''Wonderful. A manifesto of horticultural delight'' Literary Review ''Beautiful. Perfect for literary garden lovers'' Good Housekeeping ''Rich and unusual, a book to treasure. Few recent gardening books come anywhere close to its style, intelligence and depth'' Observer ''The two central activities in my life - alongside writing - have been reading and gardening.'' Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother''s garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland , and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin. ''Exquisite and original'' Daily Telegraph ''A gentle survey of the garden''s place in Western culture, which morphs into a personal meditation on time, memory and a life well lived'' i ''Scholarly bedtime reading'' The Times , Books of the Year Select Guide Rating