"In a fascinating new study of Sudell and suburban gardens, Behind the Privet Hedge, the author Michael Gilson dubs his subject 'the patron saint of crazy paving.' He was also a radical, a democrat and a visionary."

The Guardian

"If Behind the Privet Hedge were simply a life of a professional gardener, it would be interesting enough . . . but this book is also a vivid picture of landscape architecture as it developed in the middle years of the century."

Daily Telegraph

"In this ground-breaking biography, a forgotten figure in 20th-century gardens is remembered as a true activist and small garden advocate . . . This excellent book rehabilitates and revivifies [Sudell’s] reputation."

Gardens Illustrated

"We may sneer at suburban gardens but Michael Gilson reminds us they had visionary, er, roots, courtesy of inter-war pioneers who promoted ‘the empowerment that some level of horticultural knowledge’ could give. And none more than Richard Sudell, whom the author has saved from obscurity."

The Oldie

"A fine new book . . . it shows how the ubiquity of the surburban garden has had to be achieved in the face of planning opposition and how gardening managed to grow into an obsession for millions of people."

Laurie Taylor, BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed

"Gilson's book is a charming and unexpected glimpse into how gardening took root as an obsession for millions, full of suburban heroes and villains, revolutions and conformity."

John Grindrod, author of 'Iconicon: A Journey around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain'

"The radical demand for the right to a garden as part of the post-war covenant is much less well-known. Thanks to Behind the Privet Hedge, Michael Gilson’s new history of the enthusiastic gardening movement that accompanied the public housing movement between the wars, that lack has now been remedied . . . a very good book."

The New English Landscape

"If Beyond the Privet Hedge is in part a biography of Sudell, then, it is also a defence of suburbia in general and suburban gardens in particular, spiced with occasional dashes of polemic against modernist architecture and the baleful influence of Le Corbusier on post-war Britain . . . it is a thoughtful and provocative defence of both Sudell’s work and the small private Edens of suburbia."

Engelsberg Ideas