Excellent...intricate and absorbing...An elegant, shrewd and wonderfully vivacious book.

An excellent account of the greatest of England's remarkable great queens.

An informative and entertaining biography.

Full, fair and judicious and particularly good on Elizabeth's private life.

Fantastic and fascinating! Alison Weir's great talent is to pack in details without losing readability...highly recommended

A 21st-century [biography] was overdue . . . and nobody could do it better than the immensely experienced Jane Ridley . . . The Windsors have always been emotionally handicapped, and in this respect George V was their prize exhibit

A magnificent new life -- wonderfully funny, from its winning subtitle onwards, and full of human sympathy and understanding . . . an evocative and touching portrait of a surprisingly impressive man

The best royal biography since James Pope-Hennessy's Queen Mary (1959) . . . rivetingly interesting . . . sheds an entirely new light on both George V and his consort . . . Jane Ridley persuades us that their tactful handling of the many crises of the reign paved the way for the stable constitutional monarchy that persists to this day

Splendid

Jane Ridley is a consummate storyteller and superb researcher. With a funny, analytical, sympathetic touch she both conveys the immediacy of history and invests those elusive, long-ago events and mysterious, long-dead people with a humanity recognisable to us all

A big beautiful beast of a book. Fair, thorough and unexpectedly funny, it won't be surpassed for decades

Jane Ridley has written the definitive biography of George V. Sharply observed, revealing and very absorbing, 'dull George' and his dutiful wife, Mary, emerge in a new light as the monarchies of Europe crumble around them and the horrors of the early twentieth century unfold. At a pivotal time in the history of our democracy, with world leaders tested to their limits, Jane gives a gripping and authoritative account of what was happening behind palace doors

A truly inspirational new biography of George V

A superb book; arguably it is the best biography of George V... immensely readable, wonderfully researched

Ridley is good on the telling detail . . . lively and unstuffy

[George V] is candid, well written, based on wide research and full of piquant detail, some of it new

This deeply researched biography casts new light upon the misunderstood monarch and his Queen, Mary of Teck. Illuminating, intensely readable

Sparkling

Riveting... Ridley brings new insight to George's personal life... Well-researched and entertaining, this book offers a vluable reassessment of a king who shaped modern Britain

[A] graceful, funny book... Ridley offers fine-grained and astute sketches of members of the king's entourage as they came and went

Outstanding . . . richly entertaining

Empireland argues passionately that our identity has been shaped for the worse by empire, and that we must do more to debunk national myths

In the wake of personal epiphany we glimpse with Sanghera pathways of transformative potential ... a simple but profound response - this searching introspection and a quest for new horizons, combined with a readiness to sit with the contradictions of it all

My book of the year so far. A really thoughtful, deeply researched and elegantly written look at the legacy of empire

Very well written ... decent, balanced and wise. His decency and talent remind us of how much we owe to all those immigrants from our empire who came to make their lives here

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.

Helen Lewis is one of the very few journalists whose every word I will read.