WILLIAM KENT: ARCHITECT, DESIGNER, OPPORTUNIST by TIMOTHY MOWL (Jonathan Cape, £20) The last word of the title and be assured that its pejorative overtone is intended demonstrates that Timothy Mowl's new life of Kent, the first full biography of the great designer, is far from being hagiography. Very far. Though Mowl admires much in his subject's life pre-eminently his work in creating the Arcadian image of 'the English garden' at Rousham, Stowe and Esher he is almost gleeful in his delineation of what he perceives to be Kent's faults. 'Devious', 'impudent', 'unscrupulous' and 'calculating' are among the adjectives he uses to describe him that last yoked to the 'opportunist' of the title, which shows, if nothing else, that Mowl does not always come up with the unexpected.

But can Kent be condemned for opportunism, when he was merely taking advantage of every helping hand that a talented youngster from that unlikely breeding ground for the artistic spirit, Bridlington, was going to need? Depicting Kent's work as a painter in Italy as a young man, Mowl seems disappointed to find no evidence of a sexual element in his relationship with his patron Lord Burlington, who brought him back to England where prestigious royal commissions for buildings and gardens soon came. After various unsubtle hints in the early chapters, the author finally owns (on Page 116) that Kent was not gay (unlike two of the the earlier subjects of this waspish and hugely readable biographer, William Beckford and Horace Walpole). The clinching evidence is the "positive relish" shown for his company by the notorious homophobe Alexander Pope, whose poetry is given an unfair 'dissing' as Mowl, with his curious fondness for 'yoofspeak' mingled with Parnassian, might have called it in the book.

Despite a few regrettable errors (including Cardinal 'Wolseley', like the car/restaurant), this is a very entertaining account of an unusual life, played out against a cultural and artistic background of which the author demonstrates a thorough grasp. It is particularly recommended to those who delight in the dells and arbours of Rousham the only surviving example of one of his landscape designs in its entirety though they might be surprised at the motive (alleged) behind certain aspects of the commission.