Product Description

The biography of the late, celebrity gardener Geoff Hamilton.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #390141 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The sudden death in 1996 of Geoff Hamilton, popular presenter for 17 years of the BBC television "Gardeners' World", came as a devastating blow to his viewers and admirers. His colleague Gay Search says that many people told her it was as though they had lost a member of their own family. What was he like, this gardening Everyman, to inspire such affection and devotion? His story is told in Geoff Hamilton: A Man and His Garden, on which Gay Search has collaborated with Hamilton's identical twin brother Tony. It's an unexceptional life in many ways--National Service, agricultural college, struggling landscaping businesses, then the break into journalism and television. Hamilton's secret, it seems, was that he had no secret. A devoted, hard-working gardener and family man, he communicated directly with his viewers and readers, never talking down, sharing his skills and discoveries (most notably the use of Chinese take-away trays for seedlings) with enormous enthusiasm. He did it all himself and was entirely self-made: his television garden was his own garden. Gay Search has researched his life thoroughly, talking to family and friends to build up a warm, sympathetic portrait of this admirable man and gardener, whose great fortune was that, by dint of hard work and the right sort of luck, he was able to live a life he loved. --Robin Davidson

Guardian Weekend
Sure to make you laugh out loud bring a smile to your face – and occasionally, a tear to your eye.

Excerpted from Geoff Hamilton by Gay Search, Tony Hamilton. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
For the man who was to become the nation’s most popular gardener, a two-up, two-down in Tollet Street, just off the Mile End Road in London’s East End, was a rather unlikely birth-place. Geoffrey Stephen Hamilton was born on 15 August 1936, three years after his older brother, Barry Mark, and thirty-five minutes before his identical twin Anthony George – the thirty-five minutes, as Tony says with a wry smile, that shaped the whole course of their lives. ‘If you’re the older one when you’re a kid, it gives you one great asset – it gives you power.’

Geoff subtly but unstintingly exerted his dominance over Tony right up until the day he died. The earliest memory Tony has of Geoff is of them lying together in the big double pram in the hall-way where they were put to sleep for part of the day, and Geoff sitting up, grabbing his brother’s hair, pulling a chunk out, waving it around and shouting gleefully, ‘Dot sum!’

Customer Reviews

Funny, informative and often emotional
I spent every Friday night for as long as I can remember watching Gardener's World with my mum. Geoff's enthusiam when presenting the programme shone through and encouraged me to go out and dig an allotment in my parents garden! If you were as saddened as I was when Geoff died then this book is a must read. It tells of his schoolboy days, his relationship with his dad, his failed businesses and his love of singing in the local choir. It also shows Geoff's obvious reluctance to accept his household name status. There are some lovely stories of the goings on whilst filming Gardeners World and if you can manage a visit to Barnesdale Gardens in Rutland too - you can actually imagine Geoff walking around the garden. It is obvious from the book that he was greatly loved by all his family and those who worked with him. I wish my wife would let me walk straight through the kitchen with my muddy wellies on! Read it - it offers a great insight into a great man.

An excellent read
This is a really nice book. Nice is a hackneyed word, but I feel it sums this biography up very well. Geoff Hamilton's story is well written (primarily by Gay Search) with affection and humour but without rose tinted spectacles. The result is an honest account of Geoff's life and the development of his career, his gardens and his thinking. A fascinating account of a man who stuck to his principles and who cared for his fellow men and the planet on which he lived. Bravo Gay and Tony! I read this in a single sitting, I coudn't put it down. What a loss to us all Geoff's early death was, but his philosophy of life and gardening lives on and is well encapsulated here. Highly recommended.

This book comes into the must keep category.
Many books feed you with enthusiasm for the moment but fail to reach right down into your soul. Well for me, this book was able to achieve just that. A book I found hard to put down, it is full of funny experiences that has you side splitting. Then there are other moments when you find yourself welling up with tears. Reading this book has inspired me to visit Barnsdale again to soak up the atmosphere of Geoff Hamilton's legacy - his planting schemes in their full maturity. Oh how I feel for Tony Hamilton and Gay Search, as well as his family, who clearly miss Geoff's playful nature and mature gardening wisdom. This is a book that is not to be missed.