Top TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, left, stopped off in Oxford yesterday to publicise his new novel.

Alan Titchmarsh in Oxford this week The green-fingered host of BBC TV's Ground Force joined more than 100 shoppers for coffee and croissants at Waterstone's book shop in Broad Street, before reading an extract from Animal Instincts ,about a man who returns from Australia to find he has inherited a nature reserve in the middle of the English countryside.

Waterstone's events manager, Angela Parker, said: "The guests were enthusiastic and they very much enjoyed the event."