Robbie Robertson’s Testimony is a book of memories and wonders, a personal testament of a magical time in American music from someone who was there, at the centre of it all, playing and casting spells and writing songs that helped define those great lost years. There’s history here, and anecdote, regret and reminiscence, a long fond look back at the trials and triumphs of finding your voice then holding your ground. The tone is easy, conversational, like reminiscing with a friend about things you never realized you were part of too. Robbie brings you along with him, keeps you right by his side first to last, just the way his songs do, drawing you close, spellbound by his easy sorcery. You can feel the music in every word.

[An] elegant, evocative memoir … Robertson was particularly suited to a supporting role, happiest pulling the strings in the background. It’s the perfect vantage point for a memoirist, and he makes the most of it … The first half of the book is a hugely atmospheric song of the road … Midway, Dylan hits the narrative like a firework tossed through a window … Robertson brings the chaos vividly to life … He tells it with style and affection, showing a keen eye for detail.

An entertaining and valuable description of a rock’n’roll apprenticeship punctuated by encounters with such historic figures as Sonny Boy Williamson, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters. He casts light on a vital phase of Dylan’s career and, of course, on the history of the Band.

For real insight into a musical unit’s workings, it would be hard to beat the Canadian guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson’s Testimony…packed with fascinating anecdote.

'We’re deep into the golden age of the classic-rock memoir … Testimony ends when its author was still relatively young, but it is packed with incident … His memoir is confident and well oiled. At times it has the mythic sweep of an early Terrence Malick movie … Mr. Dylan blows into this memoir like a blazing tumbleweed … [Robbie Robertson's] writing is wonderfully perceptive.

Well, once I started, I couldn’t put it down. It is such a well-paced, well-structured narrative. Robertson's voice is powerful and strong. He has harnessed vivid language to a clean, elegant, writing style, and the sense of honesty, openness and completeness makes it so very compelling. The personal and the historic that he bears witness to is, of course, extraordinarily special. One of the best documents of our times. And one of the best books on rock 'n' roll ever written.

Nobody tells a story like Robbie Robertson. I can’t think of a memoir that is more compelling, fascinating or rich in history. Across every page you can feel his love, passion and musical genius.

His strong point of view is offset by the tenderness he shows, and his stress on his own experience is set within a craftsman’s effort to tell the story whole . . . The voice comes through loud and clear … He keeps clear of big ideas and period clichés. Instead, he offers his story — his side of the story — in scene after scene . . . There’s so much sound and colour here that the self-exculpating scenes fit right in, vivid and convincing . . . Testimony is high-spirited, hugely enjoyable and generous from start to finish.

Robbie Robertson fancies himself as a storyteller, with good reason. His ability to conjure a mythic America on such songs as the Civil War-inspired ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ testifies to a remarkable imagination ... As with many music autobiographies, it is the formative years that are the most revealing. The on-the-road tales with The Hawks are a rollicking read, full of youthful exuberance and a sense of discovery ... The fledgling Band members – musical equals at this point – are larger-than-life characters ... The style is fluid and pacy, with a cinematographer’s eye for detail. He also enjoys telling a thousand tales with an ever-expanding cast list. There are funny vignettes involving Bo Diddley, Roy Buchanan, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Tiny Tim, Salvadore Dali, Edie Sedgwick and Richard Pryor, to name but a few ... At the very moment you fear Robertson might be losing sense of what makes his story so important, he retrieves the narrative threads and provides a sustained and gripping account of The Band’s collaboration with Dylan during the recording of The Basement Tapes at the Big Pink house in West Saugerties. This is riveting stuff ... He has too much class ever to fall into kiss-and-tell mode and is understandably protective of his reputation ... He closes the book...with a eulogistic account of The Last Waltz. It is a great, uplifting finale.

In Testimony the voice is not in question. Robust, wry, gritty and wise to the vicissitudes of a career in rock 'n' roll, it is just what the reader wants ... Mr Robertson captures the rhythm of rock's mystery train, even in its final lurch to the terminal ... Mr Robertson bears witness to his life in music ... A steel-trap memory and a muddled childhood and you have the makings of a Dickensian bildungsroman ... A bible of road lore, a lurid coming-of-age story that veers wildly between the sweet and the brutal and a how-not-to guide to running a band ... As for Mr Dylan, a key attraction, the book offers a refreshing account ... Here is by far the fullest first-person account of the early electric tours of Mr Dylan ... The account of Mr Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident is refreshingly lucid, as is that of the subsequent making of The Basement Tapes ... Here Testimony becomes a testimonial, and the effect is redemptive. Generosity suits him, and whatever the truth, Testimony is a graceful epitaph.

It’s a flat-out beautiful ending. Be glad Robertson has written this, there won’t be many more musical lives like it.

The spellbinding, long-awaited, behind-the-scenes memoir from the legendary Canadian who, with The Band and Bob Dylan, created a new popular music that lit up the world and has endured for decades.

[An] elegant, evocative memoir.

It’s engagingly written [and] stuffed full of amusing anecdotes.

Engaging and accomplished.

Help provides a fascinating insight into Amstell’s life… a unique discussion on the role and purpose of comedy in our society as a means to protect ourselves and others, but also as means to reveal our most vulnerable states

This is extremely even-handed, but still pleasingly gossipy account of that time, from Harold Pinter calling him “a f***ing liar and a f***ing shit” to the time James Corden smacked Donald Trump on the bottom.

