One is reminded of vintage Bill Bryson...O'Connor is an engaging fellow, an affable kind of chap who could make a cross-continent Greyhound bus ride pass in a jiffy

A fabulously droll, unsentimental, and craic-laden report on the haunts of the Gael taking in a wide range of political and historical references along its way. Many of the people the authors meets are so doggedly Irish they make him feel like an Englishman at a Sinn Fein rally, which gives the book a fascinating air of being a report from a doubly foreign land

He has written a book full of laughs and smiles, skillfully basted with well-brewed blarney

The laureate of the rising Irish generation, he combines that demotic wit of Roddy Doyle, the social concern of Dermot Bolger and the structural guile of Colm Toibin. A signficant writer of a very contemporary kind

O'Connor holds up a mirror to the America that we see but don't often notice

The Cliveden Set was long said to be a conspiracy at the heart of the Establishment to appease Hitler. Here, at last is a full exposure of the truth behind the myth. Norman Rose has done a signal service to history, producing a work of profound scholarship written with a wonderfully light touch

An original and engaging history of the capital ... Cruickshank pieces together [the] evidence with meticulous care to create a compelling portrait

Richly informative ...This is a monumental work which leaves no stone unturned in its quest to create a full and brutally honest picture of the lives of Georgian London's dispossessed ... The result is a broad panorama and a compelling thesis which can be considered a commendable contribution to scholarship, as well as a gripping read

Engagingly and comprehensively assembled. Dan Cruickshank is a humane guide ... His relish for the subject is clear but so too is his understanding of the harsh price often exacted

Cruickshank brilliantly sketches the wild whirligig of drunkenness, debauchery, theft, exploitation, merriness, subversion, corruption, lust, fantasy, violence, disease, starvation and early death

Witty, elegantly written and memorable

It is the small revelations about the character of Blair that make this book worthwhile

It's a gripping insight into the ex-PM's ten years of power . . . It will take a lot for many people to read his own take on the rise and fall of New Labour, but those that do might be reminded of the charm and vision that swept him to power

I have read many a prime ministerial memoir and none of the other authors has been as self-deprecating, as willing to admit mistakes and to tell jokes against themselves

Paints a candid picture of his friend and rival, Gordon Brown, and of their relationship