The little volumes of the 'Penguin Monarchs' series will be a matchless collection when completed. Already they provide a first-rate history of England, its monarchy and the effects of power on character. I've relished Anne Curry on Henry V, Stephen Alford on Edward V, David Womersley on James II and Roger Knight's William IV - but really there is not a dud among them.

The artwork is gloriously retro, echoing the original Ladybird house style but containing completely up to date information.

Kate Thompson writes books that make you laugh and make you cry, sometimes at the same time. You cannot put them down. I advise you to read them all!

Kate Thompson's study of five working-class women who lived through the blitz shows how informal collectives can provide lasting support and inspiration . . . [a] fascinating account

Inspiring tales of courage in the face of hardship

Astonishing

Crammed full of fascinating stories

Untold stories from wartime Blitz

Britain's forgotten army

Celebrates the lives of tough wartime matriarchs

Formidable women

An amazing look into the erasure of her grandparents generation and their involvement in Nazi Germany . . . the reader really feels Krug's fear and the tension that builds as she must will herself to peel back the layers of history, and unearth a truth that she might not be ready for.

Heimat is an astoundingly honest book that conducts a devastating - and irresistible - investigation into one family's struggle with the forces of history. I could not stop reading it and when I was done I could not stop thinking about it. By going so deeply into her family's history, Krug has in some ways written about us all

A page-turning scrapbook/collage of memory, meaning and accountability, Ms. Krug draws the reader through her family history with the directness of imagery, handwriting and, ultimately, a disquieting direness that has echoes in our American life, right now. Heimat is valuable, readable and, needless to say, highly recommended

Heimat is a compelling and beautifully crafted graphic memoir. Holding this book, and leafing through its pages, rich with photographs, handwritten letters and exquisite drawings, you feel as if if the past is reaching out and grabbing you. It is an exploration of legacy and memory, the things we inherit, the stories we pass on and the strange power the past can hold over us. I loved it

Nora Krug created something completely new by inventing a new medium. (...) And with every new form of visual representation she uses, she is able to gain a new perspective on herself and on her history.

Nora Krug has created a beautiful visual memoir of a horrific time in history. A time that torments us to this day. Asking questions and searching for the truth, she will not turn away from the legacy of her family and her country. She asks the question of how any of us survive our family history. Ultimately, the only course is not to veil the answers

To belong to a place is not to be able to choose what it takes from you. But we can choose what we take from it. Nora Krug takes from her German homeland, and then gives to us, a sense of what it is like to be German today, and a guide to how a reckoning with the past can begin

As the Jewish heir of grandparents who themselves had to flee the upsurge of fascism in their German homelands, I found granddaughter Nora Krug's heartrending investigation of her own family's painstakingly occluded history through those years especially moving. But as an American living through these, our very own years of a seemingly inexorable drift into one's still not quite sure what, I found Krug's achingly realized graphic memoir downright unsettling, for what will our own grandchildren one day make of us and our own everyday compromises and failures to attend?

Nora Krug's book Heimat is a heart-wrenching, suspenseful and fascinating odyssey that straddles, and seeks to uncover, an uncharted, inaccessible, unfathomable past. It is a kaleidoscope of interrupted lives, leading inexorably to its ultimate conclusion. I couldn't stop reading it

The Butchering Art is medical history at its most visceral and vivid. It will make you forever grateful to Joseph Lister, the man who saved us from the horror of pre-antiseptic surgery, and to Lindsey Fitzharris, who brings to life the harrowing and deadly sights, smells, and sounds of a nineteenth-century hospital

Fascinating and shocking ... [Fitzharris] offers an important reminder that, while many regard science as the key to progress, it can only help in so far as people are willing to open their minds to embrace change

The Butchering Art, with its attention to detail, its admiration for its subject and its unflinching sympathy for the suffering, proposes a causal chain - running through the history of human sickness and not yet at its end - in which Lister forms a strong and vital link

An energetic, fascinating and deeply researched book… Miller’s skill is to address and capture the transient nature of Landon’s fame… to retrieve [Landon] from history’s doldrums, and demolish the mocking which continued for decades.

A compelling book.

Terrific… Miller expertly decodes the story of her life and loves from poems, and the book reads like a novel.

Sensational material brought expertly to life; but Miller’s real gift to the reader is her patient reconstruction of the “lost literary generation” 1820s and 1830s.

A riveting, tantalisingly ambiguous portrait of a poet whose confessional voice makes her only more intriguing to modern readers.

A fascinating...deeply intelligent, witty and often moving exploration of race in modern Britain

Afua Hirsch's first book, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was published to wide acclaim at the start of 2018. She looks at the many, multi-faceted questions that surround identity - both on a personal and societal scale - to pen a thought-provoking read.

It is a life-shaping read.

Brit(ish) stands out from a crop of books on growing up mixed race in 70s Britain.

Brit(ish) is an essential read for all. Hirsch's exploration of her identity brings to light the difficulties of growing up as mixed-race and black in Britain. She also challenges the British perception of race, and how our inability to confront our past has profoundly affected our ability to coherently understand and discuss race in our present. Brit(ish) is a call to action, if we genuinely want to progress as a society, we must change our discussions and understanding of race.

A personal, political and challenging account of what it means to be British when you are racialised as Black. Hirsch is a brilliant and fearless intellect who deftly handles the complexity of the issues

A beautifully written, poignantly honest memoir while also scrutinising modern history and popular culture. The breadth of Hirsch's focus is impressive... Her insights are numerous and profound, big and small, woven into the details of a personal life we can all learn from.

A haunting investigation into family trauma and secrets from a forgotten England that turns out to lie closer to the surface than anyone suspected. Turning detective, she [Laura Cumming] interrogates old snapshots with the forensic skill of a professional art critic

On Chapel Sands starts by seeming to be about one kind of mystery but soon starts being about another, much more profound one… the subtlety and suspense of the narrative lies in the way Cumming allows details about their relationship to emerge slowly, like a photograph socking in developing fluid

With her critic’s eye, Cumming turns detective to investigate who took her mother and tell a pacy story about relationships, pride and the ramifications of what goes unsaid

In a year strong in ingenious memoir, Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands…stood out, not just for its great storytelling but for Cumming’s wonderful ability to bring to life a Lincolnshire coastal community…its moods, characters and toxic secret-harbouring machinery

This beautifully written memoir of family mystery proved one of the surprise hits of 2019

[A] twisting literary mystery that also serves as a deeply moving love letter

A complex story of family secrets, beautifully written, and illustrated

A beautiful, multi-layered story full of lost love, human motivation and tender secrets

[A] bewitching blend of history and mystery

A scrupulous work of storytelling, radiant with empathy and filial affection