It's high time for a new biography of this extraordinary woman, who was a cross between Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Thackeray's Becky Sharp... Devices and Desires is fluently written and full of vivid colour and detail... This book will take its place rightly as the definitive biography of Bess of Hardwick

Part biography and part building history, considering along the way the erection of Elizabethan prodigy houses, such as Longleat, Theobalds, Wollaton, and, above all, Bess's Hardwick New Hall. It is in here that we can still see Bess's wit, ambition, creativity and vast wealth... Meticulous... A work of considerable scholarship

Carefully researched and smartly written... The story of building in the 16th century is an elegant way into the ambitions and preoccupations of Bess's world.... The book's true stars are the buildings and one is grateful to its author for reminding us how wonderful they were

A dynamic portrait of Bess's life... Hubbard makes creative use of often-overlooked sources, such as lists of purchases, to flesh out Bess's daily life and surroundings, and how she sought to shape both. The fascinating relationship between Bess's biography and her building projects is also brought to the fore. Bess of Hardwick emerges from Devices and Desires as a fascinating and influential woman

An enjoyable retelling of Bess’s long and remarkable life…and her astonishing impulse to build

A fascinating portrait of the second most powerful female character in Elizabethan England, and a wonderfully detailed account of the making of its historic houses

Excellent. The approach taken is innovative, taking the reader back into the world of Bess of Hardwick, who was arguably the Elizabethan period's greatest builder. Kate Hubbard clearly sets Bess and her building works in the context of the period and her peers, providing the most nuanced account of her life to date

A compelling study… Hubbard illuminates the creative process behind the construction of [Bess’s] architectural masterpieces

[A] vivid biography

fascinating ... dominated by the author's personal enthusiasms, researches and memories

a thrilling read ... His clear, engaging style introduces us to the Scandinavian communities of the eighth and ninth centuries, centered around the farmstead, before catapulting us overseas and outward into an expanding world where raiding and trading quickly boosted the wealth of individuals and the ambitions of the elites. ... The stereotype of the Viking that we know from history books and popular media is here dismantled and presented anew by Mr. Price in all its wonderful, terrifying complexity and ambiguity.

The question that this dark, brilliantly written and absorbing book asks is: who were these people and where did this violence come from?...The powerful and unsettling message of this book is that they never went home. These strange, vicious people are our forebears. They never went home.

as Neil Price shows in his colourful, revelatory new book, we are almost always looking at the Vikings the wrong way around. Price is one of the world's foremost experts on the Vikings and holds the chair of archaeology at Uppsala University ... He may know more about medieval Scandinavia than anyone else alive, and he aims to show us these fascinating people as they saw themselves, not as they were perceived by those on the sharp end of their robbery ... Thousands of books have been published about the Vikings - this is one of the very best.

Seb Falk lays out the wonders of medieval science. . . The mechanical clock, spectacles, advances in navigation, a grasp of tides and currents - these were among the achievements of the Middle Ages

How blissful it was to leave the 21st century behind and immerse myself in this debut by a Cambridge historian and one of the BBC's New Generation Thinkers. . . Aiming to overturn the idea that the Middle Ages were dark ages, he introduces us to a 14th-century monk named John of Westwyk: inventor, astrologer, crusader. Through his eyes, we embark on a wondrous voyage of discovery

Long before the word 'scientist' was coined, John of Westwyk devised a precision instrument to explore the universe and our place in it. Falk recreates the schooling of this ordinary (if gadget-obsessed) medieval monk in loving detail. There's a world of science on every page

The phrase "medieval science" is often understood as a contradiction. Here, the historian and Cambridge University lecturer Seb Falk provides a lucid explanation of why it is not.

Remarkable ... a book that illuminates not just the visionaries of the past but also the troubled state of anti-intellectualism in the modern world

Like a fictional scientist cloning dinosaurs from wisps of DNA, Seb Falk takes barely surviving fragments of evidence about an almost forgotten astronomer in a storm-chilled, clifftop cell to conjure the vast, teeming world of scientific research, practice and invention in the late middle ages. He makes readers share the experience of making an astrolabe, computing the heavens, and studying everything 'from the colour of a patient's urine to the ninth sexagesimal place in a table of apogees'. Profoundly scholarly, wonderfully lucid and grippingly vivid, The Light Ages will awe the pedants and delight the public.

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.

On Chapel Sands is beautifully written, immersive and moving – and it’s one of the finest books of the year

A haunting investigation into family trauma and secrets from a forgotten England that turns out to lie closer to the surface than anyone suspected. Turning detective, she [Laura Cumming] interrogates old snapshots with the forensic skill of a professional art critic

On Chapel Sands starts by seeming to be about one kind of mystery but soon starts being about another, much more profound one… the subtlety and suspense of the narrative lies in the way Cumming allows details about their relationship to emerge slowly, like a photograph socking in developing fluid

With her critic’s eye, Cumming turns detective to investigate who took her mother and tell a pacy story about relationships, pride and the ramifications of what goes unsaid

In a year strong in ingenious memoir, Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands…stood out, not just for its great storytelling but for Cumming’s wonderful ability to bring to life a Lincolnshire coastal community…its moods, characters and toxic secret-harbouring machinery

This beautifully written memoir of family mystery proved one of the surprise hits of 2019

[A] twisting literary mystery that also serves as a deeply moving love letter

A complex story of family secrets, beautifully written, and illustrated

A beautiful, multi-layered story full of lost love, human motivation and tender secrets

[A] bewitching blend of history and mystery

A scrupulous work of storytelling, radiant with empathy and filial affection