Edward Solomon Hyams (30 September 1910 – 25 November 1975)[1] was a British gardener and horticulturalist, historian, novelist and writer, and anarchist.

[4] Hyams spent his early adulthood (1929-1933) as a factory worker,[7] among other jobs, including in newspapers.

In the 1930s, Hyams was a pacifist and a member of the Peace Pledge Union, but abandoned pacifism upon the outbreak of the Second World War.

He wrote about this time in his memoir, From the Waste Land, describing the transformation of his home, "Nut Tree Cottages", into a prosperous market garden.

During this time, Hyams also developed a serious interest in viticulture, and in 1960 moved to south Devon, to re-establish grape vineyards in England.

Hyams began submitting short fiction to the BBC Third Programme and the New Statesman in the 1950s; after they were accepted, he became a regular contributor to both.

(He won the Scott-Moncreiff Prize in 1964 for his translation of Joan of Arc By Herself and Her Witnesses by the French historian Régine Pernoud.

He was involved with the New Statesman for many years, editing a history of the publication and an anthology of selected works from the journal.

[4] Hyams moved to Brampton in Suffolk in 1970, establishing a third garden on the property of an old Victorian school (described in An Englishman's Garden (1967)) In 1973, Hyams married Mary Patricia Bacon, divorced from Edward Bacon, an editor at the Illustrated London News.