Catherine Horwood

Welcome to my website

 Thank you for visiting my website.

Here's where you'll find biographical information about me and the books I've written.

My latest book is Gardening Women. Their Stories from 1600 to the Present (Virago, 2010) Please visit its dedicated website: www.gardeningwomen.com

On the left hand side, you'll find links to the other books and articles I've written. You will also find them in the categories list.

I have always been a writer and have published on the social history of sports clothes, horticulture and consumerism and women's magazines in academic journals and BBC History, History Today and Herstoria

.

I have contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and to BBC Radio 4 programmes on shopping, and the social history of dress and garden history.

I am a member of the Garden Media Guild.

I was Specialist Consultant to the exhibition, A Garden within Doors,  at the Geffrye Museum which ran from 30 March- 27 July  2010. 

See the Articles column for links. 

I have taught at several London-based universities, and give talks and papers in the UK and the USA. See the Events column for forthcoming dates.

Gardening is my great love and I opened my previous garden in Belsize Park, London, for the National Gardens Scheme for many years.  It was featured in books and magazines in the UK, Sweden and Japan, and won several prizes.  I was also Assistant Organiser for the NGS London area.  Now I have a large south-facing roof garden in Primrose Hill, which has also been open for the NGS and featured in various magazines. I am also starting work on a new garden in West Suffolk.

I am also Assistant County Organiser/Booklet Co-ordinator for the National Gardens Scheme in Suffolk.

This is my academic background:

I was a late starter and didn't return to do my first degree until 1990 after I'd had my family. Now I am an Honorary Research Fellow at the Bedford Centre for the History of Women, Royal Holloway, University of London.  My PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London (Keeping Up Appearances: Clothes, Class and Culture 1918-1939) was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Board Award. I took an MA in Women's History also at Royal Holloway  (Distinction and the Best Student Prize, 1997-8). In autumn 2006, I was a visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn., USA. In 2007, I was awarded the Ernestine Ritcher Avery Fellowship at the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California.

In 1999, I was joint winner of the Clare Evans National Academic Prize organised by the Women's History Network, for the best new essay in the field of Women's History/Gender & History, 'Girls Who Arouse Dangerous Passions: Woman and Bathing 1900-1939'.  This was published in Women's History Review in 2000.

To get in touch with me, please click on the email link on the right.

Gardening Women. Their Stories from 1600 to the Present

Gardening Women is published by Virago (May 2010)

Please visit its dedicated website for full details of reviews, talks and associated events.

Potted History. The Story of Plants in the Home

Potted History was published by Frances Lincoln in 2007 (£25, ISBN 978-0-7112-2800-9).

To dip into the book via Amazon, click on this link.

The Bookseller, July 2007
Intriguing blend of social history, horticulture and interior design that examines changing fashions in houseplants.

Country Life, January 2008
This charming, thoughtfully illustrated book traces the interwoven threads of social and horticultural history that created a hunger for potted plants from the Tudors to today. Kathryn Bradley-Hole

The World of Interiors, March 2008
It seems that Catherine Horwood ... has found that rare thing: a genuinely new subject for a book pertaining to interior design... The book is full of interesting discoveries for the lay reader. Ros Byam Shaw

Synopsis
There are plenty of books on how to look after houseplants, but until now no one has written about why and when plants came to be found in the home - and the fashions that swung from the aspidistra in the Victorian drawing room to the orchid in the designer loft. Catherine Horwood explores the role of houseplants and cut flowers in the home and has brilliantly combined social history, plant history and the history of interior design. This book explores the changing role of houseplants in the home. Social history, plant history and the history of interior design are brilliantly combined. It is illustrated with drawings, prints, watercolours, oils and photographs - some quirky and amusing, others beautiful and sumptuous.

Keeping Up Appearances - sample text

Playing the game

Since its inception, golf has always been seen as a game for the leisured classes, those with time on their hands and not just the money but also, more importantly, the connections to gain membership to the best clubs. There were regional differences in the class distinctions on golf courses.  Rural areas such as Scotland, traditionally seen as the birthplace of golf, and Wales, were able to accommodate all classes of golfers whereas areas such as south--east England where land was at a premium, golf--club entry was controlled far more strictly. In 1890, there were nine golf clubs in and around the London area. By 1909, there were eighty--nine. By the 1920s and 1930s, the game's popularity with the Prince of Wales enhanced the exclusive image of the sport making golf club membership a much sort-after status symbol.

