Valuable on the backstory is Kevin O'Rourke's A Short History of Brexit (Pelican). As an Irish historian who divides his time between a French village and All Souls College, Oxford, O'Rourke is a quintessential Remainer; but he's not blind to the EU's supranational ambitions.

He recounts the history of British involvement with Europe over the last 60 years with unique concision and clarity. He searches for the motivations behind the Brexit vote, parsing arguments that it was the inevitable result of structural economic factors, that it stemmed from a misplaced backlash against rising inequality, or that it was just a fluke brought about by political miscalculation and opportunism. Ever the professor, O'Rourke hints that all these views contain some truth.

Crisp, clear and quietly devastating ... It might indeed be questioned whether such a project is worth doing while the outcome is so uncertain. But O'Rourke's book provides a bracing and absorbing answer. As he puts it towards the end, Brexit has already been "a hugely informative, if costly, civics lesson for the people of Britain, Ireland, and the rest of Europe" and he is superbly well fitted to draw out that lesson for the general reader.

The 2016 referendum already feels so long ago that it is hard to remember that a longer story was erased and forgotten amid the fevered claims of £350m, 80m Turks and the 'easiest' deal in history. Kevin O'Rourke painstakingly lays out the facts in A Short History of Brexit

A Short History of Brexit couldn't have come at a better time ... an excellent and authoritative exploration of the roads to Brexit, one that is erudite, rigorous and highly readable

Anyone who has found themselves newly politicised by the convulsions of British politics in general or Brexit in particular will find this a handy primer on the events and undercurrents that led to our present discontent. Anyone who is familiar with that history will find something they knew, but hadn't fully appreciated.

[Mortimer] has already written guides to the medieval, Elizabethan and Restoration periods, and now he's bringing that same mix of telling anecdote and pithy research to Regency Britain, that funny wedge of time squeezed between the Georgians and the Victorians

Thrilling...when you read it, you imagine yourself among your ancestors, and they are as awful and ingenious as we are

Excellent ... Mortimer's erudition is formidable, and he rarely writes a dull sentence ... Georgette Heyer's research for her novels would have been so much easier with this book on her shelf. As for Jane Austen, she would have found in its pages not only her own world, but other Regency worlds she probably never knew existed. And now, two hundred years later, so can we

Every page of The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain is crammed with enlightening information

As entertaining as it is inventive

Put away your Austen: this eye-popping microhistory spares no detail of the slums, squalor and bad dentistry of Regency Britain; a lost world springs from the page

All the history you need to understand why you're so furious, angry and still hopeful about being a woman now. A book that is part intellectual weapon in your handbag, part cocktail with a friend.

A great manifesto for all those women who have never been very good at being well-behaved.

Difficult Women has real bite and is brimming with the kind of sharp wit that renders it unsuitable reading on public transport lest you start cackling.

Through her telling of the fascinating histories of Difficult Women, Lewis gifts us with a fresh, whip-smart and compassionate perspective on contemporary feminism. A brilliant and inspiring book.

Well-behaved women may not make history but brilliant women certainly write it. Helen Lewis’s glorious history of feminists, feminism, and female causes is a rallying cry for women to take up intelligent action and fight – fight for those rights!

Helen Lewis is one of the very few journalists whose every word I will read. Her debut book…makes the very solid point that the acquisition of rights for women has not always come from those who one would necessarily like.

Some names you will recognise, others will be new. All deserve your respect. In a world where equality still feels like an uphill struggle, it is wonderful to celebrate eleven epic and ultimately victorious battles.

A witty and wise corrective to the whitewashed heroines of the “rebel girls” and “awesome women” industry.

I loved Difficult Women. Helen Lewis writes with a devilish wit and a clear eye about the harder edges of meaningful progress. Engaging, moving, witty and sobering - Difficult Women is a book for all humans who value all humans, as difficult as they may be.

An extremely important and timely book that shows why sometimes it pays to be a "difficult woman".

[Difficult Women is] written in a feistily accessible style…so it’s easy to engage with the actual substance.

Intellectually rigorous, satisfying, eloquent and witty with it. What more could you want?

Ultimately it chimes with a resounding clarion call: we are difficult women. Don’t sand our edges away. Celebrate us in all our uneven glory. After all, well-behaved women don’t make history.

Blending rigorous research with passages that make you bark with laughter, this is an effortlessly smart study of feminism’s power to make society better for everyone.

Helen Lewis has produced a real gem in Difficult Women... With wit and understanding...it is effective and often very moving.

A collection of fascinating, well-researched and vividly told biographies of women who made tangible contributions to the lives we live now… Lewis’ book is challenging, punchily written and refreshing in equal measure, and a joy to read.

A lesson modern progressives would be remiss to ignore.

Any one of these women could fill a book on her own, but Lewis deftly threads their lives together into an irresistibly rumbustious account of this movement; sometimes affecting, sometimes very funny (the footnotes are a sass-filled joy) and sometimes shocking.

[Difficult Women] is meticulously researched and intelligently argued whilst also being extremely readable. Unusually for a non-fiction book, it is a page-turner. Lewis' style is playful and engaging, and after each chapter you find yourself turning the page asking eagerly "but what happened next?”… Interspersed with personal anecdotes and often funny footnote asides, she deals with the serious alongside the light-hearted in a way which demonstrates her talent as a writer, researcher and journalist

This history of feminism eschews feelgood, empowering clichés and goes in search of the 'difficult women' who shaped the fight for gender equality.

Engaging and witty, this history of feminist fights will keep you gripped to the last page.

This often hilariously funny book taught me about the women who fought for my freedoms. Unlike in so many accounts, these women are not canonised but written as they are, imperfect.

Helen Lewis is one of the very few journalists whose every word I will read.