Many landscape writers have striven to give their prose the characteristics of the terrain they are describing. Few have succeeded as fully as Robinson.

An erudite and delightful literary and philosophical romp

McLynn's feisty and highly personal take on the pivot point of the Seven Years War adds fresh perspectives to the old story

A stylish and fascinating account of the first global struggle

Splendid

Magnificent

Fascinating

Makes a great case for a better appreciation of this, the fourth year of the Seven Years' War

Robust, intelligent, panoramic history at its best

Frank McLynn is clearly one of those historian-writers so prolific and versatile that he makes you wonder why Simon Schama doesn't pull his finger out

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