Following the end of the war the author moved to Merry Hall (a property in Ashtead, Surrey) leaving Allways, the suject of an earlier successful trilogy. He ghostwrote Dame Nellie Melba’s "autobiography" Memories and Melodies (1925), and in 1966 he wrote A Case of Human Bondage about the marriage and divorce of William Somerset Maugham and Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo, which was highly critical of Maugham. The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. For a garden is a mistress, and gardening is a blend of all the arts, and if it is not the death of me, sooner or later, I shall be much surprised.

My memories of Beverly Nichols are of him appearing on television when I was a child and not understanding a word he was saying because he seem to have a plum in his mouth all the time. Father Figure, which appeared in 1972 and in which he described how he had tried to murder his alcoholic and abusive father, caused a great uproar and several people asked for his prosecution. I had a very successful garden this year, mostly because we were blessed with a record amount of rainfall during August, which is normally as arid as the Sahara. From the chapter entitled "Not for the Tough": "I always seem to be disturbing hedgehogs, and always at the wrong time of year, and I wish there were some means of assuring the hedgehogs that this conduct is inadvertent. Little by little, the charm of being stunned and sent reeling to the wall, six times a day, by the low beams on the ceiling, is apt to pall; one no longer darts gaily to the bathroom for the sticking plaster, chortling with amusement at the nice Tudore bumpe on one’s forehead.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! The ghost of Stebbing is everywhere – and Nichols takes a quite violent dislike to everything about him. It’s also very nice to find someone else who loves Nichols too – I don’t know anyone else outside the Blogosphere who does. I couldn't wait to read the rest of the trilogy once I'd read Merry Hall and I suggest you do the same.

By 1946, however, Nichols had fallen out of love with the beams and bumps of Tudor architecture and was looking for something different. G. Wodehouse, Beverley Nichols (a man) takes us on the adventures of moving into his new home, Merry Hall, in the English countryside.Oklahoma winters are too cold to grow tropical or subtropical plants; summers are far too hot and dry to sustain the temperate beauties that thrive in English gardens. Built in 1504 by Prior Thomas Docwra, St John’s Gate was the south gateway to the Priory of Clerkenwell, the headquarters of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem.

Nichols's horticultural undertaking is serious, his writing is high-spirited, riotously funny, and, at times, deliciously malicious. You have encouraged me to take old Beverley down from the shelf (where I have several of his books), dust him off , and enjoy Merry Hall all over again!The endpapers in your book are stunning, and I’ve looked at the covers for his other books before and they are beautiful too. Nichols's final trilogy is referred to as "The Sudbrook Trilogy" (1963–1969) and concerns his late 18th-century attached cottage at Ham, (near Richmond), Surrey.

I am afraid that I should not be able to fetch the vegetables myself, so I hope it would not be too inconvenient to you to deliver them — preferable on Saturdays, between three and four?I was very curious to read them, as I love the acidic style of writing of Mr Nichols, and he does not disappoint. For the first time, I kept a sort of diary (in the Notes app) of what plants did well and what I want more of next year. There was some unpleasantness in the village, particularly when the young men who came for weekend visits propositioned the local boys. I agree that this doesn’t matter – his lack of grubby fingernails doesn’t stop the books from being such fun! His books are period pieces and the ‘ servant question’ is something we find impossible to relate to now.