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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Books Podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator,

and this week I'm extremely pleased to be joined by Kate Telcher, who is the author of a new book

about the amazing palm house that's the centrepiece of Q Gardens, and it's called Palace of Palis

of Palms, Tropical Dreams and the

making of Q. Okay, welcome. Now, we now think of Q gardens as an absolute staple part of London's

touristic landscape. But when your story begins, its very future was kind of in doubt, wasn't it?

Well, yes, I start my story with the government inspection of Q.

This is at the moment when Queen Victoria has just descended to the throne

and there's a review of royal household spending

and there's a question about whether the royal household should

keep on the gardens or if they're just a drain, an unnecessary drain on the expense. So there's this

elaborate report that's conducted by, among others, John Linley, who's the secretary of the

Horticultural Society and Joseph Paxton,

who's the gardener of the Duke of Devonshire, and they go all the way around the gardens,

the botanic gardens. At that stage, it's really just quite tiny. It's just 11 acres,

and it's in bad repair. So they write their report. In fact,

it's John Lindy who writes the report and he really advises that they're kind of two options.

His favourite option is that you build up and expand this botanic garden and you actually make it

a public botanic garden

...