Fresh and lively... Vividly told... He sets before us not only the woman behind the throne but the girl behind the woman

The best account in English of the early years of Elizabeth... One of the most zestful pieces of narrative history written...a racy read and first-rate history

What a page turner! A white knuckle ride through history...inspired research, from the clues embedded in the portraits to court ceremonial to the often circumlocutory letters

I found myself compelled by David Starkey's vivid recreation of the hazardous uncertainty of Elizabeth's early life, her successive exclusions from the centre of power, the studiedly ambiguous answers she offered her interrogators, her inevitable implications in conspiracies and narrow escapes from execution

Combines a relaxed and unfussy style with a thorough knowledge of the period and a sharp eye for detail. Elizabeth's life makes for a compelling story and Starkey tells it well

The best political diarist of our times

Reading A. N. Wilson's The Victorians provides ongoing pleasure in handsomely researched, beautifully written prose about an age which we have come to think disparagingly. We thought wrong

The Victorians was one of the books that gave me greatest pleasure during the past year... A brilliant evocation of an age

Rarely have author and subject been found in such deep and contented harmony... Wilson's tour de force

Wilson's panoramic survey is the best attempt so far to describe and explain what was happening in that fascinating time

The Victorians finds Wilson writing at the height of his powers

I can't recall a history book furnishing so many laughs en route ... The Victorians is a work of scholarship, a labour of love, a persusasive polemic