Virginia Nicholson is one of the great social historians of our time, and How Was It For You? is another jewel in her crown. No one else makes makes history this fun

They say that if you remember the 1960s you weren't really there. But if you really weren't, then the next best thing is to read this fascinating book. With the meticulous attention worthy of a Vidal Sassoon haircut, Virginia Nicholson has shaped her dazzling kaleidoscope of facts, feelings and observations, into a razor-sharp account of the women who lived through that tumultuous decade

Essential reading for all those who lived through it, and for those who came after

Intimate, immersive, often moving, How Was It For You? subtly but powerfully subverts complacent male assumptions about a legendary decade

How Was It For You? brings it all back. As always Virginia Nicholson's book is full of fascinating history and fascinating new material. It makes it feel like the Sixties have never been away, which they never have been, as far as I'm concerned. Wonderful

A hugely ambitious, kaleidoscope of a book, written in a sympathetic but also hard-headed tone that captures squalor and tragedy as well as glamour

Virginia Nicholson's social history of the lives of women during the 1960s is an absorbing study of an extraordinary age. Beautifully written and intensively researched, it covers a wide range of characters and many levels of society, uncovering with remarkable perspicacity a world of rebellion and change. I am sure How Was It for You? will remain a vital study for many years to come

Written with verve, wit and empathy, this account of the 1960s skilfully interweaves the lives of individual women with broader social and cultural changes. Virginia Nicholson nudges the reader to reconsider the well- beaten tracks and to reflect upon out-of-the-way experiences. Best of all How Was It For You? neither idealises nor excoriates the bouncy, controversial decade

Every baby boomer should read this great and wonderfully revelatory book if only to shout, 'Ah yes, that's exactly what it was like for me!'

For those of us who missed the 60's, Virginia Nicholson catapults this era to roaring, authentic life. Rich with intimate voices and a keen edged analysis of the public perceptions at work, this book brilliantly evokes the struggle between the urgent change and the heavily freighted forces of tradition that defined this singularly compelling decade. Read it. It is unputdownable

A tremendous achievement... a triumph of research and organisation - but also of sympathy

An important and humane book of female social history

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

Virginia Nicholson is the outstanding recorder of British lives in the twentieth century. She has told us how it was for British women - and therefore of course for men and children - in the twentieth century. The formidable research and sympathetic understanding of so many different lives make this account of the 1960s - that swinging, sexy, revolutionary decade - the most vivid and moving of all her works. A fascinating decade, a fascinating book

I loved this. Yes, the 1960s were good fun, sometimes. But Virginia Nicholson forensically unpicks what "promiscuity" really meant for flower-chicks, fearful of seeming un-cool. They were perpetuating a society as patriarchal and phallocentric as ever - even in the counter-culture. I was there, and she's right. Amazingly right about so many things. Roll on the 1970s when things did change - but that's for another of her excellent books

Sparklingly readable . . . Having read Nicholson's magisterial and sensuous overview of the decade, I feel I'm floating above the Sixties (a bit like Lucy in the Sky) and looking down on them with a new understanding

The stories are terrific

This vivid comprehensive study brought so many memories flooding back to me! It's a treat for those of us who were around in the sixties, and delightfully instructive for those who weren't

Sparkling . . . there is a wonderfully diverse range of voices . . . we have a long way to go, but reading this book made me grateful for how far we have come

Clever . . . absorbing

the city was "the melting pot of Europe" ... the hinge between the old Roman empire, the refounded Rome of Byzantium and the second new Rome of Charlemagne, who plundered its monuments for his capital at Aachen. Herrin's book ... is a welcome addition to a golden era of scholarship devoted to late antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Europe

Judith Herrin's Ravenna aims to set the mosaics, the buildings they ennoble and the urban landscape they inhabit back within a meaningful historical context. It's a worthy project that surprisingly has not really been attempted before ... it takes a scholar of Herrin's brilliance to bring events to life within a meaningful evocation of a time and a place. That skill, and a wonderfully pellucid prose style, ensures that even readers frustrated by the archaic narrative will find a great deal to admire and indeed learn from.

An ambitious, rewarding and detailed history of the city of Ravenna, spanning the period from its designation as imperial capital in the early fifth century to its Carolingian spoliations in the ninth. ... This book is a comprehensive, detailed and glittering history of the city within its Mediterranean context. It will attract the casual reader while also carrying sophisticated new arguments that will appeal to specialists.

Judith Herrin tells its fascinating history and presents a parade of forceful and creative characters with great insight and a wonderfully light touch, in a book as beautifully produced as it is profoundly researched.

Reviews for Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

Others in recent years have made worthy efforts to interest us in the Byzantine achievement, but none has made it live in quite the way that Herrin does ... Free from portentousness and pretentiousness, she doesn't insist on her subject's importance or relevance: the freshness and enthusiasm of her book is its real point. Not just an important work of scholarship but a delight to read, this study works a minor miracle in raising Byzantium, Lazarus-like, from its dusty grave.

She presents Byzantium as a vibrant, dynamic, cosmopolitan reality which somehow escaped the constraints of its official ideology

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.