David Jacques

Having trained as a planner and landscape architect, Dr David Jacques pursued his interests in garden and landscape history, and practiced in conservation. By 1987 he had already written 'Georgian Gardens' and the 'Gardens of William and Mary'. He became the first Inspector of Parks and Gardens at English Heritage that year, establishing the first grant schemes for historic gardens worldwide. In the mid 1990s he led the landscape team to restore the Privy Garden at Hampton Court, and meanwhile was prominent in the global cultural landscapes movement. In the 2000s he set up the MA in Landscape Conservation at the Architectural Association, and his 'Landscape Modernism Renounced: the Career of Christopher Tunnard' was published. In the 2010s his 'Gardens of Court and Country' was issued by YaleUP, and he carried out a number of World Heritage missions for ICOMOS advising UNESCO. In 2019 his book on the last 50 years of theories of 'Landscape appreciation' was published, and in 2022 he continued his longstanding involvement in Chiswick House and Gardens with a book on Lord Burlington, William Kent and the story of the gardens. In 2023 his 'Teaching Landscape History' (with Jan Woudstra) came out to be followed by a fun project, a small treatise on 'Genealogy and Fraud: The Case of the Fabulous Peshalls'. 2024 saw his 'Tudor and Stuart Royal Gardens' which revealed that the high spending on royal gardens in those two centuries was a reflection of their role in diplomatic one-upmanship between the great powers of Europe.