Patrick Taylor-Martin
The Busiest Man in England
A Thing In Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton
By Kate Colquhoun
Fourth Estate 307pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
JOSEPH PAXTON'S GREAT patron, the sixth Duke of Devonshire (always called the Bachelor Duke), was one of the richest men in England. Owner of many great houses besides Chatsworth, his palace in Derbyshire, he was an obsessive collector of books, statuary, pictures, precious objects of every kind. Plants, however, were his consuming passion and Paxton, who could work such wonders with them, became his closest friend and confidant as well as his employee.
The Duke had many mistresses in his youth but gave them up when he got a bad attack of evangelical Ieligion in middle age - orchids rather than courtesans became the love of his life. Fortunately, he never allowed God l to stand in the way of his plants. How
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George Mackay Brown's work 'not only captures the totality of Orcadian life but also draws from that life a humane vision of creaturely dwelling, of man’s symbiotic relationship with the land and its history'.
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'Rather than concerning themselves with the machinations of great men', antiquaries 'sought to establish how people had lived, what they had worn, what stories they’d told and what games they’d played'.
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