoir “great spans of muddy time” in which there is nothing but depression. He noted “‘Earth heals me better than any medicine”. He has had cognitive behavioural therapy and took Prozac before favouring a lightbox, now a recognised aid for Seasonal Affective Disorder sufferers. He had peritonitis in 2007 and a minor stroke in 2008.

He lives near Ivington, Herefordshire, England, and has lived in Herefordshire for over 20 years.

Plant Hunters : Sir Ghillean Prance, A Remarkable Man, From Eden to Eden ……..

Sir Ghillean Tolmie Prance  FIBiol FRS FLS FRS (born 13 July 1937) is a prominent British botanist and ecologist who has published extensivelyon the taxonomy of families such as Chrysobalanaceae and Lecythidaceae, but drew particular attention in documenting the pollination ecology of Victoria amazonica. Prance is a former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Early life

Prance was born on 13 July 1937 in Brandeston, Suffolk, England.[1] He was educated at Malvern College and Keble College, Oxford. In 1963 he received a D. Phil. in Forest Botany from the Commonwealth Forestry Institute.

Career

Prance worked from 1963 at The New York Botanical Garden, initially as a research assistant and, on his departure in 1988, as Director of the Institute of Economic Botany and Senior Vice-President for Science. Much of his career at the New York Botanical Garden was spent conducting extensive fieldwork in the Amazon region of Brazil. He was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1988 to 1999.

Current work

Since his retirement he has remained very active, notably involving himself with the Eden Project. Prance, a devout Christian, is currently the chair of A Rocha and was president of Christians in Science 2002–08.

He is actively involved on environmental issues, a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust, and a Vice-President of the Nature in Art Trust.

Honours

Prance was knighted in 1995. He has been a Fellow of the Linnean Society since 1961, a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1993 and was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour in 1999.

In 2000 he was made a Commander of the Order of the Southern Cross by the President of Brazil.

Legacy

Two photographic portraits of Prance are held at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

A biography of Prance was written by Clive Langmead.

The standard author abbreviation Prance is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name

Plant Hunters : John Tradescant The Younger, The Real Lord of the Aster….

John Tradescant the Younger (4 August 1608 – 22 April 1662), son of John Tradescant the elder, was a botanist and gardener, born in Meopham, Kent and educated at The King’s School, Canterbury. Unlike his father, who collected via other people bringing back specimens, he went in person to Virginia between 1628-1637 (and possibly two more trips by 1662, though Potter and other authors doubt this) to collect plants. Among the seeds he brought back, to introduce to English gardens were great American trees, like Magnolias, Bald Cypress and Tulip tree, and garden plants such phlox and asters. He also added to the cabinet of curiosities his American acquisitions such as the ceremonial cloak of Chief Powhatan, one of the most important Native American relics. Tradescant Road, off South Lambeth Road in Vauxhall, marks the former boundary of the Tradescant estate, where the collection was kept.

When his father died, he succeeded as head gardener to Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France, making gardens at the Queen’s House, Greenwich, designed by Inigo Jones, from 1638 to 1642, when the queen fled the Civil War. He published the contents of his father’s celebrated collection as Musaeum Tradescantianum — books, coins, weapons, costumes, taxidermy, and other curiosities — dedicating the first edition to the Royal College of Physicians (with whom he was negotiating for the transfer of his botanic garden), and the second edition to the recently restored Charles II. Tradescant bequeathed his library and museum to (or some say it was swindled from him by) Elias Ashmole (1617–1692), whose name it bears as the core of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford where the Tradescant collections remain largely intact.

He was buried beside his father in the churchyard of St-Mary-at-Lambeth which is now established as the Museum of Garden History.

He is the subject of the novel Virgin Earth by Philippa Gregory, sequel to Earthly Joys on his father.

The standard author abbreviation Trad. is applied to species he described.

People : Sir Roy Strong, The Only Living Landscape Architect & Garden Designer To Have 17 Portraits In The National Portrait Gallery…..

Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL (born 23 August 1935) is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He was knighted in 1983.

Biography

Early years

Roy Colin Strong was born in Winchmore Hill, then in Middlesex, and attended nearby Edmonton County School in Edmonton.

He earned a first class honours degree in history at Queen Mary College, University of London. He then earned his Ph.D from the Warburg Institute, University of London and became a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. His passionate interest in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth I was sidelined “while he wrote a thesis on Elizabethan Court Pageantry supervised by the Renaissance scholar, Dame Frances Yates who (he says) restructured and re-formed my thinking.” In 2007 Strong listed his qualifications as DLitt PhD FSS.

Career

National Portrait Gallery

He became assistant keeper of the National Portrait Gallery in 1959, and was its director 1967-73: Sir Roy came to prominence at age 32 when he became the youngest director of the National Portrait Gallery. He set about transforming its conservative image with a series of extrovert shows, including “600 Cecil Beaton portraits 1928-1968.” Dedicated to the culture of the 1960s and 1970s, Sir Roy went on to amuse audiences at the V&A in 1974 with his collection of fedora hats, kipper ties and maxi coats. By regularly introducing new exhibitions he doubled attendance.

Reflecting on his time as director of the National Portrait Gallery, Sir Roy Strong pinpoints the exhibition “Beaton Portraits 1928-1968” as a turning point in the gallery’s history. Strong chose fashion photographer Cecil Beaton as a catalyst for change says much about the glamour and appeal of the photographer’s work. But even so, it seems unlikely that anyone could have predicted the sheer scale of the exhibition’s success. “The public flocked to the exhibition and its run was extended twice. The queues to get in made national news. The Gallery had arrived”, Strong wrote in the catalogue to Beaton Portraits, the more recent exhibition of Beaton that ran at the gallery until 31 May 2004.

Victoria & Albert Museum

In 1973, aged 38, he became the youngest director of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London. In his tenure, until 1987, he presided over its The Destruction of the Country House (1974, with Marcus Binney and John Harris), Change and Decay: the future of our churches (1977), and The Garden: a Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening (1979), all of which have been credited with boosting their conservationist agendas. In 1980, “he was awarded the prestigious Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg in recognition of his contribution to the arts in the UK.” He was awarded The Royal Photographic Society’s President’s Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2003.

Television

In 2008 Strong hosted a six-part TV reality series The Diets That Time Forgot. He acted as the Director of the fictitious Institute of Physical Culture, where nine volunteers spent 24 days testing three weight loss diets and fitness regimes that were popular in the late Victorian (William Banting) and Edwardian periods (Horace Fletcher) and the ‘roaring’ Twenties (Dr Lulu Hunt Peters). The weekly series was first aired on 18 March on Channel 4.

Writings

In 1999, he published The Spirit of Britain: A Narrative History of the Arts, a widely acclaimed 700-page study of British arts through two millennia. In 2005, he published Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy.

Personal life

Marriage

Roy Strong married Julia Trevelyan Oman in 1971. The arts world was astonished when “Strong abandoned the bachelor life and ‘eloped’ with Julia Trevelyan Oman, marrying her at Wilmcote church, near Stratford-upon-Avon, on 10 September 1971 with a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Julia Trevelyan Oman was 41 and her husband 35…they enjoyed a belated honeymoon in Tuscany.” She died in 2003 of pancreatic cancer.

Herefordshire

Sir Roy lives in the village of Much Birch, which lies 8 miles (13 km) south of Hereford on the A49 trunk road. Here, with his wife, he designed one of Britain’s largest post-war formal gardens, the Laskett. In 1995 he and his wife commissioned the artist Jonathan Myles-Lea to paint a ‘portrait’ of the house and gardens and the painting the Laskett was completed the same year. Sir Roy now works full-time as a writer and broadcaster. He has lived in Herefordshire since 1973-74 and he and his wife conceived the Laskett garden in autumn 1974.

From 22 April 2010 the Laskett Gardens have been open to the public by appointment, for groups of over twenty.

