Stunning... [Weir has] brought those five queens to life like never before. I just raced through it - it has all the drama and suspense of a novel.

[A] historian who has achieved popularity without sacrificing scholarly precision... She writes with the dramatic intensity of a novelist.

The book that I most anticipated this year was Alison Weir's Queens of the Crusades... Told with all of Weir's characteristic verve and exceptional eye for detail, this book should find its way into every history lover's Christmas stocking.

As in previous books, the exceedingly knowledgeable author's prodigious research is impressive. Another treat for Weir fans.

This meticulous group biography of the first five Plantagenet queens of England brushes away long-standing legends. Weir skillfully documents the political, religious, and cultural issues of medieval England and France.

Tombs is a historian of rare elegance and puckish wit [and] This Sovereign Isle is a light and spritzig essay

Cambridge professor Tombs offers a fine first draft of history in this objective explanation of how and why Brexit happened. Tombs takes a witty, engagingly ironic approach to the false claims of Project Fear.

A short, punchy, eloquent statement from such a distinguished historian

A rare intellectual proponent of Brexit, Robert Tombs infuriates pro-Europeans-even more so because of his undeniable calibre as a historian ... This Sovereign Isle argued that the Leave vote was inevitable as well as rational: the UK never fitted the European project. He understands this as a reaction to the traumas of the continent's story - traumas that Britain's distinctive journey has sometimes ducked ... His theme - national identity in a fracturing world - has contemporary significance far beyond these shores.

Really interesting, regardless of what side you voted on. Even if you voted remain it's well worth reading

bracing stuff, and very convincing

intelligent and insightful. Readers are sure to find This Sovereign Isle a page-turner

a heroic book... a cracking read

Tombs' account of the context is valuable to us economists for at least two reasons. First, he reminds us that the debate was not only - or even primarily - about economics, despite his own initial nervousness on that score. Second, he does not subscribe to the UK's miserabilist, declinist, establishment outlook ... It is a refreshing stance. I voted to remain

Praise for

Masterful, an enormously readable narrative of the English people from the Anglo-Saxons to the present

As ambitious as it is successful ... Packed with telling detail and told with gentle, sardonic wit, a vast and delightful book

A stupendous achievement ... a story of a people we can't fail to recognize: stoical, brave, drunken, bloody-minded, violent, undeferential, yet paradoxically law-abiding ... I found myself gripped

Original and enormously readable, this brilliant, hugely engaging work has a sly wit and insouciance that are of themselves rather English

[A] graceful, funny book... Ridley offers fine-grained and astute sketches of members of the king's entourage as they came and went

Outstanding . . . richly entertaining

Empireland argues passionately that our identity has been shaped for the worse by empire, and that we must do more to debunk national myths

In the wake of personal epiphany we glimpse with Sanghera pathways of transformative potential ... a simple but profound response - this searching introspection and a quest for new horizons, combined with a readiness to sit with the contradictions of it all

My book of the year so far. A really thoughtful, deeply researched and elegantly written look at the legacy of empire

Very well written ... decent, balanced and wise. His decency and talent remind us of how much we owe to all those immigrants from our empire who came to make their lives here

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.