Distinguished historian Gordon Campbell is the author of numerous books on literature, art, history, and biography, including the bestseller Bible: The Story of the King James Bible. Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester, he is a fellow of the British Academy and a former chair of the Society for Renaissance Studies. In 2012 he was awarded the Longman-History Today Trustees Award for a lifetime contribution to History. In The Hermit in the Garden, his interests in cultural history, architectural history, and designed landscapes converge in a study of the 18^th-century craze for ornamental hermits in the grand gardens of Georgian England. Campbell traces the story of garden hermits from their distant ancestors in imperial Rome to their humble descendant, the garden gnome.