One of the most brilliant journalists in the country

Peerless reporting ... sharp and instructive ... wonderfully acidic about people when he thinks they deserve it

A national institution

Playing devil's advocate is the function he performs better than anyone else anywhere ... an excellent and amusing read

Written from the battlefield ... Humphrys has written an important book

The best political diarist of our times

Reading A. N. Wilson's The Victorians provides ongoing pleasure in handsomely researched, beautifully written prose about an age which we have come to think disparagingly. We thought wrong

The Victorians was one of the books that gave me greatest pleasure during the past year... A brilliant evocation of an age

Rarely have author and subject been found in such deep and contented harmony... Wilson's tour de force

Wilson's panoramic survey is the best attempt so far to describe and explain what was happening in that fascinating time

The Victorians finds Wilson writing at the height of his powers

I can't recall a history book furnishing so many laughs en route ... The Victorians is a work of scholarship, a labour of love, a persusasive polemic