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Books

This beautiful new history of Kew Gardens needs a bit of weeding

A review of Peyton Skipwith and Brian Webb’s ‘Edward Bawden’s Kew Gardens’. A beautiful book is somewhat weighed down by its scholarship

12 April 2014

9:00 AM

12 April 2014

9:00 AM

Edward Bawden’s Kew Gardens Peyton Skipwith and Brian Webb

V and A Publishing, pp.112, £20, ISBN: 9781851777792

Edward Bawden’s Kew Gardens is a beautiful book. Lovers of early 20th-century British art will find it hard to stop gazing at the painted board cover under the dustjacket. It is so sheenily brilliant that you want to frame it and hang it on the
wall at once. Every page, including the endpaper plans of Kew, is visually perfect, and the book is an agreeable size.

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Illustrations by Edward Bawden

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