Twice I missed my stop on the Tube reading this book... this is a jewel among histories, taking a single episode from the penultimate year of the Great War, illuminating a continent, a revolution and a series of psychologies in a moment of cataclysm and doing it with wit, judgment and an eye for telling detail... Catherine Merridale, who won the Wolfson history prize for Red Fortress, her 2013 book about the Kremlin, is one of those historians whose work allows you to understand something more about the world we inhabit now.

'A detailed look at the famous train journey... fascinatingly realist... [Merridale] is good at capturing the frankly dodgy atmosphere of high politics and low motives that swirled around post-abdication Russia... Merridale can bring humour into the most gruesome moments.

Catherine Merridale is one of the foremost foreign historians of Russia, combining wry insights with deep sympathy for the human beings suffering the tragedies she writes about... It combines diplomatic intrigue, spycraft, towering personalities, bureaucratic bungling, military history and ideology. Ms Merridale neatly unites background and foreground, and deftly evokes the atmosphere of the time... excellent

Praise for RED FORTRESS: 'Magnificent ... [a] a superbly written book' Telegraph 'A zingy, razor-keen history of the Kremlin' Spectator Books of the Year 'Exhilarating'

A brisk and often witty overview for the lay reader of the circumstances leading up to the February and October revolutions.

With a novelists' readability and a fertile imagination... Merridale retraces his week-long journey... At the same time, she skilfully weaves into the story the unfolding revolution

With the 100th anniversary of the two Russian revolutions of 1917 around the corner... surely no author will give a better account than Merridale of how, in that fateful year, Lenin made his way with German help from exile in Switzerland to Russia.

Fills a lacuna in the canonical record of Soviet communism.... A superbly written narrative history that draws together and makes sense of scattered data, anecdotes, and minor episodes, affording us a bigger picture of events that we now understand to be transformative

Merridale corrects factual errors made by predecessors and opens a fresh interpretive perspective. Personal reenactment of Lenin's eight-day train-and-ferry journey gives force to materials uncovered through assiduous research in newly opened archives as Merridale resolves perplexities long surrounding the political gambles, devious espionage, and shadowy financing that transport Lenin through Germany on a sealed train bound for a land tempestuously shedding its czarist past and desperate for a leader to guide it into an uncharted future. . . . History recovered as living drama

A colorful, suspenseful, and well-documented narrative

[This] remarkable account recaptures the idealism that filled this ragtag band of revolutionaries with the desperate belief that their leader would bring a "springtime of hope" to their divided and brutalised country. This is a revealing portrait of Lenin and his fellow travellers at a crucial turning point in world history.

Shows how a lethal blend of politics and personalities led to the American Revolution

Bunker has done a wonderful job describing the tragedy of errors that led to a bitter and costly war

A distinguished and refreshing contribution to the secondary literature on the American Revolution

[It is] brilliantly written and meticulously researched.

A vigorous book, full of energy as well as insight

Utterly wonderful… It reads like a thriller

A superb work of history. Shakespeare has assumed nothing and allowed himself to be guided only by what a patient re-examination of the evidence-some of it new, much of it still surprisingly ill-digested until now- actually reveals. That is being an historian. The fact that he is also a novelist just means that it is very well written too, a thriller, in fact.

Shakespeare is better known as a novelist than as a historian. This may change after his superb account of the under-examined Norwegian campaign, for which alone his book deserves to be read… Shakespeare is excellent in tracing the intricate manoeuvres ahead of the debate between groups of parliamentarians… Enthralling

One of the very best history books I have ever read.

An eloquent study in how quickly the political landscape can change—and history with it.

An absorbing account of how events 1,300 miles away across the North Sea let to the most drastic cabinet reshuffle in modern British history... Shakespeare's book grips the attention from beginning to end. He conjures the characters and personalities of the senior commanders in the Norwegian campaign with a novelist's flair and eye for detail.

The most prescient book of the year

Sometimes, I think of it as a song cycle; sometimes, a book of poems; sometimes, an epic. Vuong puts himself at the centre of this collection in an astonishing way, even as he is also entirely willing to set himself aside.

Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds... is beguiling and sublime.

Vuong's voice is unique and inspires empathy.

Beautiful... [Night Sky With Exit Wounds] is pretty special.

I loved Dadland for its tenderness, humour and candour. It has begun to open the door for me to what may well lie ahead in my life, in so many of our lives, in terms of ageing parents. And it has also taught me something deeply moving about tolerance, and about love

A wonderful, haunting and beautifully written memoir... I found myself laughing out loud at times and, at others, unable to hold back the tears... An absolutely stunning book

Dadland has the weight of family love but fizzes along in accessible and dynamic prose, highly recommended

A mesmerising performance by a natural storyteller gifted with the most seductive material possible, in the wild and wonderful life of her exasperating Irish father. Pain and annoyance is transmuted into pure narrative gold, as Keggie Carew interrogates the legend of this wartime adventurer and the bitter comedy of his domestic relationships and his late decline. A brave, risk-taking tale that alarms, delights and moves. As soon as you come to the end, you want to start again, to see if those things really happened

You love these people from the first page ... As Tom's life falls apart memory by memory, Keggie is picking it up again and her storytelling is spell-binding. Effortlessly readable, this is a delight combining laughter - and tears, yes, quite a few of those.

Compelling

A moving memoir-cum-biography.

By some margin my Book of the Month... A detective story, a family history, a thrilling tale of derring-do, and the most distinctive and affecting memoir I’ve read since H is for Hawk.

Utterly remarkable, and beautifully evoked… Dadland is a completely riveting, deeply poignant “manhunt” for which I predict great things.

Dadland, by Keggie Carew, is being tipped for award-winning breakout success in the vein of H is for Hawk

It’s an exorcism, ghost-hunt and swim through the archipelago of her father’s shattered self… The author’s descriptions have an easy lyricism.

The old question 'what did you do in the war, Dad?' has never had a more surprising or moving answer.

Warm and funny, sometimes regretful and sad, but overall a read like a rollercoaster. Wonderful.

You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I'd give up right now

You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I’d give up right now… This gripping book, written with real verve and a narrative expertise that wouldn’t shame a veteran.

A brilliant, bittersweet biography.

Keggie’s writing is immersive… She writes with a warmth and generosity about her father, a man who was a genuine character and hero.

Dadland is deeply personal. But it is also the story of our generations: people touched by war and by Alzheimer’s