Vita Sackville-West spent much of her life and fortune rehabilitating Sissinghurst, a Tudor-era castle in Kent. Upon her death, her son Nigel Nicolson turned the castle over to the National Trust, who took on much of the admin work and expense of up-keep. The Nicolsons were allowed to live at Sissinghurst free of charge for two generations. When Nigel's son Adam became the in-resident Nicolson, he was fired with the idea of making Sissinghurst into a working farm, as it was in his youth. After years of meetings and negotiation, the National Trust refused to go for it. So Nicolson scaled back the scope of the project (no cattle or hop fields, for instance) and tried to get an organic vegetable patch for the Sissinghurst restaurant. At this, he succeeded. And then he wrote a whole book about his doings, generously padded with the history of Sissinghurst through the ages (well-done, and very interesting), and his memories of his grandmother Vita (which struck me as a bit uncouth).

When Nicolson writes about other people and places, he is good--when writing about himself, he is horrid. He exhibits little idea of how to edit his own experiences: I don't need to read about every damn meeting he went to. He seems rather self-aggrandizing, and certainly tone-deaf. I was interested by the first half of this book, but heaved a great sigh of relief when I was done with it. ( )

Nicholson's got both a sense of place and a sense of prose in his genes. He's an extraordinarily good writer. I loved this book, which chronicles the entire history of Sissinghurst from ancient times to the modern day while also limning the fight Nicholson is waging with the National Trust to make Sissinghurst once again a self-sustaining organic farm. Lavishly illustrated with photos from the last hundred-odd years.

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The story of Sissinghurst and Adam Nicolson's struggle to return the surrounding land to a working farm which acknowledges past, present and future. Nicolson writes very well and is quite open about his own failure to fully see that other people also had a strong emotional attachment to the place. ( )

21 Jan 2011 (I either had this for a present or bought it with birthday Amazon vouchers)

A wonderful feast of a book, goiong through the history of Vita Sackville-West's beloved Sissinghurst and the plans her grandson has for it as he comes of age and embraces the partnership that it offers (this is the book accompanying a TV series that was shown last year; there's so much more satisfying detail in the book!). Some truly exquisite, and never less than lovely, writing and descriptions make this a book to be treasured and re-read - and it even makes me proud to be from the Weald of Kent! ( )

A drowsily beautiful and gorgeously written book. To my regret, I never did visit the famous gardens at Sissinghurst Castle when I lived in the south of England (too remote and difficult for a poor carless student to access). But this book made me feel as though I now know it a little. By turns a history of the Kentish landscape and environment, a tale of bureaucratic struggles with the National Trust (who now own the property), and a chronicle of the many historical characters who have inhabited Sissinghurst down the centuries - not least of which were the author's famed literary grandparents Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. Adam Nicolson has clearly inherited some remarkable writing abilities, and I enjoyed the fact that the story has no clear outcome, as yet - the project to transform Sissinghurst back into the working farm it once was is still very much an unfinished project, as the title of the book indicates. His vision for what the estate could be is unabashedly romantic, and may well end up being unachievable, but it is unarguably noble. On my next trip to England, Sissinghurst will definitely be on the itinerary.