In illuminating her own, Light serves up the most powerful family history I have ever read.

Light writes beautifully. With such colour and with perception and lyricism she clads the past....Common People is part memoir, part thrilling social history of the England of the Industrial Revolution, but above all a work of quiet poetry and insight into human behaviour. It is full of wisdom.

This book is a substantial achievement: its combination of scholarship and intelligence is, you may well think, the best monument you could have to all those she has rescued from time's oblivion.

Evocatively written...a thrilling and unnerving read

Exquisite...Barely a page goes by without something fascinating on it, betraying Light's skill in winkling out the most relevant or moving aspects of her antecedents' lives, which echo through the generations.

[A] short and beautifully written meditation on family and mobility.

Intellectually sound and relevant...a refreshingly modern way of thinking about our past.

Light [is skilled] in probing dark corners of her ancestry and exposing their historical meaning...packed with humanity.

Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, Alison Light makes her family speak for England.

A remarkable achievement...should become a classic.

Indefatigably researched, moving and perceptive, Nicholson handles her wide-ranging material with sympathy, humour and a lightness of touch. Her enviable gift for interpretation and storytelling is balanced by first-hand accounts of those women of the 1950s, their youth so relatively recent, who have trusted her with the intimate details of their lives

There is certainly warmth in [Virginia Nicholson's] curiosity as she delves into the stories of her mother's generation . . . Nicholson's judgements are rightly and often amusingly sharp . . . Her skill as an interviewer leaves her subjects revealing long-kept secrets and her flair as a writer makes us care about these young women and what happens to them

Richly detailed. We hear from women working as air hostesses, housewives, biscuit packers, prostitutes, academics, models, secretaries and Buttlin's Redcoats. We discover how women felt entering beatuty contests, having to give up work on marriage, being defined by their husband's jobs, becomming unmarried mothers, enduring racism, marching against nuclear weapons and desiring other women. Nicholson's own commentary, in turns compassionate and wry, holds everything together

A fascinating look at the lives of ordinary women in 1950s Britain

Meticulously researched

A ground-breaking book, richly nuanced with titbits of information, insight and understanding

Remarkably perceptive and well-researched . . . Virginia Nicholson has produced another extraordinarily interesting work, sensitive, intelligent and well-written

An inspiring book, lovingly researched, well-written and humane . . . the period is beautifully caught

The popular image is of a world where women wore little frilled pinafores with immaculately coiffed hair and happy smiles as they dusted, swept and baked . . . But Nicholson's book reveals a much darker side of life

Gripping, constantly surprising: a page-turner. We hear at first hand the life stories of women from different walks of life, from factory workers to debs. Each story draws you right in and it's always a wrench to move on

A sparkling and fascinating account

Well-paced narrative...of great relevance today, when such conflicts seem (but only seem) to have disappeared.

Immensely compelling

Meticulously researched

The true strength of this meticulously researched book is the placing of the revelations into the context of a compelling human drama

Engrossing

[An] outstanding treasure of literature

Impeccably researched, and moving, this book breaks new ground