Happy Sissinghurst. I mean, Easter
Oh, this was a deeply uncool programme to have found on BBC 4 on Good Friday and to have really enjoyed. Featuring posh people, the National Trust and Sissinghurst, the gardens famously created by writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicholson, it couldn’t have been further removed from groovy metro media types.
But I did enjoy the two episodes I saw of this, for lots of reasons. Firstly there was the fascinating set-up whereby Adam Nicholson, the grand-son of Vita and Harold, is now apparently living at Sissinghurst although he doesn’t own it. The National Trust does and so he is not lord of all he surveys. Far from it.
Also because a massive piece of the celebrity gardening jigsaw fell into place when it was revealed Adam Nicholson’s wife is Sarah Raven, gardening columnist and sometime Gardeners’ World presenter. No wonder she’s always floating around massive cut-flower beds in muslins: she’s married to a real toff. And Raven gardens at Perch Hill in Sussex, just down the road from Sissinghurst which set up another fantastic tension in the film - where do the Nicholson/Ravens really live?
This seemed to come to a head in the final scene when Adam and Sarah surveyed the Sissinghurst estate from a hot-air balloon, both cooing over its beauty. “Doesn’t it look like somewhere where me might be happy?” asked Adam, in his posh, slightly feckless yet hopeful way. (I really liked him - especially when he confessed to ignoring Sarah’s artistically written lists and surviving on treacle tart and houmous while she was away.)
“The jury’s out,” snapped back Sarah, from under a hat fashioned out of baby bearskin. Let’s have more on this couple. And, OK, more on how Sarah upset the National Trust catering staff with talk of tagines and spinach tarts instead of plain old English fayre.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I saw some of this too and you’re absolutely right, I didn’t want to like Adam Nicholson but couldn’t help be charmed by his openness and willingness to admit when he screwed up. Specially intrigued about his parents’ marriage. Did you see the album with the young stud posing in trunks in amongst all the family snaps?
April 14th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Missed the young stud. Who was he attached to? Not ‘50 lesbian lovers’ Vita, surely?
April 16th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Harold, would you believe.