Vita Sackville-West spent much of her life and fortune rehabilitating Sissinghurst, a Tudor-era castle in Kent. Upon her death, her son Nigel Nicolson turned the castle over to the National Trust, who took on much of the admin work and expense of up-keep. The Nicolsons were allowed to live at Sissinghurst free of charge for two generations. When Nigel's son Adam became the in-resident Nicolson, he was fired with the idea of making Sissinghurst into a working farm, as it was in his youth. After years of meetings and negotiation, the National Trust refused to go for it. So Nicolson scaled back the scope of the project (no cattle or hop fields, for instance) and tried to get an organic vegetable patch for the Sissinghurst restaurant. At this, he succeeded. And then he wrote a whole book about his doings, generously padded with the history of Sissinghurst through the ages (well-done, and very interesting), and his memories of his grandmother Vita (which struck me as a bit uncouth). When Nicolson writes about other people and places, he is good--when writing about himself, he is horrid. He exhibits little idea of how to edit his own experiences: I don't need to read about every damn meeting he went to. He seems rather self-aggrandizing, and certainly tone-deaf. I was interested by the first half of this book, but heaved a great sigh of relief when I was done with it.