Seeking a Christmas present for that bibliophilic relative who has seemingly read everything? It's right here.

Peculiarly hilarious and/or hilariously peculiar!

An enchanting billet-doux to an arcane and eccentric world. Every page is a pleasure.

A wonderful, eccentric love letter to books and the people who love them... A must read for anyone who has ever lost a few hours in a second hand bookshop or been tutted at by a strangely dressed proprietor.

Utterly charming

Darkshire is an exciting new voice brimming with self-effacing charm. If you consider yourself a book aficionado, this is your Coachella.

I love bookseller memoirs, and this is a laugh-out-loud exemplar... A very entertaining journey into the dimly lit heart of rare bookselling.

Sirs, thank you for your extremely entertaining book, which I have enjoyed most heartily. The anecdotes about the bookselling profession were as enlightening as they were amusing. Unfortunately I have mislaid the book in question as there are honestly too many books here. I mean, they're everywhere. Teetering piles of the things. If ever I see it again I'll try and say something nice about it, but by then it will undoubtedly be too late. Yours apologetically,

A book lover's delight

He writes very engagingly and extremely honestly... His sardonic wit runs through the book in a similar fashion to Shaun Bythell... But here there's more of a mischievous Terry Pratchett tone... Uproariously funny

Beneath the bemusement and occasionally explosive irritation, there is a very kindly book here, about unlikely friendships and little epiphanies.

Once Upon A Tome is an utter treat for those of us who prefer books and reading to any other activity - the oddballs and obsessives who, like waggish Oliver Darkshire, never easily mixed with other children at school; who loathed compulsory games and sport; who have never 'texted' or 'tweeted'; and who require a lot of floor space, 'an indecent amount of square footage', to house our ever-expanding hoard.

With its mixture of exaggerated misanthropy and eloquent surrealism, Once Upon a Tome calls to mind the cult television sitcom Black Books, albeit with more emphasis on matters of genuine interest to bibliophiles.

Mr. Darkshire is a witty observer .... All of this-the craft and customs of an esoteric enterprise; the delights and irritations of buying and selling-is conveyed in charming short chapters with titles like "Kerfuffles," and in a prim tone perfectly suited to Mr. Darkshire's subject.

Sen's gentle memoir shed[s] light on the distant nooks of a long life of distinction. ... There is something of Tagore in the judicious Mr. Sen. He is an un?inching man of science but also insistently humane.

warmhearted, clear-eyed account of the formative years of his life, a book that reaches from Myanmar to Berkeley ... a testament to just how far, in one life, one man might go into that vast world ... Sen's writing style is even-keeled and gently humorous.

PRAISE FOR AMARTYA SEN

With his masterly prose, ease of erudition and ironic humour, Sen is one of the few great world intellectuals on whom we may rely to make sense out of our existential confusion

Amartya Sen is one of the most distinguished minds of our time [who] enjoyably mixes moments of profundity with flashes of mischievous provocation

The world's poor and dispossessed could have no more articulate or insightful a champion

An accessible and exceptional humanitarian

Sen is one of the great minds of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We owe him a huge debt

A distinguished inheritor of the tradition of public philosophy and reasoning - Roy, Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru ... if ever there was a global intellectual, it is Sen