Help Identifying An Author

[shingo]

Hi,
I remember watching a documnetary about a month ago on an Author, but I can't remember who it is now, and it is really aggrovating. I know the following points are vague but its the most I can cunjour from the depths of my mind.

- Early Life (if not all) in Milton Keynes

- A Preist *

- Wrote about the surrounding environment, and paid attention to detail

- At a guess; 19 or 18C

- (he had a garden and put a cardboard cut out statue at the end of a series of gates to mock the present trends, only helpful in jogging minds if you happened to see the same program)

If I think of any more I shall add them.

Thanks in advance, I realise it's a lot to ask but it's something that is incredibly hard to search for on the internet with such a small amount of leads.

[Nightshade]

I hate to be a nit picker but Milton keynes is a new town that is created to deal with the baby boomers post WWII. Ill see if I can dig anythng up though.

[quasimodo1]

I'm guessing Mendel, who was a monk, and did groundbreaking work on plant genetics.

[kilted exile]

I'm guessing Mendel, who was a monk, and did groundbreaking work on plant genetics.

Hmmm I doubt it was Mendel, he was from what is now the Czech Republic. And despite the mentioning of Milton Keynes being erroneous in the OP, I think I am still concluding that we are looking for a brit here

[shingo]

I hate to be a nit picker but Milton keynes is a new town that is created to deal with the baby boomers post WWII. Ill see if I can dig anythng up though.

I did not know that, but I am sure the presenter said Milton Keynes, unless it is the area now known as Milton Keynes. Either way, I know my hints aren't very clear.

Thanks for the guess quasimodo1, but it was not Mendel.

Another thing that I have remembered is that he attended a presitgious University, either Cambridge or Oxford, as part of the programme involved the presenter visitng and looking at his old record books.

I'll do some more searchin myself and see what I find.

[Logos]

You could try perusing the lists of Cambridge's alumni:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/ alumni
http://www.blanchflower.org/alumni/camalumn.html

and Oxford's :)
http://www.ox.ac.uk/aboutoxford/history.shtml

[shingo]

Thanks,
I had a quick look after my last post but i couldn't find anything. Unfortunatley I think it is one of those things that will just have to wait untill it comes back to me at the most unexpected time. Cheers anyway.

[Whifflingpin]

?? Gerard Manley Hopkins C19th poet, Jesuit priest

?? Gilbert White C18th naturalist and clergyman, had a famous garden at Selborne near Alton.

"Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste; The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste: Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true; Through the high arch call in the length'ning view; Expand the forest sloping up the hill; Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill; Extend the vista; raise the castle mound In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown'd: O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, Or with the blending garden mix the mead; Bid China's pale, fantastic fence delight; Or with the mimic statue trap the sight. "



Both of them had degrees from Oxford

[shingo]

Wow, I am stunned, despite my dodgey leads you have managed to find him, Gilbert White. God knows where i got Milton Keynes from. Seriously I am truely thankfull, I would never have found it myself.

* I was looking for this book "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne" written in 1789, and it is now sitting prooudly next to my bed.