The golf course appeared to have been the one place where the middle--class man in particular could relax his innate inhibitions towards fashion. Before the First World War, golf clothes had been specially made by a man's tailor or adapted from a woman's existing country clothing. Throughout the interwar years, specialist clothes for golf were regularly advertised in both the men's and women's press. 'Golf jackets,' it was noted, 'have almost now become a universal fashion.  Tens of thousands wear this jacket who never hit a golf ball.  This may be taken as a testimonial to the general utility and comfort of the new style.'  The comfort was due to a cut which allowed the wide range of movement necessary to swing a golf club...

Keeping Up Appearances. Fashion and Class Between the Wars

'Meticulous and engaging'
The Times Higher Education Supplement

'excellent... combines scholarship, good writing and humour'
Contemporary Review

'a rich and thoughtful book that illuminates a complex subject'
Costume



A woman should have a fresh wholesome appearance, turned out in such a way that it subtly conveyed, without investigation, that her underclothing was spotless.
Ethyle Campbell, buyer, 1938

I regard it as a social service and the duty of every citizen to make the most of his or her appearance.  No trouble is too much to take in looking after one's wardrobe and good clothes are not an extravagance.
Mass-Observation Respondent, Pinner, Middx., 1939


Many a 'marriage will not take place' notice has been traced back to a dusty black velvet frock.
Fashions for all, 1925


The British have always been concerned about accent, appearance and class, but at no time during the twentieth century was 'keeping up appearances' more important than during the 1920s and 1930s. Drawing on a range of original sources, Catherine Horwood vividly records the experiences of clothes selection during the interwar years, and reveals the importance of dress codes to both men and women whether at home, work, or at leisure.

Dr Horwood recreates the world of middle-class clothes shopping, with its mix of department stores, chain stores, tailors and 'madam' shops.  She examines how the various outlets enticed customers across the threshold, and the advice available to purchasers to ensure they chose wisely. From the impecuious youth anxious to create a favourable impress at the local tennis club dance to female office workers advised by the Daily Mail that women in business kept 'their position partly, if not chiefly, by appearance', we peer into the intimate lives and anxieties of the middle classes as they dressed to impress. Choices were influenced as much by the advent of mass production, economic stringency, snobbery and the influence of America, as by personal aesthetics.  Seemingly insignificant items such as ties, braces, gloves and hats, could convey lack of breeding if worn incorrectly.  Yet while most attempted to meet accepted dress codes, a few - the pansy, dandy and Bohemian - risked social ostracism by deliberately flaunting their differences.

This beautifully written and illustrated book explores the social mores behind one of society's most popular activities, and reveals not only how we dressed, but why.

Contents

Introduction

1 Shopping for Status

2 Black Coats and White Collars

3 Business Girls and Office Dresses

4 In Home and Garden

5 From Seaside to Sports Club

6 Top Hats and Tulle

7 Everything to Match

8 Radicals, Bohemians and Dandies

Conclusion

Worst Fashions...What we shouldn't have worn but did

Published by Sutton, 2005

Daily Mail: 'From hot pants to boob tubes, a new book names and shames the worst fashion crimes ever ... What Not To Wear Again.'

Have you ever glanced at an old photograph and questioned just why you chose to look like that? Or wondered just what possessed a designer when he or she imagined a particular item of clothing could flatter anybody?  Well, we all make mistakes, and here they all are.

From safari suits and platform soles to hot pants, kipper ties, knitted tank tops and paper dresses; from Afghan coats, shell suits and tartan trews to boob tubes and Val Doonican jumpers, prepare to re-live the fashion victim's tangerine dreams and visible nightmares.

Richly illustrated with ghastly close-ups and contemporary photographs the book also features the Kings and Queens of Worst Fashion.  Celebrity disasters include fashion faux-pas by Elton John, Sarah, Duchess of York, and Elizabeth Taylor plus Luciano Pavarotti's own range of perfumes and Frankie Dettori's endorsement of Jockey pants.

Entertaining and informative, this book takes a new look at fashion and examines just what we have worn - and wished we hadn't - during the past fifty years.

Why gardening can be the best form of therapy - Times Online

Why gardening can be the best form of therapy - Times Online.