A captivating book on a pioneering footballer. Read it.

Meticulously researched...incredible

A book bursting with telling anecdote… a fully rounded, highly accomplished portrait

Ian Hawkey, casts an expert eye over the life and career of Real Madrid’s original galactico, his experience of the politics of Franco’s Spain, and tells the complete story of Spain’s original footballing icon

People argue between Pele or Maradona. Di Stéfano is the best, much more complete.

The most complete footballer in the history of the game

Maybe the greatest player I have ever seen

The greatest of the greats

Leap In celebrates the glory of swimming.

This is a candid and empowering book. I recommend it.

Warm, personal and moving

Inspiring

An honest moving account of marriage, personal loss and living life to the full.

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