Engrossing…written with brio and verve

Zareer Masani has captured the life, the essence, the dazzle and the enduring impact of the extraordinary Lord Macaulay in this masterpiece of concision and explanation. It's high time Macaulay was brought back to life for those who seek to understand modern India and a contemporary Britain shaped more than it knows by its nineteenth-century experience

Brisk, well-written... Tightly argued

Engaging

An elegant mixture of polemic and biography

Masani makes a powerful and lucid case for a British statesman who profoundly influenced the course of Indian history and whose influence survives today, a case that is bound to stir up controversy

Zareer Masani is one of those rare historians who conveys insight and detail in a highly readable style as a result of of which his books are both thought-provoking and eye-opening

Writing with his customary elegance and insight, Masani goes beyond the stereotypes of Macaulay to show a difficult, complicated and very human man who, for better or worse, left his mark on both India and Britain. A thoroughly enjoyable and very welcome biography

Splendid and original

A lively overview, which eschews a linear narrative in favour of flashbacks to John's earlier life and which offers a damning indictment of the king in the conclusion.

Morris is more than the master of his sources: he engages with them and brings his sharp critical intelligence to bear on them. His writing is clear, incisive and spiced time and again by a bon mot. This is by far the best book on the monarch's reign since W L Warren's trail-blazing biography, King John, written in 1961 - with the literary bravura of which Morris' book may not unfavourably be compared.

[A] magisterial biography ... Will surely become the book of choice on this fated reign for years to come.

A multi-layered book that demands time to read and be digested but rewards by giving one plenty to chew on

Excellent. The Edge of the World does what good non-fiction should, in making the reader see the world in a different light

An inspiring book, full of surprises . . . this is the kind of book that can open up new vistas. It might just rekindle a sense that Britain really is a North Sea nation and not just a rootless post-Imperium searching for a niche in the global emporium

Bristling, wide-ranging and big-themed ... Pye's view of the North Sea and European history succeeds in reorienting our thinking about the past

A joy to read and reread. Pye challenges all our notions of the Dark Ages and shows the vast accomplishments completed long before the Renaissance. This book must be ranked right up there with the works of Mark Kurlansky and Thomas Cahill as a primer of the steps that led to modern civilization

Refreshing. Pye excels at painting a unique portrait of the political, economic, and cultural transformation that has occurred on the shores of the North Sea. His frequent use of primary sources as well as fictional literary works gives the work an ethereal nature

An eye-opening reexamination of of Europe during the Dark Ages, and delightfully accessible. Pye's style is leisurely yet authoritative, scholarly but engaging; his approach resembles that of a docent leading a group through a vast museum, with each section devoted to a different aspect of society

White’s book is a true piece of art

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