Merry Hall is the first book in a second trilogy, and I fear books two and three may be a lot harder to find.

User contributions are not fact checked and do not represent the official position of Historic England. As we all know, the only way to plant daffodils is to pile them on to a tray, and then to run out into the orchard and hurl the tray into the air, planting them exactly where they fall. If you’re sensitive, this is not the book for you, as Nichols cheerfully insults all manner of people (women in particular). He often visits Crowther’s, a real purveyor then and now of garden ornaments, and mentions enough other acI have an issue of “The Studio” magazine from the 30’s in which he is shown in front of the cottage. The endpapers in your book are stunning, and I’ve looked at the covers for his other books before and they are beautiful too.

I couldn't wait to read the rest of the trilogy once I'd read Merry Hall and I suggest you do the same. 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. All three books are generously illustrated with line drawings, dust jackets and endpapers by the Scottish illustrator William McLaren. aww bless, here’s to you getting well soon and being able to check up on you treasures outdoors, which I hope will be blooming. I love the description of the rockery studded with speckled concrete stones and the rank, stinking pond.Hardbacks; red, green, and blue cloth bound-boards, backed with white cloth and matching title-label to spine, dust jackets. One evening, we sat and watched a small mouse climb in the raspberry canes to find and nibble on the ripe berries. This bestseller — which has had 32 editions and has been in print almost continuously since 1932 — was the first of his trilogy about Allways, his Tudor thatched cottage in Glatton, Cambridgeshire. The last few chapters were a bit more technical for my liking, lots about the plants and flowers in his garden--I wanted to hear more about his meetings with Miss Rose and Miss Kemp and the exasperation that ensued! Put me in post WWII London suburbs, add a manor house needing repair, a crusty old gardener, some siamese cats, one or two gossipy village socialites, and an author with the humor of PG Wodehouse and I'm truly happy.