This is an energetic, ambitious, provocative work by a young historian of notable gifts, which deserves a wide readership

A gifted historian...he tells the big story well but also illustrates his themes with many small stories and appealing anecdotes.

Todman explores every aspect of the British experience of the war...rich in telling detail and reliant on the records kept by a host of ordinary Britons as they came to terms with the events going on around them...what ordinary people thought about the time they were living through provides a texture and depth that older wartime narratives have often lacked.

[Dan Todman] has succeeded in creating something that adds to our perception of what happened during this critical period...It is a compliment to Todman that time and again in reading his book I found myself thinking that I wanted to know more about this or that aspect.

The first volume of Dan Todman's new history of Britain and the Second World War is a tour de force. Taking the story up to the end of 1941, Todman provides us with a judicious guide to the road to war and its catastrophic first phase, offering in addition a shrewd portrait of Churchill which is worth the price of the book alone. Total history at its best.

Bold and breathtaking... I have never read a more daringly panoramic survey of the period...Todman has taken on a mammoth task but, at half-time, he shows every sign of completing it triumphantly.

It is quite simply brilliantly well done. Gary Oldman's performance is nothing short of a masterpiece and Kristin Scott Thomas is remarkable. At one moment in the film I closed my eyes and I thought it was my grandmother speaking. It is also extremely moving - what my mother used to call a "two-handkerchief film"

Stands alongside any of the great studies of Churchill

McCarten's pulse-pounding narrative transports the reader to those springtime weeks in 1940 when the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Winston Churchill. Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable, Darkest Hour is a true story thrillingly told

Meticulously researched, splendidly told, immensely entertaining and often very moving

Thrilling ... An extraordinary book

He brings his familiar mix of thrilling anecdotes, meticulous accuracy and bizarre humour to a book that should appeal to many readers beyond military history buffs. An instructive, as well as an engrossing, read

An astonishing book

Important...gripping...a universal message of hope.

A beautiful memoir, reminiscent of the great works of Anne Frank and Viktor Frankl. But it is more than a book—it’s a work of art. It gave me goosebumps, the kind that grace you in transcendent moments of appreciating a Mozart sonata, an Elizabeth Barrett Browning sonnet, or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Edith Eva Eger is my kind of hero. She survived unspeakable horrors and brutality; but rather than let her painful past destroy her, she chose to transform it into a powerful gift – one she uses to help others heal.

This warm, compassionate and truly extraordinary book is much more than a remarkable Holocaust survivor story. It is at heart an examination of the human spirit and how it can be helped to survive after trauma. Like Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, a more important book for our times is hard to imagine.

Compelling and irresistible. A genuine, honest-to-goodness life-changer.

Inspirational

Powerful ... hard to put down.

Comparisons to Man's Search for Meaning are natural but this work has the potential to be even more bold.

The distressed fabric of the author's traumatic past becomes a beautiful backdrop for a memoir written with integrity and conviction...A searing, astute study of intensive healing and self-acceptance through the absolution of suffering and atrocity.

Comparisons to Man’s Search for Meaning are natural but this work has the potential to be even more bold

One of those rare, page-turning books that will leave the reader fundamentally changed

Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds... is beguiling and sublime.

Vuong's voice is unique and inspires empathy.

Beautiful... [Night Sky With Exit Wounds] is pretty special.

I loved Dadland for its tenderness, humour and candour. It has begun to open the door for me to what may well lie ahead in my life, in so many of our lives, in terms of ageing parents. And it has also taught me something deeply moving about tolerance, and about love

A wonderful, haunting and beautifully written memoir... I found myself laughing out loud at times and, at others, unable to hold back the tears... An absolutely stunning book

Dadland has the weight of family love but fizzes along in accessible and dynamic prose, highly recommended

A mesmerising performance by a natural storyteller gifted with the most seductive material possible, in the wild and wonderful life of her exasperating Irish father. Pain and annoyance is transmuted into pure narrative gold, as Keggie Carew interrogates the legend of this wartime adventurer and the bitter comedy of his domestic relationships and his late decline. A brave, risk-taking tale that alarms, delights and moves. As soon as you come to the end, you want to start again, to see if those things really happened

You love these people from the first page ... As Tom's life falls apart memory by memory, Keggie is picking it up again and her storytelling is spell-binding. Effortlessly readable, this is a delight combining laughter - and tears, yes, quite a few of those.

Compelling

A moving memoir-cum-biography.

By some margin my Book of the Month... A detective story, a family history, a thrilling tale of derring-do, and the most distinctive and affecting memoir I’ve read since H is for Hawk.

Utterly remarkable, and beautifully evoked… Dadland is a completely riveting, deeply poignant “manhunt” for which I predict great things.

Dadland, by Keggie Carew, is being tipped for award-winning breakout success in the vein of H is for Hawk

It’s an exorcism, ghost-hunt and swim through the archipelago of her father’s shattered self… The author’s descriptions have an easy lyricism.

The old question 'what did you do in the war, Dad?' has never had a more surprising or moving answer.

Warm and funny, sometimes regretful and sad, but overall a read like a rollercoaster. Wonderful.

You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I'd give up right now

You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I’d give up right now… This gripping book, written with real verve and a narrative expertise that wouldn’t shame a veteran.

A brilliant, bittersweet biography.

Keggie’s writing is immersive… She writes with a warmth and generosity about her father, a man who was a genuine character and hero.

Dadland is deeply personal. But it is also the story of our generations: people touched by war and by Alzheimer’s