B.A., M.A., King's College, Cambridge; Ph.D., Bristol University. Taught English Literature, with special emphasis on its relationships with the visual arts, at universities in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States. Former Director of Studies in Landscape Architecture at Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard).
Author of numerous articles and books on garden history and theory, including a catalogue of the landscape drawings of William Kent, Garden and Grove, and Gardens and the Picturesque. Edits two journals, Word & Image and Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, formerly the Journal of Garden History.
Current interests focus upon landscape architectural theory, the development of garden design in the city of Venice, modern(ist) garden design, and ekphrasis. Inaugural series editor of the new Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture (University of Pennsylvania Press), in which will be published his own theoretic study of landscape architecture, Greater Perfections.