I loved this book, as I love any good adventure story sublimely told...This book has the same effect as that drug. It's a gloriously exciting high, followed by a crushing realisation of war's enormous waste

Enthralling . . . the heroism on display that night was unsurpassed, and Whittell is right to call his book The Greatest Raid

Absorbing . . . The extraordinary bravery of the participants shines out from the narrative

A story of extraordinary courage . . . Without Chariot there might have been no further raids such as the much larger, and ultimately disastrous, attack on Dieppe five months later

A compelling page-turner, the work of a master storyteller. The drama of the March 1942 operation is cinematic in its sweep and detail -- and Whittell's detective work on the real reasons for the raid is extraordinary. It is also beautifully written

A spellbinding account of one of the most astonishing episodes of the whole war. Thrilling and tragic in equal measure, it is a story of self-sacrifice, comradeship and courage on an unimaginable scale

Churchill called St Nazaire "a deed of glory intimately involved in high strategy." This vivid and moving book shows why

Giles Whittell's crisp, tight, prose is perfectly suited to record one of World War 2's great moments of heroism: his journalistic skills tease apart the flaws in the plan, while expertly bringing back to life the rich cast of protagonists

World War Two's Operation Chariot against Nazi Germany's battleship repair facility is the greatest commando raid of all time. So bravo to Giles Whittell for this meticulously researched and utterly gripping account of the heroism at St Nazaire. The Greatest Raid does great justice to its subjects

Powerful . . . there is rage in his ink. McKay's book grips by its passion and originality

Painstakingly researched and fascinating

Combines over-arching analysis and explanation with a ground-level reporter’s skill at narrating events and capturing character with vividness and compassion … a historian working at the height of his powers.

In this stunning feat of historical reconstruction, Jessie Childs brings England's brutal civil conflict to life, illuminating the human experience, and human cost, of this devastating war. A work of deep scholarship, The Siege of Loyalty House is gripping, moving, unputdownable

Beautifully written and gripping from first page to last. A sparkling book by one of the UK's finest historians

A thrilling, immersive read, especially searing in our own tormented and besieged times. Her beautiful writing drops the reader deep in the war, sees it through a cast of extraordinary characters from both sides of the terrible conflict, but most of all, shines with a compassionate understanding of human courage, folly, obstinacy and frailty, at times almost Tolstoyan in its emotional intelligence and literary power

She is a gifted narrative historian, eloquent, graceful and witty; the stories she tells are the ones we all should know

Childs...has a good eye for evocative detail... [The Siege of Loyalty House is a] highly readable account [of the civil war]

[Childs's] great strength is her ability to deliver first-rate scholarship in really luscious prose, [and she] uses Basing as a microcosm through which to view the civil war in all its fog and mess

Enthralling ... the sort of coup de théâtre that only the most brilliant archival research can pull off ... Few books on the Civil War convey so powerfully the human cost ... All this is done with such clarity and economy that her book doubles as a fine introduction to 1640s England as a whole, quite apart from the engrossing story of Basing House ... A magnificent achievement. Rarely has such fine-grained focus on a single event been used so effectively to open up wider perspectives on that fractious age. And as an account of what it was like to live through the bloodiest and most traumatic decade in England's history, it has few rivals

Jessie Childs tackles this rolling tragedy with confidence and a clear eye ... There are wonderful character portraits throughout ... successfully brings the ghastliness of the period to life, dramatically, vividly and with pathos

Extraordinary: meticulously researched, beautifully written, and heartbreakingly relevant. I urge you to read it

Brilliant. Original. Gripping.

Extraordinary. Exhaustively researched and beautifully (and wittily) written, a thrilling and immersive tale that offers the reader a rare window into the terrifying events of the English Civil War when religion and ambition divided families, friends and neighbours. One of the finest books I've read for years, a stunning achievement

The Siege of Loyalty House is not only deeply researched. Childs has composed a wonderfully poetic narrative and adds a touch of the gothic

This heroic story has not been told before in such detail and with such an eye for the tragedies of civil war. Childs handles a remarkable amount of source material with masterly skill...Thrilling

Gripping ... The accumulation and deployment of facts is impressive. The understanding of what they signify is profound. The elegance, wit and brio of the writing is sheer delight

The Siege of Loyalty House is exciting and scholarly, vivid and accessible. It is a perfectly-crafted triumph of narrative history...one of the most pulsating books on seventeenth-century England I have read for many years

In Jessie Childs [Basing House] finds at last a writer able to bring out in full its excitement, pathos, glory and tragedy, with a deep political, military and social context. As so many of the defenders of the house were transplanted Londoners, it is a tale that links the heart of Hampshire to the heart of the capital. Local Civil War history does not get better than this.

Childs brilliantly shows us the world of the civil war

Enthralling... This is history as rip-roaring narrative. ... Both her previous books won awards, and I would be amazed if this does not make it a hat-trick

Fantastically well written

A masterpiece

Jessie Child's The Siege of Loyalty House turns an English Civil War stand-off into a fable of murderous polarisation: gripping, timely history

The Siege of Loyalty House ... tingles with a discerning historical imagination

[A] thrilling tale of war

[A] gripping tale of a royalist house standing its grown against the Roundheads ... Atmospheric, unflinching, and at times extraordinarily witty

[A] poignant book... the story is timeless

Compelling

Exhaustively researched and beautifully written, [The Siege of Loyalty House] tells the story of the epic two-year siege of Basing House, a royalist mansion finally captured by Oliver Cromwell in 1645.

When you are as good a writer as Jessie Childs, and as assuredly immersed in the archives, the pages zing with the technicolour of celluloid. ... [A] masterpiece.

Childs writes an engrossing, spellbinding narrative while laying out a clear and comprehendible history

The broad subject of this poignant book is what happens to people during civil war: how quickly and imperceptibly order becomes chaos and decency yields to cruelty. In other words, how close to inhumanity humanity always is. The focus is on an episode in the English civil war, but the story is timeless

A gripping account of the agony at Basing, The Siege of Loyalty House is also a potted social history of the civil wars and how they started. Jessie Childs, [is] a gifted storyteller