Sir Nicholas Hytner was arguably the best Artistic Director that the National Theatre has had in its 50-year history… Balancing Acts is a most enjoyable series of memoirs recalling the highs and lows of the period. For those like this reviewer who saw almost all of the theatre’s output, it recalls many happy memories… this is also a reminder of so many more high points across all three auditoria, building to both the Golden Jubilee celebrations and the refurbishment and reconfiguration of the venue… Along the way, readers will learn a great deal about the art of directing plays as well as running a big business and getting along with those sometimes very touchy arty types who inevitably end up making a director’s life hell sometimes just for the fun of it… Balancing Acts is simultaneously a highly informative portrait of a wonderful institution, a fitting tribute to a great man who did his job brilliantly and a really good read. It comes highly recommended.

Hytner takes us, fascinatingly and often wittily, through many of the plays he himself directed and he writes warmly of some of the actors who have become National Theatre “regulars” and personal friends… The book is a joyful reminder of the excitement of some of this work. If you missed some or all of these shows, then this is a chance to learn about some pretty iconic productions.

Balancing Acts is an apt title, conveying the books attunement to the fine calculations of leadership while also capturing the author’s personal and professional style, a coolly judicious manner that can look like suavity, discretion, or aloofness… Hytner is both an enthusiastic and a rethinker, nimble and smoothly articulate yet capable of delivering a gimlet-sharp judgement… His prose has the kind of crisp specificity one might expect of an exacting civil servant… A memoir of this kind will tend to feel like an envoi. But this one resembles an advertisement. It presents a blueprint for artistic directors.

Hytner’s book is the ultimate insider’s view… Hytner gives his readers an access-all-areas pass to the meetings, lunches, crises and rehearsals that propel a play to the stage… His talent as a memoirist is that he can be funny without being frivolous, revealing about his actors without being indiscreet, and high-minded without ever being pompous, all of which is itself an impressive high-wire balancing act.

Engaging… Hytner proves an erudite chronicler of his notable successes, while not being afraid to acknowledge some of the more egregious failures on his watch. A must-read for anyone interested in theatre.

Hytner chronicles the highs – and occasional lows – of running the National with crisp wit and deep affection

Book of the day

A sensitive, sweetly melancholic story of music, connection and community

BOOK OF THE WEEK: An uplifting read…full of humour and authentic characters

Breezily written, heart-warming and unashamedly sentimental… [a] modern fairy tale

Rachel Joyce returns to some of the themes in her bestselling debut The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: loss, the past and the bonds that can be forged with strangers. This time the pilgrimage is through music.

A quirky, romantic fairy tale perfect for summer.

My Christmas pick: I love any novel by Rachel Joyce, whose The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was a huge success. Now she has created another Pied Piper of the heart in Frank, the proprietor of The Music Shop...This bewitching love story sings out the unique beauty of every human being, leaving you uplifted.

The Music Shop is a one gulp, super-satisfying read. Love it, love it, love it.

Joyce, a British actress and playwright, whose first novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, was longlisted for the Man Booker, continues to enchant and break hearts with her lovable misfits trying to survive in a modern world determined to pass them by. Irresistible.

An unforgettable story of music, loss and hope. Fans of High Fidelity, meet your next quirky love story. Vinyl fans, hold onto your turntables - Joyce's latest is a buoyant homage to the healing power of music well-played.

‘The Music Shop’ is an unabashedly sentimental tribute to the healing power of great songs, and Joyce is hip to greatness in any key…. [The novel] captures the sheer, transformative joy of romance — ‘a ballooning of happiness.’ Joyce’s understated humor…offers something like the pleasure of A.A. Milne for adults. She has a kind of sweetness that’s never saccharine, a kind of simplicity that’s never simplistic…. I wouldn’t change a single note. Rachel Joyce, if music be the food of love, write on!

Rachel Joyce’s charming and deceptively simple fourth novel chronicles an offbeat love story between a mystery woman and an ardent, if lonely, collector and gently explores the power of memory and music and the certainty of change…. love, friendship, and especially the healing powers of music all rise together into a triumphant crescendo…. This lovely novel is as satisfying and enlightening as the music that suffuses its every page.

Magnificent…. Joyce’s novel is intellectually and emotionally satisfying on every possible level. If you love words, if you love music, if you love, this is 2018’s first must-read, and it will be without question one of the year’s best.

Joyce has a knack for quickly sketching characters in a way that makes them stick…. This is a touching, sometimes funny book about surviving change, the power of music and the importance of having a community — wacky or not. As with all of Joyce’s books, it will surprise you.

Joyce…continues to enchant and break hearts with her lovable misfits trying to survive in a modern world determined to pass them by. Irresistible.

Magical…. [Rachel] Joyce has a winner in this deceptively simple love story…. Joyce’s odes to music…and the notion that the perfect song can transform one’s life make this novel a triumph.

Whether on foot, as in her novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, or track by track, on this unlikely musical odyssey, Joyce excels in enveloping readers in epic journeys of lost connections and loving reunions.

[Rachel] Joyce sets up a charming cast of characters, and her spirals into the sonic landscapes of brilliant musicians are delightful, casting a vivid backdrop for the quietly desperate romance between Frank and Ilse. From nocturnes to punk, this musical romance is ripe for filming.