Timothy Mowl

Entertaining, provocative and stimulating... opens one's eyes afresh to Kent's all-round genius.

[Mowl's] accounts of actual buildings and gardens are full of subjective intensity as well as subtle observations... Engrossing.

Mowl has energy and cunning in spades, and he wisely takes the course of making the book more of an assessment of Kent's work and times than an attempt on his life... a glittering knockabout of a book.

Provocative... We tend to admire what received opinion admires, whereas Mowl's book reverses the process, and healthily advises us to 'draw back from praising past culture simply because it happened.'

Engaging... I was reminded, above all, of Sacheverell Sitwell's evocations of the Baroque. Kent is as much a work of stylistic art. Mowl has a gift for putting his hero's concepts into prose.

Entertaining... Mowl [has] an impressive grasp of politics and patronage, and he writes about architecture, interior decoration and garden design with both authority and liveliness.

There is much to admire in Timothy Mowl's fearless approach.

Although Kent is an influential figure, he left little in writing but Mowl does a fine job of recreating his life, and personality... An honest account of Kent's genius and failings.

Architect, Designer, Opportunist

William Kent (1685-1748) was great without a hint of gravitas, a con man who became one of the artistic geniuses of his age. He was a high camp Yorkshire bachelor, brought back by Lord Burlington from an artistic apprenticeship in Rome where he had painted for a cardinal and won prizes from a pope. In London he charmed the surly old Hanoverian King George I, redecorated Kensington Palace for him with a clumsy bravura, and survived the subsequent critical storm - just. England was in stylistic chaos after rejecting its lawful Stuart rulers and Burlington was imposing a chaste and dreary Palladianism on a philistine island people. Kent saw his chance and never looked back. 
 
Queen Caroline, the real ruler, used him to project in sensational garden buildings by the Thames at Richmond her vision of a new scientific Britain. Sir Robert Walpole paid him to turn Houghton Hall in Norfolk into an imperial palace, outshining anything the German monarchs could raise. Another prime minister, the virtuous Henry Pelham, built with Kent a revolutionary suburban bolt-hole in Surrey. Between them they invented the Gothic Revival out at Esher, but have never been given the credit. 
 
Late in life, while raising an alabaster temple to Jupiter at Holkham Hall, also in Norfolk, and the sexiest interiors in London on Berkeley Square, Kent was discovering his true genius, laying out casually at Esher, Stowe in Buckinghamshire and Rousham near Oxford, the Arcadian image of the 'English Garden' that would take the continent, even France, by storm as England's only original contribution to European culture.

Timothy Mowl

Praise for William Kent

Entertaining, provocative and stimulating... opens one's eyes afresh to Kent's all-round genius.

[Mowl's] accounts of actual buildings and gardens are full of subjective intensity as well as subtle observations... Engrossing.

Mowl has energy and cunning in spades, and he wisely takes the course of making the book more of an assessment of Kent's work and times than an attempt on his life... a glittering knockabout of a book.

Entertaining, provocative and stimulating... opens one's eyes afresh to Kent's all-round genius.

[Mowl's] accounts of actual buildings and gardens are full of subjective intensity as well as subtle observations... Engrossing.

Mowl has energy and cunning in spades, and he wisely takes the course of making the book more of an assessment of Kent's work and times than an attempt on his life... a glittering knockabout of a book.

Entertaining, provocative and stimulating... opens one's eyes afresh to Kent's all-round genius.

[Mowl's] accounts of actual buildings and gardens are full of subjective intensity as well as subtle observations... Engrossing.

Mowl has energy and cunning in spades, and he wisely takes the course of making the book more of an assessment of Kent's work and times than an attempt on his life... a glittering knockabout of a book.

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter