Hay's meticulously researched biography, rich in period and personal detail, sheds light on both Johnson and the vibrant cultural world he inhabited

[A] compelling and magnificent study... Dinner with Joseph Johnson is an admirable achievement of biography and humanistic imagination

Dinner with Joseph Johnson sheds much-needed light on a key figure in both the ideological and material context of the 18th century... Hay's meticulous research brings this "paper age" to life... Evokes the noise and excitement of an age characterised by the unceasing hum of literary debate... a fitting reflection of the period that Hay describes: a time when the written word could make someone's name - or cost them their liberty

This delightful book by the English literature professor Daisy Hay gives the reader the feeling of being at a rather elevated party... Johnson's guests talked, wrote and painted about democracy, human rights, atheism, feminism, anatomy, chemistry and electricity. While dreaming of a better future, they befriended each other, loved each other and criticised each other... shaped an era... Johnson was a brilliant talent spotter and supported the best minds of his day

A portrait of literary ferment... Daisy Hay's compendious and impressive survey illuminates the contribution to these significant ideological shifts of the ill-assorted men and women whose kinship was marked by their shared participation in Joseph Johnson's hospitality

Hay makes the most of a vivid period in English and especially London history. Her carefully poised study puts Johnson, today an obscure figure, back at the centre of his circle

A beautifully packaged, skilfully written and detailed book that finally gives this gentle revolutionary the recognition he deserves

Chronicling Johnson's fascinating dining companions and the changes that rocked Britain during the period, this is a feast for those interested in the 18th century

Marvellous... The list of [Joseph Johnson's] guests reads like a who's who revolutionary politics and culture: abolitionist MPs, Jacobin agents, pioneering scientists and radical preachers... Panoramic and kaleidoscopic

It makes little sense to approach a character of such extensive and various connections as the bookseller and publisher Joseph Johnson other than via the clubbable sort of method at which Daisy Hay has already proven herself adept... In Dinner with Joseph Johnson, she has again broadened her scope... Hay pursues lines of enquiry with patience and sensitivity to detail

Close attention to detail and brisk and vigorous prose

Where this book excels is in the writers' impressive untangling of the web of family interconnections betweens Brown's patrons

A worthwhile account of the designer of choice for the wealthy late-18th-century landowner

Engaging

In her exhaustive biography, Jane Brown leads us from Brown’s modest beginnings… to his fatal collapse in a Piccadilly street…Her strength is to show, by carefully extrapolating associations and commissions, how Lancelot’s star rose and rose in the crowded firmament of eighteenth-century society

A charismatic, dazzling piece of work that has the feel of a future classic. Shadows at Noon is remarkably rich and full of life, packed with insights conveyed through beautifully moving storytelling. A unique and vital book, it is at once incredibly informative, profound and very readable - a genuine page-turner

Both erudite and intimate, Chatterji narrates how South Asia in the twentieth century produced democracy and authoritarianism, inclusion and violent exclusion, all at the same time, explaining our present as well as giving us an account of the past

A tour de force of contemporary history of the Indian subcontinent. Its masterly analysis of the big picture - nationalisms, citizenship and the State - sets the stage for its innovative focus on ordinary people and their lives. A brilliant, wonderful read

This book's promise to deliver a 'people-centred history' of South Asia over the twentieth century is no small task. Chatterji's epic work meanders across this huge terrain, taking a series of imaginative angles such as the histories of the household, music, film and food, as well as many others. Combining scholarly rigour with a spontaneous tone and autobiographical style, this is a courageous and captivating work

A historical epic in prose - masterly, original, provocative - and, yes, compellingly readable

[A] bold, innovative and personal work rallies against standard narratives of ‘inherent’ differences between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and reveals the many things its people have in common

This extraordinary book exposes how various sides in the Petain debate have manipulated the historical record in a desperate attempt to make the past palatable.

Julian Jackson’s France on Trial grapples with the life and (mis)deeds of Philippe Pétain—the French general who led the Vichy regime during the Second World War—and the country’s dark feelings of hatred and guilt after the war.

Superb, totally fascinating and compelling, Katja Hoyer's first full history of East Germany's rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research - and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading

A beyond-brilliant new picture of the rise and fall of the East German state. Katja Hoyer gives us not only pin-sharp historical analysis, but an up-close and personal view of both key characters and ordinary citizens whose lives charted some of the darkest hours of the Cold War. If you thought you knew the history of East Germany, think again. An utterly riveting read

A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe and the forging of the 20th and 21st centuries

The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall Katja Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced and filled with interesting people

A refreshing and eye-opening book on a country that is routinely reduced to cartoonish cliché. Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the ordinary East Germans who built themselves a society that - for a time - worked for them, a society carved out of a state founded in the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism

A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history's most fascinating political curiosities. Katja Hoyer skilfully weaves diverse political and private lives together, from the communist elite to ordinary East Germans

Katja Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.

Katja Hoyer brilliantly shows that the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union. To understand Germany today we have to grapple with the history and legacy of its all but dismissed East

Katja Hoyer's return to discover what happened to her homeland - the old East Germany - is an excellent counterpoint to Stasiland by Anna Funder