The Bookseller.com

7th September 2008

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Transworld plans Hessayon off-cuts

27.05.08 Benedicte Page

Transworld is marking the 50th anniversary of D G Hessayon's Expert series with a Christmas gift book from the gardening author, and the news that a series of non-gardening Expert guides are to follow. The Bedside Book of the Garden will be published as a £14.99 hardback in September. Designed with a nostalgic "retro" feel and illustrated with line drawings, it will offer discursive chapters on famous gardeners and gardens, plants and wildlife, garden ways from the past, sayings from the garden world, and other miscellaneous elements. Transworld hopes it will make an ideal present for fans of the Expert series.

The 2009 gardening Expert guide is due in March and will cover the topic of green gardening, while a new series of non-gardening Expert books will also kick off next year, with Hessayon as editorial and design consultant. The first title in the new series will be The Cat Expert, Transworld said, and it is due out in September 2009. Hessayon said: "Next year my new role will be the same as the [proverbial] old cat on the tiles—not doing it myself any more, but I'm there to tell the young ones where things ought to go."

The new developments in the Expert series were announced at a party for Hessayon last week, at which the author made a rare public appearance. It celebrated 50 years since the first title in the series, Be Your Own Gardening Expert, was produced, as well as sales of 50 million copies for the series. Today more than one in every two households has, or has had, an Expert book, said Transworld.

Book Benedicte Page Transworld D G Hessayon