uplifting...you'll be radiating goodness all year!

I have a short list of intellectual heroes, and Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett each have a place on it—not because I always agree with their views, but because I'm in awe of the way they form, express, and defend their views. If thinking were a sport, these four would be national superstars—and reading The Four Horsemen feels like having a front row seat at the all-star game. This is more than a book about atheism and religion—it's a lesson in how to use our intellect to cut through the haze of delusion and misconception inherent in any human society.

We are slowly losing the hard-won right, gained by brave heroes of the enlightenment such as Voltaire and Hume, to be free to criticise religion without persecution and prosecution; the crime of blasphemy is creeping back. The words of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett are needed more than ever. These are the heirs to Voltaire.

I was gripped. Throughout this erudite conversation the humility and openness of science shines against religion’s arrogance, hypocrisy and sheer gall in just ‘making stuff up’. How refreshing it is.

One to watch: electrifying

If you had to pick a place for our pop culture to change, Sun Records on December 4, 1956 at a jam session with Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley is a pretty good symbolic spot. This conversation on September 30th, 2007 with Daniel, Sam, Richard, and Elvis . . . I mean Hitch at Hitch’s pad is as good a place as any to mark the start of the Atheist revolution.

What a gift to be able to eavesdrop on this conversation! These four are the kinds of thinkers we don’t get enough of anymore; unapologetic, uncompromising, and deeply generous with one another as well as anyone who happens to be listening in. You needn’t be an atheist or a horseman to relish every word of this delightful book. You just need to be hungry for genuine intellectual inquiry and open debate. And, let’s face it, you’re probably starving.

Reading this book is like to getting to spend a profound afternoon with some of our greatest intellectuals. Blasphemous, erudite, devastatingly truthful, slyly hilarious. I gasped, I laughed, I nodded, and sometimes had to stop and just think for a moment about what they'd dared to say.

For people inclined to disbelieve supernatural explanations -- in America, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters -- The Four Horsemen is a smart, fun, funny, seriously provocative primer.

Thrilling...Challenging...This bracing exchange of ideas crackles with energy...an invigorating example of what happens when astute, inquisitive minds engage together on deep questions.

The second volume of Simon Schama’s story of the Jews…continues with a cast of characters so extraordinary that some seem hardly more believable than the Sabbath-keeping Sambatyon river… Schama, as both a historian and a Jew, closes his wonderful book the only way he could: with love shot through with melancholy and foreboding

Schama writes history through personalities, a technique that makes the second of his vast-ranging history of his people as gripping as the first… All these stories offer pathways backwards and forwards in time, and make an unforgettable tale of mixed fortunes

A masterpiece

A revelation. It is an engaging and electrifying read by a skilled literary craftsman, cultural historian and tour guide … Schama enchants his readers by introducing colorful characters worthy of a Charles Dickens novel ... [it] dazzles with the art and alchemy of an adventure novel

Schama writes with power and energy, and his patchwork of individual tales crosses the world.

Extraordinary… From Britain to France, from America to the dark forests of central and eastern Europe, Schama’s scalpel-like wit and painterly descriptions provide a bravura panorama of the Jewish story

It’s a riveting read, bursting with anecdote, colour and wit. Schama uses individual stories to highlight horror and suffering, but also to illustrate bravery, achievement and hope

Few historians write with the energy of Simon Schama. His second volume on the history of the Jews shows that Schama has lost none of his vigour

Simon Schama takes the reader through a grand sweep of Jewish history, but he makes it so personal you begin to feel you know the men and women whose lives shine out from the pages, and their foibles, and you get a sense of the fragility of their lives and their determination to survive. It's a brilliant piece of work

Schama's speciality is to take sometimes little-known historical figures and bring them dramatically to life. We are presented with a glittering cast of Jews from every century since the 15th ... Belonging shows Jews as prize-fighters and charlatans, theatre managers and physicians, writers, actors, painters, farmers and musicians. They are men and women of every sort, who leap off the pages as they struggle with what Schama has defined as the abiding challenge of Jewish life in the diaspora

Simon Schama’s epic tale of the Jewish people is full of rich, colourful stories that span centuries and continents and include massacres, miracles, discrimination and tolerance… Passionate

In the hands of a master colourist, this is history as a portrait gallery.

It is an engaging and electrifying read by a skilled literary craftsman, cultural historian and tour guide.

Dazzling.

Schama presents his material with the wit and panache of a novelist. The reader is treated to a dazzling parade of humanity in all its glory and shame. Every page sparkles with rich material and the range of learning is breathtaking. The story of Jewish survival – and sometimes even flourishing – against all the odds is utterly riveting.

Simon Schama is the perfect companion for a time-travelling journey through Jewish history… A beguiling narrator.

These accounts make such fascinating reading that, through Schama’s extraordinary gift for storytelling, his book was difficult to put down.

Recounts, one guest per chapter, a number of her interviews with the boldest of boldface figures . . . Entertaining

A quick, absorbing read . . . my overriding impression is of rather breathless thoughtfulness . . . her formidable intelligence and self-deprecating awareness shine brightly

We love the Maitlis

We're obsessed with Emily Maitlis in this house

Emily Maitlis is a particular hero of mine . . . I know I'm in for a treat with Airhead

Emily Maitlis is one of my favourite interviewers and I want to read her tales of interviewing people such as Donald Trump, Theresa May and Simon Cowell

A fascinating behind-the-scenes insight into modern television news

It's a brilliant, often funny, behind-the-scenes account of her working life, written by one of Britain's best television broadcasters. It proves she's far from an airhead!

She gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most engaging interviews she's conducted in recent years - with all the wrangling, arguing, pleading and last-minute script writing they involved. Insightful, funny and engrossing, we love it.