Tradescant #1
Touchstone
June 2005
Featuring: John Tradescant; Duke of Buckingham (George Villiers); Robert Cecil
512 pages ISBN: 0743272528 Trade Size (reprint) Add to Wish List
Whether he is nurturing a single rare seedling into a
blossoming tree or planning acres of exquisitely conceived
royal gardens, John Tradescant's fame and skill as a
gardener are unsurpassed in seventeenth-century England.
But it is Tradescant's clear-sighted honesty and loyalty
that make him an invaluable servant, and in his role as
informal confidant during garden strolls with Sir Robert
Cecil, adviser to King James I, he witnesses the making of
history, from the Gunpowder Plot to the accession of King
Charles I and the growing animosity between Parliament and
court.
Tradescant's talents soon come to the attention of the most
powerful man in the country, the irresistible Duke of
Buckingham, the lover of King Charles I. Tradescant has
always been faithful to his masters, but Buckingham is
unlike any he has ever known: flamboyant, outrageously
charming, and utterly reckless. Every certainty upon which
Tradescant has based his life -- his love of his wife and
children, his passion for his work, his loyalty to his
country -- is shattered as he follows Buckingham to court,
to war, and to the forbidden territories of human love.
From the details of garden design and innovation to the
politics of a growing revolution which was to kill a king
and turn a world upside down, Philippa Gregory once again
makes history come alive through the people whose passions
shaped that world.