Deer parks are a unique and peculiar concept. Landowners, from kings and emperors to squires and gentlemen, have aggrandised themselves since prehistory by isolating and controlling deer: the most iconic hunting quarry of the northern hemisphere. Enclosed parks represent humanity's closest parallel with the territories of animals yet no-one has attempted to unravel their history across cultures. Why did people empark deer? When did they start doing that? Why did England possess so many more parks than other countries? John Fletcher's experience of a lifetime spent handling deer in parks together with recent historical research enables him to shed new light on these questions.<BR><BR>Parks are about status; the deer and their venison, especially when used as gift commodities, symbolise that. The position of hunting in the human psyche is deep; even in the apes it may be more than merely a dietary survival strategy. Hunting enclosures existed before written history and recent research has indicated that the parkland landscape of Europe may be the habitat over which we have hunted for longest, and with which we have the longest connection and the deepest affinities; this is exemplified in European painting over many centuries.<BR><BR>Gardens of Earthly Delight describes not only the history of deer parks but man's relationship with deer. Over twenty-one chronological chapters Fletcher ranges from the significance of deer and venison in prehistory to the symbolism of venison as an elite gift commodity for seven centuries of the English Royal Warrant, as well as the three hundred year prohibition on its sale within England and continuing illegality of selling hunted venison in the USA. He stresses the importance of rulers being seen to hunt in ancient Chinese parks and examines the ring hunts of Asia, Persian hunting enclosures and German water hunts. Britain has a long and rich history of deer parks, and he describes how the deer were fed, transported, enclosed, captured, housed and hunted within parks, and how parks evolved from haga and elricks to the splendour of the Tudor era, the destruction of the Civil War, and beyond to the 21st century.