Merry Hall (Beverley Nichols Trilogy)

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Though I don’t think this in any way matters; they are funny and charming and Nichols never let pesky reality get in the way of being funny and charming! I absolutely adored Merry Hall but it is a work of fiction with elements of reality … thank you for such a great review of this book.

At the heart of his writing is the passion of a sensitive, intelligent man who has found a creative and emotional outlet in his love of plants and the act of making a garden.He went to school at Marlborough College, and went to Balliol College, Oxford University, and was President of the Oxford Union and editor of Isis. After all, sometimes it’s the first volumes in sets that are hardest to find, because so many people think they are going to read the series but then don’t follow through.

Those rare moments when he either admits the interlopers into his home or finds they’ve breeched the gates themselves, he is of course subjected to a passive aggressive lecture criticizing all the changes he has made.While Nichols would probably make for an odious neighbour, with all his catty comments and ungenerous sentiments, these same features make him wickedly entertaining. For a garden is a mistress, and gardening is a blend of all the arts, and if it is not the death of me, sooner or later, I shall be much surprised.

He often visits Crowther’s, a real purveyor then and now of garden ornaments, and mentions enough other ac Anne Raver New York Times 20000227 Merry Hall provides excellent and detailed descriptions of plants and gardening as it also provides an intriguing plot. It suggests that Nichols was not much of a hands-on gardener and his ‘gardening’ books are rather more fictional than they may at first appear. I guess it did seem rather twee, plus I didn’t like how he complained about how his servant failed to bring him breakfast in bed. Oh Chloris – you must indeed be really poorly if you have not ventured out to see your galanthus ‘Three Ships’.As I have bored all my friends and acquaintances in repeated tellings, my husband and I visited England this year for the first time. I’m used to humourous garden literature being more about the journey and the gardener himself rather than what the garden is composed of, so such guidance was surprising but welcome. I am reading James: The Portrait of a Lady for my book group and Nichols is a great relief from page- long paragraphs! I love the description of the rockery studded with speckled concrete stones and the rank, stinking pond.

Merry Hall” tells of Nichols’ escapades after the war, when he was looking for a particular type of house and garden to settle in.Nichols naturally takes on Oldfield too – finding they don’t agree on everything – Oldfield’s silences speaking volumes. I cannot forecast, with any accuracy, the probable nature of my own horticultural demise; at the moment, in view of the fact that the water garden is claiming most of my attention, it will probably take the form of drowning. Beverley Nichols is very readable – these books are not dry, dusty tomes about when you should plant what and where – although gardeners should probably have a notebook to hand, there are tips aplenty.