PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A CHANGE FROM THE ORIGINAL LECTURE

The last splendid flowering of the formal Italianate garden in this country.

The Royalist landowners returning from exile on Charles II’s Restoration in 1660 brought with them, from Holland or France, new tastes in garden design, and a longing to put down roots. John Evelyn was one of many employed to create little Edens for them. 

We see paintings and plans of the new gardens created during the late Stuart period.  The pictures, many of them by Dutch and Flemish artists who had travelled over with the restored King, are as lovely now as these magnificent gardens once were.   

Lucy Hughes-Hallett's  book on the 17th century Duke of  Buckingham, The Scapegoat, will be published by Fourth Estate in October 2024. Her last non-fiction book,  The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio was described in The Sunday Times as ‘the biography of the decade’. It won all three of the UK’s most prestigious prizes for non-fiction - the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Costa Biography Award. Her other non-fiction books include Cleopatra and Heroes.  

She also writes fiction. Her novel, Peculiar Ground, is largely set in the 17th century, and narrated by a landscape designer loosely based on the diarist John Evelyn. It was described as 'almost Tolstoyan in its sly wit and descriptive brilliance' (The Guardian) and 'full of drama, vivid characters, wit, gorgeous writing and fascinating detail’. (New York Times).  In her short story collection, Fabulous, she retells fables from classical mythology, relocating them to modern Britain. 

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Historical Association, she has written on books, theatre and the visual arts for publications including The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The New Statesman and the TLS. She was Chair of the Judges for the 2021 International Booker Prize.