The English Landscape Garden Dreaming of Arcadia

This sumptuous, beautifully photographed volume celebrates this quintessentially British creation, arguably its greatest artform, taking you on a tour of 20 of the finest surviving gardens, including:
* Studley Royal (Yorkshire), a dreamy valley garden which culminates with a view down and across the ruins of a Cistercian abbey
* Stowe (Buckinghamshire), the great politically motivated garden of its day, boasting the ensemble masterpiece that is William Kent's Elysian Fields
* Chiswick House (London), Lord Burlington's experiment in neoclassical architecture
* Petworth (Sussex) - of 'Capability' Brown, who eschewed the symbolism of earlier generations but created instead his own powerful vision of pastoral Arcadia
* Hawkstone Park (Shropshire), designed to elicit a thrill of fear in visitors as they traverse rocky precipices and encounter live hermits
Including much new research and specially commissioned photographs, this is a book to dive into and be transported to an idyllic dream realm.