Captain Ken is an excellent and reliable fellow, if inclined to extreme scepticism when he comes across any suggestion of the Brown Advisor’s. He numbers archery amongst his past-times and it was while we were amusing ourselves at the butts that he asked me whether I was sticking to the notion that Capability Brown preferred to show off his houses in a head-on view. I said I did, for Brown was a friend to freedom and a foe to forced solutions: if head-on was the most obvious way to see a house, then head-on is what he would provide. Indeed I had already published my opinion on the matter (note 12 for example).
Tag: Kirtlington
Forgive me if in this note I resume my happy task of setting out the progress of enlightened thought in pursuit of that snappy salesman, the gardener, Capability Brown, through a consideration of Dr Sarah Rutherford’s new book Capability Brown and his landscape gardens.
The spoil heap at Wentworth Castle
Days come in late March or in April, when Spring has not wholly disentangled herself from Winter, but there is a freshness to the air and it is better to be out than to be in. So I am advised by the good folk of Health and Safety , who have asked me to warn you that happiness can cause damage in confined spaces.
My postman is always the first to know when Mrs L of Melton Mowbray has filled her pen.
At a genial evening just past in the upstairs rooms at the Tatler’s Waste-Bin, conversation turned to the idea of ‘cultural landscape’ and the fond attachment people form to particular places.
Monsieur B of Orléans has been in touch again, this time with a question about Copper Beech – did Capability Brown use it, and if so in what circumstances?