Peter Walker has written the book I wanted to write. It should be compulsory reading for anyone in a decision making role. This might seem a sweeping statement but when you see the diverse and positive impact more cycling could have on our lives - cyclist or not - you’ll understand.

Stacked with stats and filled with stories, this book is as exhilarating as a clear stretch of highway. If we are at a turning point for cycling in big cities, this book is it.

Where cycling is considered normal, and where it's done by 25 percent of more of the population, people are healthier, happier and richer, demonstrates Bike Nation.

Peter Walker may just have written the most convincing argument ever seen for 'how cycling can save the world’… Walker provides invaluable information on every discussion that you are likely to encounter when making the case for cycling… This book should be sufficient to convince rational people that we would all benefit from a society that is less centred on motor vehicles and more open to the benefits of cycling

It’s the sort of book best read with a highlighter pen as there lots of different quotes, facts and interviews that you’ll want to refer back to again and again… If you’re involved in cycle campaigning, this book is an excellent introduction to new members of your group to help get them up to speed. It’s also a powerful read for transport planners, councillors, MPs, council officers and local influencers. Anyone with even a semi-open mind in making the town they live in work better for everyone (including drivers) will find this an illuminating read. I highly recommend this book

This is not just a book for cycle campaigners. It will help everyone who cycles to understand how they are part of something that has the potential to change our nation for the better

This is a very timely book. Peter Walker is a political columnist at the Guardian, and when it comes to writing in a calm, fact-heavy tone that still manages to hold your attention, there are few that can match him. He’s also been one of the newspaper’s regular writers on cycling for several years now, and for this book he clearly had a wealth of material to draw on… Overall this is a great summary of the challenges facing cycling, as well as the opportunities it presents to transform our cities and our lives. It’s accessible enough to be read by anyone, regardless of their knowledge of cycling, and I’d happily drop a copy in every town hall or transport authority’s office in the UK, like a sustainable transport version of a Gideon Bible. It’s also imbued with an empowering sense of optimism, particularly around the recent developments for cycling in London. We have a huge amount of work to do if we want to turn cycling back into an attractive, safe form of everyday transport in the 21st century. But this book sets out the why and the how as elegantly as anything I’ve read

A hugely refreshing dunk in the ocean ... fascinating

A genuine and powerful insight into the lives of people who brave the sea for a living

An immersive account... It is an eye-opening, dramatic and poignant account of life on Cornwall’s most dangerous coast and the people who fish it.

The Swordfish and the Star is a fine, and at times really beautiful, book. It has a tough no-nonsense prose style that I very much admire. A style that entirely fits the lives of the people it is about, people who live tough lives where the land meets the sea at the far end of Cornwall. There are too few books that tell, so respectfully and truthfully, the stories of the men and women that make a living from the land and the sea

This is a marvellous and humane book about Cornwall -- and unusual: a travel book with no 'I' -- rather the traveller as a silent observer and patient listener. It is Cornish life as told by its people -- fishermen, farmers, publicans, singers, brawlers, historians, drunks, old-timers, newcomers and even D H Lawrence and King Arthur

Wonderfully evocative, from the title to the last line. Knight has condensed the detailed tales and tragedies from decades of fishing, to produce a real insight into those who brave the sea. Full of brotherhood and triumph, loss and sadness

Plaudits will arrive faster than an incoming tide.

In her memoir Leap In, Alexandra Heminsley gives an eloquent exposition of the painful, powerful but ultimately exhilarating effects of wild swimming throughout the winter.

Haunting and beautiful

Like father, like son, for both come across as hugely talented, hugely driven misfits.

The Marches marks him [Stewart] out not only as a writer but as a political force rooted in geographies so different to London as to shed new light on politics itself… [A] serious politician, social critic, and practical ethnographer at work. As such The Marches is a book for walkers, for those who love the Borders, and for fathers seeking inspiration in their family responsibilities… If this is the polymath as politician, then we need more of them.

This is so much more than the story of their journey – it’s a superbly written, endlessly fascinating book encompassing history, geology, landscape, family memories, wars experienced and lives well lived.

One of the most unexpected and enjoyable reads of 2016… The book fizzes erudition and is delightfully leavened by the companionship of his aged and doughty father.

A very funny book - not jovial in the post-Wodehouse Boris mode but something more taught and Caledonian... The politician in Stewart never had a chance against the writer, a reliable adversary of consensus and cant.

Beautiful, evocative, and wise.

The Marches is a transporting work from a powerful and original writer.

This beautifully written account is a moving memoir of tales from along the route but also reflections on life and relationships – father and son on this their last journey together.

Rory Stewart is one of the most talented men of our era. The Marches takes us from Rory’s constituency to his family house is an attempt to understand the bloody history of the Scottish borders… The quest is fascinating even if the answers are elusive.

As the book unfurls, the march along the marches turns into a eulogy to his father, part memoir, part biography, always a love story. It also contains one of the most unflinching, moving descriptions of death I have read.

This beautifully written book is a haunting reflection of identity and our relationships with the people and places we love.

Stewart provides much food for thought about how we value our past history