When Capability Brown refused a fee of £1,000 to work in Ireland because “he had not yet finished England”, it marked the high tide of the English Landscape Movement. His birth in 1716 signalled the end of the Baroque age and his death in 1783 heralded all the excesses of Romanticism. The intervening years witnessed the greatest contribution Britain has made to Art. This is the Augustan age of the Grand Tour and the Whig party, of Lord Burlington, William Kent and Neo-Palladianism, when Britain trembled on the edge of Empire. Brown’s years as head gardener at Stowe, learning from both Cobham and Kent formed the basis of his independent practice in which he surveyed and transformed England from Milton Abbey to Alnwick Castle.