In this richly illustrated talk Dr Philip Mansel, author of King of the World: the life of Louis XIV (2019) will explore how the King used the gardens he created at Versailles to attract and impress foreign visitors, and to prove that French gardens and French sculptures surpassed those of ancient and modern Rome. Along the way Phillip will look at the garden rooms at Louis XIV private paradise of Marly with its games and slides reserved for his personal guests. The gardens at the Grand Trianon, with a pavilion designed by Louis XIV himself, which were filled with bulbs imported from the Levant: their scent was sometimes so strong that they drove courtiers inside. And finally, the ‘bosquets’ or groves at Versailles were used for dances and plays, beginning with Les Plaisirs de l’Ile Enchantee in 1664.

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Philip Mansel is one of Britain's leading historians of France and the Middle East. His previous books include Louis XVIII (1981), The Eagle in Splendour: Napoleon and his Court (1987), The Court of France: 1789-1830 (1988), Paris Between Empires, 1814-1852 (2001) and Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II (2005). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 1995 was a co-founder of the Society for Court Studies, whose journal, The Court Historian, he edited for twenty years. He is President of the Conseil Scientifique at the Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles and a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2012, he received the London Library Life in Literature Award.

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Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session, available for one week, will be sent shortly afterwards.

Louis XIV, King of Gardens