|
Thursday, 07 August 2008 |
Dear Editor
In the June issue, Weevil was, I’m sorry to say, guilty of a
glitsch, writing: “the famous Sissinghurst gardens were
planned by the Nicholsons”.
No doubt Sir Harold Nicolson would have been quite
accustomed to his surname being incorrectly spelled and
therefore faintly amused, but his wife, Vita Sackville-West,
would have been distinctly unamused. She, the designer of
the most visited garden in Britain today, was a writer and
poet of some distinction, being awarded the Companion of
Honour in 1946 for her ‘services to literature’.
Throughout her long and remarkable marriage to Harold,
she was never known as ‘Mrs’or ‘Lady’ Nicolson, which her
husband always respected, and she would have bristled at she
being bracketed with her husband as ‘the Nicolsons’.
That said, Weevil’s reference to them made me look at the
Sissinghurst Gardens website; if you want 15 minutes of pure
bliss, browse the scores of wondrous photographs there.
Clive Anthony Greenwood,
Oradour-sur-Vayres
|
