'Karen Armstrong has written an amazingly wide-ranging book, showing that the world's religious texts can be a force for good today, rather than a cause of conflict. The scale of her knowledge never ceases to astonish'

A triumph... Karen Armstrong is one of our great commentators on the sacred. In this book she explores the sacred texts with a scholar’s eye and an illuminating clarity suggesting how much their wisdom and lasting power are still needed today

[The Lost Art of Scripture] takes us on a glorious journey… Armstrong is the most articulate and generous-hearted exegete of religion writing in English at the present time

Rich and wide-ranging… [The Lost Art of Scripture] makes a fascinating read… a treasure chest of social and religious history. Armstrong’s lucid prose makes her many-stranded story remarkably straightforward to follow… a learned and stimulating book

A remarkable book by a remarkable writer… the author’s mission is urgent in the light of the uses to which the world’s scriptures are sometimes put

The Lost Art of Scripture… exhibits [Armstrong’s] well-known and admired characteristics as a writer: an ability to be both authoritative on all the major faiths…a reasoned insistence that religion today is misunderstood, as much by the religious as by their critics; and a passionate appeal to our fractious and fractured world to embrace religion’s core message…compassion and respect for others

Magisterial ... a dazzling accomplishment, a reflection of an encyclopaedic knowledge of comparative religion and of a wisdom about spirituality in the human species

Exhilarating, challenging and curiously comforting… [The Lost Art of Scripture has] been written not only with intellectual rigour and an accessible turn of phrase, but also with love

One of our best living writers on religion

Karen Armstrong is a genius

Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion

A fascinating excursion into neo-Gnosticism… Armstrong…has clearly done an enormous amount of reading and research to handle so skilfully the mass of material she surveys

[Armstrong] weaves…[a] truly vast history into a coherent and fascinating narrative… an interesting and very well-written book

An epic story with a polemical edge… [a] lucid account of the evolution of sacred text… The Lost Art of Scripture is an impressive achievement, presenting a wide sweep of global religious history in little more than five hundred pages… Armstrong is…an accomplished and fluent writer

[Fergusson] has marshalled his surveillance tools of wit, tenacity and decades of experience of the Muslim world to produce a fine, detailed portrait of Al-Britannia.

Don’t read Al-Britannia, My Country unless you’re prepared to let go of prejudices against Muslims, and seek a deeper understanding beyond headlines which have fanned the flames of fear and hatred. Fascinating, rich and complex.

An important book... ground-breaking.

A recommended read for anyone interested in the present condition and further development of Muslims in Britain.

[A] highly sympathetic new survey of British Muslims. The end of multiculturalism and its replacement with heightened surveillance and the emphasis on national cultural values are dealt with in detail. Fergusson’s belief that British Muslims should be valued because of their faith, not in spite of it, is a major improvement on the self-interested toleration that has often passed for an enlightened position on the Muslim question.

The human cost of the deadly Japanese tsunami is examined in this powerful and absorbing work that exposes the emotional trauma the mountain of water left in its wake… Parry, who has worked in Japan for years, documents with great closeness and insight the impact of such staggering loss on people living in a society not noted for its emotionality.

His central narrative swirls around the black hole formed in those 45 critical minutes between quake and tsunami. He knows that its awful gravity may pull some readers in, and push others away.

Natural disaster is given a jarringly human constitution in Ghosts Of The Tsunami… This is "literary non-fiction", full of gilded language and sensations as Parry recounts the scene he was met with when he travelled up the coast of Japan to where the giant waves had hit. A transcendental reading experience.

Ghosts of the Tsunami deals mainly with the aftermath of the tragedy – days, weeks and months in which parents continued doggedly looking in the mud for their children, knowing full well that there was no chance of finding them alive. Their testimonies are unbearably moving.

This is a haunting account of Okawa’s loss and it is almost unbearably sad. Parry rarely speaks of his own reactions but he is the most compassionate of writers, allowing the voices of those he encounters to be heard… Exceptional.

Powerful and absorbing.

A sobering and compelling narrative of calamity.

This is a piercing look at the communities ravaged by the tsunami

Recounts, one guest per chapter, a number of her interviews with the boldest of boldface figures . . . Entertaining

A quick, absorbing read . . . my overriding impression is of rather breathless thoughtfulness . . . her formidable intelligence and self-deprecating awareness shine brightly

We love the Maitlis

We're obsessed with Emily Maitlis in this house

Emily Maitlis is a particular hero of mine . . . I know I'm in for a treat with Airhead

Emily Maitlis is one of my favourite interviewers and I want to read her tales of interviewing people such as Donald Trump, Theresa May and Simon Cowell

A fascinating behind-the-scenes insight into modern television news

It's a brilliant, often funny, behind-the-scenes account of her working life, written by one of Britain's best television broadcasters. It proves she's far from an airhead!

She gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most engaging interviews she's conducted in recent years - with all the wrangling, arguing, pleading and last-minute script writing they involved. Insightful, funny and engrossing, we love it.