After leaving the V&A, Strong published a set of diaries that became infamous for its often critical assessments of figures in the art and political worlds. It has been rumoured that he has retained a set for posthumous publication. Jan Moir commented in 2002: “His bitchy, hilarious diaries caused a storm when they were published in 1997 and although he has no plans at present to publish another set, he is keeping a private diary again.”

Anglicanism

A practising Anglican, Strong is an altar server at Hereford Cathedral, as well as being high steward of Westminster Abbey. He was previously its high bailiff and Searcher.[11] In this capacity he attended the funeral service of the Queen Mother in 2002. On 30 May 2007, in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, he delivered the annual Gresham College Special Lecture, entitled The Beauty of Holiness and its Perils (or what is to happen to 10,000 parish churches?), which was deeply critical of the status quo. He said: “little case can be made in the twenty-first century for an expensive building to exist for a service once a week or month lasting an hour,” and he recommends someone taking “an axe and hatchet the utterly awful kipper coloured choir stalls and pews, drag them out of the church and burn them,” and “letting in the local community” in order to preserve many rural churches in Britain.

Portraits of Roy Strong

Seventeen portraits of Strong reside in the National Portrait Gallery Collection including both photograph and sketch by Cecil Beaton and an oil painting by Bryan Organ. An early bronze bust by Angela Conner is on view at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. In 2005, Strong sat for Jon Edgar for a work in terracotta which was exhibited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2013 as part of the Sculpture Series Heads – Contributors to British Sculpture.

Honorary positions

Chairman of the Art Department, Arts Council.

• Deputy Chairman, Southbank Centre.
• High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, from 2000.
• President, the Garden History Society, 2000-06.

President, the Friends of Croome Park, from 2008.

Plant Hunters : John Tradescant the Elder, The Start of The National Garden Museum Lambeth

John Tradescant the elder (c. 1570s – 15–16 April 1638), father of John Tradescant the younger, was an English naturalist, gardener, collector and traveller, probably born in Suffolk, England. He began his career as head gardener to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury at Hatfield House, who initiated Tradescant in travelling by sending him to the Low Countries for fruit trees in 1610/11. He was kept on by Robert’s son William, to produce gardens at the family’s London house, Salisbury House. He then designed gardens on the site of St Augustine’s Abbey for Edward Lord Wotton in 1615-23.

Later, Tradescant was gardener to the royal favourite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, remodelling his gardens at New Hall, Essex and at Burley-on-the-Hill. John Tradescant travelled to the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery in Arctic Russia in 1618 (his own account of the expedition survives in his collection), to the Levant and to Algiers during an expedition against the Barbary pirates in 1620, returned to the Low Countries on Buckingham’s behalf in 1624, and finally went to Paris and (as an engineer for the ill-fated siege of La Rochelle) the Ile de Rhé with Buckingham. After Buckingham’s assassination in 1628, he was then engaged in 1630 by the king to be Keeper of his Majesty’s Gardens, Vines, and Silkworms at his queen’s minor palace, Oatlands Palace in Surrey.

On all his trips he collected seeds and bulbs everywhere and assembled a collection of curiosities of natural history and ethnography which he housed in a large house, “The Ark,” in Lambeth, London. The Ark was the prototypical “Cabinet of Curiosity”, a collection of rare and strange objects, that became the first museum open to the public in England, the Musaeum Tradescantianum. He also gathered specimens through American colonists, including his personal friend John Smith, who bequeathed Tradescant a quarter of his library. From their botanical garden in Lambeth, on the south bank of the Thames, he and his son, John, introduced many plants into English gardens that have become part of the modern gardener’s repertory. A genus of flowering plants (Tradescantia) is named to honour him. Tradescant Road, off South Lambeth Road in Vauxhall, marks the former boundary of the Tradescant estate.

He was buried in the churchyard of St-Mary-at-Lambeth, as was his son; the churchyard is now established as the Museum of Garden History.

He is the subject of the novel Earthly Joys, by Philippa Gregory.