A breadth of perspective few other imperial historians can boast. The British Empire really does look different in the light of it ... Breadth of vision, fizzing ideas and a brilliant style as well as superb scholarship ... It deserves to supplant every other book on this topic, including - though my publisher and bank manager won't thank me for saying this - my own. It is British imperial history at last without hang-ups; the one we've been waiting for

A brilliantly perceptive analysis of the forces and ideas that drove the creation of an extraordinary enterprise ... Bringing together his huge erudition, scrupulous fairness and elegant prose, Mr Darwin has produced a wonderfully stimulating account of something that today seems almost incredibly yet was, in historical terms, only yesterday. It is also a much-needed antidote both to the leftish consensus of the past 50 years that Britain's empire was unrelievedly awful ... and the recent triumphalist revisionism of more conservative historians

Engrossing ... What Darwin adds to this insight is a rare, wonderful capacity for comparison. Empire here is a jigsaw of dreams and anxieties, conquests and loss of faith ... Seeing the imperial experience in the round like this does gives us a clearer, more subtle appreciation of the range of power and violence at play. It raises the historical writing on empire to another level

Balanced, original and impressive ... Subtle ... intelligent

Comprehensive ... Darwin's erudition allows him to skirt around the narrow orthodoxies of apologist v critic and provide an insightful account of Britain's unlikely period of global hegemony

John Darwin's Unfinished Empire surpasses even his own previous work to give an unmatched overview of imperial Britain's rise and fall

Uglow is being modest: her long and leisurely stroll through 2.000 years of British gardening is dense with the foliage of historical research, and highly decorated with literary references and colourful anecdotes

Enthralling...an elegant and witty gem

In this pacey retelling of a classic love story, Kate Williams has created a sparkling life worthy of Emma herself. A new biography for a new generation

Popular history at its best

Every intricate detail is laid out, and Kate Williams' writing is so immediate, you feel all but transported...

From Soho tart to glamour model, diplomatic wife in Naples to the most famous extra-marital passion in UK history: Emma Hamilton's amazing tale is hardly unfamiliar. Williams tells it shrewdly and well, with access to recently discovered letters and a sharp contemporary spin. In her skilled hands, Lord Nelson's lover, for all her "charisma, intelligence and charm" falls foul both of ingrained misogyny and a fledgling culture that both gave her stardom and exacted a fearsome price.

Lively, sympathetic and meticulously researched

Williams account is both balanced and evocative...[Emma Hamilton's] ruthless but romantic pursuit of celebrity is so close to our own time that the story barely needs contemporary parallels

Divertingly and instructively illuminates a time and culture both far away and intriguingly like our own, and resurrects a woman whose mingled vulnerability and resilience - to say nothing of her glamour - still have the power to fascinate

The first self-made superstar, the first manipulative media celebrity, dazzling Europe with her style and beauty as muse to artists and mistress to Nelson ... Emma famously gets her comeuppance, and her headlong flight to romantic destruction is told with novelistic dash

Rigorous and relevant

Pries open the most astounding archives to uncover what our recent ancestors tried to hide