Since moving into a thatched cottage, I find I like reading about them, probably to reinforce the idea that I’ve done the right thing. An old favourite is
A Thatched Roof by Beverley Nichols, the sequel to the best gardening book ever written:
Down the Garden Path. Beverley Nichols was not only a prolific writer but what we would call today a celebrity. His phizog could be seen on advertisements telling the world that ‘If Beverley Nichols offered you a cigarette it would be a De Reszke.’ (There’s a famous story of Noël Coward saying, at a party given by the notoriously mean Godfrey Winn, ‘If Godfrey Winn offered you a cigarette, it would be a b-bloody m-miracle.’)
Nichols was a prolific writer; he said himself that he had a ‘fatal facility’. He gardened fanatically, played the piano to concert standard, adored cats. Astonishingly, and a sign of how celebrity culture has changed since those days, he managed for years to be doted on by women readers, including those of
Woman’s Own, while drinking like a fish and carrying on a sex life which is hem hem too strong for my journal.
I’d like more people to enjoy his books so I’m recycling (sheer laziness) an article I wrote a long time ago
( about Beverley Nichols’ gardening books )![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
