A fascinating and scholarly study of one of the most influential film-makers of this century

She expertly marshals every source, from the journals of the famous (Goebbels, Speer) to the letters, diaries and affidavits of Riefenstahl's one-time friends and film colleagues

Where Salkeld excels is in the gradual, painstaking construction of a cumulative portrait...Indeed, by the end of the book, I confess I felt something I had never dreamt I could feel. I felt sympathy for Leni Riefenstahl

A wonderful book...Salkeld succeeds, in this not only sensitive but highly intelligent biography, in viewing Riefenstahl, and the psychological conflicts created by the politics and the personalities of the time, with admirable detachment - in moral multicolour, one might say, while describing a life in black and white

Highly entertaining...written with her accustomed dash and gaiety, in a manner which frequently suggests one of her delightful novels... Because Miss Mitford is so at home in Versailles, she confers the same feeling of being at home upon a sympathetic modern reader

Gossipy account of the art, affairs and poison paranoia at Louis XIV's Versailles.

Delectable biography

Hardman’s Our Queen is the closest thing to an official jubilee portrait. It is thoroughly researched.

[A] superb book.

As this book immodestly reveals, Tony Blair was, and remains, a remarkable influence on politics, both domestically and internationally

What makes his memoir so absorbing as it swings from clever phrase-making and thoughtful contemporary history to wince-inducing self-analysis, is that he is the first of a generation of politicians to conduct their craft as if observing themselves from an amused an admiring distance - and then to write about it. No recent politician has examines his own motives and psychology quite so candidly

It is the small revelations about the character of Blair that make this book worthwhile

It's a gripping insight into the ex-PM's ten years of power . . . It will take a lot for many people to read his own take on the rise and fall of New Labour, but those that do might be reminded of the charm and vision that swept him to power

I have read many a prime ministerial memoir and none of the other authors has been as self-deprecating, as willing to admit mistakes and to tell jokes against themselves

Paints a candid picture of his friend and rival, Gordon Brown, and of their relationship