This is a portrait skilfully drawn in the round...brilliantly captured

Wonderfully researched and absorbing account

Rosemary Ashton tells his story [John Chapman's] with both aplomb and scholarship. Anyone wanting to deepen their knowledge of London's intellectual life at this time will find her book indispensable

Rivetingly entertaining

On the intellectual debates...that exercised these characters she is excellent, describing books and linking ideas with panache. There are, too, many moments when the story of 142 Strand comes very vividly to life

[Ashton] comes close to creating something far more original than a standard biography: not a romance, but the real-life equivalent of a Victorian multi-plot novel; a web of human connections that comes closer than any recent historical study to capturing the spirit of the age

A truly marvellous evocation of a group of people living at the centre of Victorian life. She draws a picture so vivid it is like a novel; so detailed and dramatic in all its emotional twists and turns that we feel we are living through its story. ..a real page turner

Brilliant, sparkling and witty

A rich and fascinating account.... His unravelling of the theories is a model of common sense and responsible reasoning

Anyone who has toyed with suspicion over the accidental nature of Princess Diana's death, or the self-inflicted nature of David Kelly's, will have that flirtation brutally curtailed by Aaronovitch's caustic rationality

A useful book about an important subject

With dark wit and extraordinary patience he lays bare the psychology of conspiracism

Voodoo Histories is as concerned with understanding conspiracies as it is with rebutting them, and Aaronovitch's tone throughout is that of the sage psychologist, his method that of the forensic historian

Fascinating

Admirably diligent

He is articulate, well-versed and a good writer; it's worth reading this whether you agree with him or not.

Fascinating account of the major conspiracy theories of the past 100 years

Aaronovitch aims to do more than expose popular nonsense

Forensically intelligent and hugely enjoyable study of modern conspiracy theories...consistently reasonable, persuasive and humane

Solid, well-researched and unexpectedly gripping

[Aaronovitch] is, broadly speaking, an enemy of conspiracy theories. He is also articulate, well versed in the facts and a good writer

Aaronovitch painstakingly dissects these and some of the other great conspiracy theories of the age and demonstrates with merciless clarity what utter tripe they are.

A serious, entertaining and shocking investigation into the stuff that conspiracy theories are made of. Aaronovitch guides us through the half-truths and speculation and examines the distrust of officialdom which fuels conspiracists' imagination.

In its many-layered discoveries, the book is truly magnetic