An authorised and comprehensive account of an institution that was long held to be the best of its kind in the world. Campbell-Smith's book is vast, monumentally detailed, sharply observant of personalities and wittily readable.

The Post Office is currently in difficulties and Duncan Campbell-Smith's thoughtful and well-written book helps provide an explanation of its present situation, placing it in the context of an impressive history of the Royal Mail. This book has much to offer the scholar and general reader alike.

Highly valuable. An assured and fascinating account.

Some of the subjects Campbell-Smith is obliged to tackle would defy the liveliest pen to make them fascinating, but he has written a solid, brilliantly researched and sometimes drily witty account of an institution once again in the throws of dramatic reinvention.

Duncan Campbell-Smith's account not only provides a wealth of information and insight. He has succeeded in presenting the often complex story in a clear and incisive style. All in all a highly recommended book.

Sarah Wise is too clever and considered a historian simply to give us a lurid, one-dimensional Victorian melodrama. Through painstaking archival work and readable empathetic prose, she has instead sought to evoke the texture of life here

The account is both moving and engrossing, and its tendency in places to become a litany of misery and despair is redeemed by Sarah Wise's light and occasionally humorous touch

As with her previous book The Italian Boy, Sarah Wise is superb on statistical detail... In every respect this is a note-perfect work of social history, thoroughly researched, charitable in its sympathies, and sadly still embodying lessons for today

Carefully researched... a wide-ranging study

Her achievement is remarkable... This engrossing work shines a light not only on a turbulent period in London's history, but on humanity itself. Only the best histories can claim as much

Spilling facts, lives, conditions, intolerable burdens and the spirit expressed by spontaneous dancing in the streets, The Blackest Streets is a little masterpiece

Extraordinary scholarship and rare sensitivity

Sarah Wise mines the archives to bring the local inhabitants back to life, and makes particularly brilliant use of the interviews that historian Raphael Samuel conducted in the 1970s with Arthur Harding.

As in her wonderful book The Italian Boy, she explores a milieu that was hungry, dirty, threadbare and exploited

Sarah Wise animates the horrors in fascinating detail

Reveals the London beneath your feet in all its fascinating – and sometimes horrifying – glory. Historian and novelist Ackroyd invests his tales of buried rivers and catacombs with enormous energy