Packed with riveting detail, a more absorbing collection of tales from the spirited shopgirls of the Victorian era to the present day would be hard to find.

Rich in surprising insight and human detail . . . endless[ly] fascinating . . highly readable

Fascinating and addictive... A profusion of lively material includes the Wodehousian yarn of future Hollywood star "Chilli" Bouchier.

[Go] behind the glamorous shop fronts and the glitzy shop floors of Britain’s department stores . . . Here the hidden history of the unsung heroines of the retail trade is revealed.

As packed with good things as the Peter Jones sale

Forensic, unflinching and utterly compelling … the story of the first killings at Dachau has scarcely been more urgent

An extraordinary, gripping and edifying story told extraordinarily well. I read it with a sense of amazement at the capacity of one good man to stand tall in the face of evil

Amazing … This is history come alive in your hands

Horrifying and heartbreaking … By recounting such striking heroism, he allows us at least to ponder whether, had more good Germans come forward, it all might just have been stopped

Inspiring ... In the gathering shadow of the Holocaust, Josef Hartinger's dogged decency may redeem the German race

All the more startling and important for bringing to life an episode so little known

Finely researched and deeply disturbing

Gripping, revelatory account

Absorbing

Extremely well written, taut and evocative... Despite its complex subject, Butcher makes this an easy and engaging read with his breezy style and fascinating encounters

Illuminating... Butcher achieves something remarkable with Princip. He promotes him quite plausibly from mad man to everyman; a warning to the future whom the future foolishly forgot

Arguably the most important story of the war

As a travel writer, Butcher takes some beating. He packs balls as well as ballpoints

A triumph of storytelling... [A] highly original gem of a book

Informative and powerful

A page-turning exploration of how the forgotten past continues to inform the present... Important, and relevant

[Princip’s] story as Butcher now tells it has a resonance far beyond the Balkans

Elegant, horrifying and enlightening… A book which is not only a good piece of detective work, it is the finest contribution so far this year to the rapidly expanding literature on the Great War

Tim Butcher has produced the most imaginative and singular book on the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War to date. It is a lot more than a study of Princip… It is a piece of expeditionary journalism, an investigation in time, place and spirit, of the highest order

A revealing insight into the mind and journey of the boy who escaped the narrow confines of his village, and whose political aspirations for his native country had such far-reaching effects on the world

Utterly absorbing… If journalism is the first draft of history, Butcher marries both disciplines with boldness and originality – as well as sympathy for his shadowy subject

Insightful and entertaining, this blows the cobwebs off the history of that day

Positive proof that fact can be as gripping as fiction…rich and timely… Amongst so many books published around the anniversary of the First World War, this one stands out

A fascinating investigation… An absorbing read

Despite its serious subject matter, the book is a rollicking read, full of amusing details and sarcastic humour

A brilliant and haunting journey through the Balkans

In the centenary year of the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, what better read than Tim Butcher’s The Trigger

[A] fascinating and lively history

Very complex – but you will grasp it

A fascination exploration

Highly readable but profoundly researched, The Trigger represents a bold exception to the deluge of First World War books devoted to mud, blood and poetry

a fascinating original portrait of a man and his country