Machiavelli's Lawn: The Great Writers' Garden Companion

Twelve great authors offer their top tips on gardening, from Sylvia Plath's struggles with autumn bulbs, to Pablo Neruda on pruning roses at the end of a romance. In Brecht's mini opera, a courageous mother's fight to protect her tender young potatoes from the army reveals the tragic consequences of a crop being harvested too soon. On Zola's allotment, a striking miner finds more brutal and perilous than anything he imagined at the coalface. Carver's anti-hero plants up a neglected hanging ...