Читать книгу The Grass is Greener: An Anglo-Saxon Passion - Tom Fort - Страница 4

‘Here is cultural history at its best: the story of the lawn, and the implements used to cut it, and the place it has in our culture and psyche. It is clear that the author is in thrall to the green stuff, as there is a wonderful personal account of the first lawnmower in his life, and of the details of his ongoing struggle to develop his own lawn to a level he feels satisfied with’

Country Life

‘A confident writer, he meanders into social commentary, definitions of Englishness and observations on masculinity, without ever going too far from his subject. I bet he can mow in straight lines’

New Statesman

‘Fort’s own perspective is, however, resolutely gardenesque. He loves lawns and lawnmowers. They are entangled with his dearest memories. He is a founder-member of the Old Lawnmower Club (membership 249 men and one woman) and the enthusiasm that pervades his book can make even that seem not ridiculous but somehow admirable’

Sunday Times

‘Even those without green fingers will find Fort’s hymn to horticulture entertaining. So you mad workers have nothing to lose but your daisy chains. Go on, stay in bed this weekend, give us all a rest’

Yorkshire Post

‘Tom Fort … in this ardent summertime essay on lawns and lawnmowers, conjures up a multitude of green thoughts in a green shade. Marvellous!’

Irish Times

‘Mower Man’s full blown identity is explored for the first time by Tom Fort. Ostensibly about the English love of lawns, The Grass is Greener is more an apologia for ‘our man’, as Fort puts it, and his intimate relationship with his beloved lawn’

Financial Times

‘I must admit that I did enjoy this celebration of my garden bete noire. This says a great deal about the achievement of the author. Fort has a lightness of touch which makes this book oddly beguiling as he hurtles us from the herber (medieval garden) down to today’s average patch of greenery. This is an effortless … and funny read’

The Mail on Sunday

‘The Grass is Greener is a discursive and jolly book … Tom Fort comes into his own after the days of scythes and besoms, with the invention of the mechanical mower: “a small, peaceful revolution”.’

Victoria Glendinning, Literary Review