Biography
From age 10, De Thame studied ballet to a professional standard at the Royal Ballet School, White Lodge, Richmond Park. De Thame contracted glandular fever at age 15, and eventually chose to give up her dream of a dancing career at age 19. She then undertook a part-time evening course in Drama at Southgate College in 1979/1980 and studied History of Art at London's City Lit, after which she worked for a short period for a well-respected international firm of art dealers in London. She then married for the first time.
While pregnant with her first baby, de Thame was recruited by a modelling agency and went on to enjoy a successful modelling career. A major part of Rachel's modelling included appearances in TV ads - where she met her second husband - and casting agents soon began to suggest De Thame for acting roles. By 1998, she had appeared in the mini-series Merlin and in the British feature film Bodywork; credited in both productions as "Rachel Colover".
However, as a long-term career, acting was not Rachel’s ideal choice so late in 1998 she enrolled at the English Gardening School, indulging an inherited passion from her father. After earning a certificate in Practical Horticulture and Plants & Plantsmanship, she immediately auditioned for BBC2’s Gardeners' World. Initially a weekly presenter, following the birth of her second child from her second marriage she now makes occasional appearances on the programme. She has also filmed her own series for the BBC, Small Town Gardens and Gardening with the Experts. De Thame has co-presented the BBC's annual coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show, Hampton Court Flower Show as part of the Royal Horticultural Society output on BBC 2. Other television appearances include Going for a Song and Call My Bluff, both for the BBC.
In 2008 De Thame designed the 2008 LK Bennett garden at the Chelsea Flower Show.
De Thame has written two gardening books, Small Town Gardens and Rachel de Thame's Top 100 Star Plants, and co-wrote Gardening with the Experts. She currently writes a monthly horticultural column for The Sunday Times and has also contributed to the gardening pages of The Daily Telegraph, Gardeners' World Magazine, Woman's Own Magazine, Eden Magazine.
Read more about this topic: Rachel De Thame
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)