Quest-Ritson, Charles

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QUEST-RITSON, Charles

PERSONAL:

Born in Potterne, Wiltshire, England; married; wife's name Brigid; children: two daughters, one son.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Highfield House, Shrewton, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP3 4BU, England. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Viking Press, Penguin Putnam, Inc., 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER:

Attorney, historian, writer, lecturer and editor.

WRITINGS:

The English Garden Abroad, Viking Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Garden Lover's Guide to Germany, Princeton Architectural Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Gardens of Germany, Mitchell Beazley (London, England), 1998.

House & Garden Book of Country Gardens, Vendome Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor, with Christopher Blair) The Royal Horticultural Society Gardener's Handbook, Dorling Kindersley (New York, NY), 1999.

The English Garden, Viking Press (New York, NY), 2001.

American Rose Society Encyclopedia of Roses, DK Publishing (New York, NY), 2003.

Climbing Roses of the World, Timber Press (Portland, OR), 2003.

Editor of the Royal Horticultural Society's Gardener's Yearbook and Garden Finder.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gardening expert and lawyer Charles Quest-Ritson presents a history of English horticulture in The English Garden Abroad. His "extensive study results in a stimulating view of the influences that culminated in such masterful examples of English gardening" in locales throughout France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, wrote Alice Joyce in Booklist. A reviewer in Contemporary Review called The English Garden Abroad a "beautifully illustrated," book that explores 250 years of "those gardens created by English expatriates" living in locations throughout Europe.

Similarly, Quest-Ritson's 2001 volume, The English Garden, offers a social history of English gardens and gardening from 1500 to the present. "Each chapter is made up of essays, all relatively short so that the mind doesn't wander and each is packed full of information," remarked a reviewer at the Good Web Guide Web site.

"Quest-Ritson's mainstream social history contains much careful research," wrote Alexander Urquhart in the Times Literary Supplement. "It is also clearly and forcefully written and embellished with lavish illustrations." To Quest-Ritson, a major function of gardens are as symbols of social status for middle-class Englishwomen. "This jaundiced view is a partial truth that fails to acknowledge that among those Englishwomen—so rudely agglomerated—there are individuals who will make subtle or profound changes which, in the spirit of El Niño, will influence the course of garden history," Urquhart observed. "They will have done so not because they are acquisitive or snobbish but because they are blessed with imagination or artistic vision."

Even though Urquhart notes instances of inadequate insight and the Good Web Guide reviewer finds "moments of pomposity on the grandest scale" in the book, The English Garden is "an entertaining read," said the Good Web Guide reviewer, and "along with the excellent illustrations, you could not ask for a better potted history of the English Garden."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 1992, Alice Joyce, review of The English Garden Abroad, p. 18; March 15, 2003, Alice Joyce, review of Climbing Roses of the World, p. 1263.

Contemporary Review, September, 1996, review of The English Garden Abroad, p. 166.

Times Literary Supplement, February 15, 2002, Alexander Urquhart, "Breaking New Ground," review of The English Garden, p. 36.