Join us for Man, Myth and Mountains: Reginald Farrer (1880-1920) was an alpine plant collector, gardener, and garden writer, who single-handedly changed the way the anglophone world writes about garden plants. He was also a travel-writer, rock gardener, novelist, poet, and amateur water-colour painter, and became a Buddhist in 1908.

4 weekly on-line talks, Tuesdays @ 7 starting January 5th, £5 each or all 4 for £16.

5th Jan @ 7pm: The Power of Farrer - John Page

12th Jan @ 7pm: The Rescue of an Edwardian Rock Garden - Mike Myers

19th Jan @ 7pm: Farrer in the Alps and the Far East - John Page

26th Jan @ 7pm: Plants, Books and Journeys: the world of Reginald Farrer, ‘well-known' Buddhist - Michael Charlesworth

This ticket is for this individual session and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links above, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 4 sessions via the link here.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

26th Jan: Plants, Books and Journeys: the world of Reginald Farrer, ‘well-known' Buddhist - Michael Charlesworth

This talk will trace the energy of Buddhist thought in varied works by Farrer. It will look particularly at his account of temples and ruined cities, In Old Ceylon (1908), and the extraordinary volume of war propaganda that he wrote in 1917-18 while employed at John Buchan's Department of Information, The talk will also consider his poetry and of his travel writing.

Michael Charlesworth is professor of art history, University of Texas at Austin. An authority on landscape and the history of gardens, on photography until 1918, and on landscape drawing and painting, he is the author of Derek Jarman (Reaktion Books, 2011), Landscape and Vision in Nineteenth Century Britain and France (Ashgate, 2008), The Gothic Revival 1720-1870 (3 Vols, 2002); and The English Garden (3 Vols., 1993). His study of Farrer, The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature, and Buddhism. which was published in 2018, is the first full-length study of his life and work and explores the connection between British modernism and Buddhism.