I began my working life at the BBC in Birmingham where I worked on many different programmes including Gardeners’ World – in the days of the late great Geoff Hamilton, for those of you who can remember back that far! I acquired a large garden of my own to look after, and few years later, gained an RHS certificate in gardening at Pershore College of Horticulture. Then came the history bit. I returned to academia somewhat late in life, studying for an MA at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. My subject was not just the playwright and his plays, but also the times in which he lived, which for me, turned out to be the most interesting element of the course, teaching me that it is impossible to isolate areas of history or literature or culture from their social and historical context. In order to fully understand why someone wrote a play – or painted a picture – or planted a garden – we have to understand something of the world in which they lived.