Armitage was the real star, with his vivid and muscular dialogue and occasional flashes of humour…The Last Days of Troy was a powerful reflection on the folly of men and the cruelty of war.

[A] page-turner biography of the capital, full of amazing facts and anecdotes, a book that anyone wanting food for thought about social history or human nature will treasure

An invigorating yet thoughtful tour through the metropolis’s most extraordinary and bracing of centuries

A tremendous work - well researched, well written, solid and reliable, mastering a complex subject in an authoritative account that is a pleasure to read

A dazzling account

Spiralling stories enliven every page of Jerry White’s magnificent, fully annotated, accessible and scholarly book

It’s hard to see how a more detailed and readable account of Defoe’s ‘great and monstrous thing’ could be written

A vast and impressive synthesis ... [a] wonderful panorama

Magnificent

Magisterial

At the heart of this books lies a fascinating debate about poets and society

A powerful and very talented writer…dashing and arresting…the greatness in his subject shines through every dark corner

Swift admits that he cannot pin his elusive subject down, but there is no need. By following his instinct he has allowed the poet, with his ‘shifting self-narration’, to lead the way in this marvellous evocation.

American poet Ezra Pound… proves an elusive but fascinating subject in this non-linear, impressionistic biography

Isaiah Berlin is considered one of the letter-writers of the 20th century... those who give into temptation to flick through will be infinitely rewarded

Sparkles with brilliance and generosity

Meticulously edited and footnoted.

So readable... wonderfully vivid portraits of Powell's famous acquaintances

Richly and movingly enjoyable... a tapestry of Powell's contemporaries

Publisher's description. A biography of the comic writer Anthony Powell, author of the million-word masterpiece A Dance to the Music of Time, from renowned British biographer Hilary Spurling. An insightful and surprising look into what drove the writer widely regarded as the English Proust.

Elkin is a beguiling writer, and resolutely female, her sentences doing what Virginia Woolf wanted women's sentences to do, which is to "hold back the male flood"… Flâneuse is a riposte to all that macho stomping about… Flâneuse is so rich with shining trinkets and wise thoughts that not a single page disappoints or bores. It's that rare thing these days - a work of feminism which is enthused by literature and art and ideas rather than pop culture.

Elkin explores the history of people and places in astonishing detail. She writes with a passion and personality that creates the kind of familiarity which encourages us to believe that the women she studies were close friends of hers… Elkin's first person, colloquial yet witty style lets you into the recesses of her imagination and invites you to be her travel companion

Lauren Elkin is one of our most valuable critical thinkers – the Susan Sontag of her generation

The acclaimed historian of Russia sweeps the brittle high society of pre-Revolutionary St Petersburg, the terror-chilled jails of Stalin's purges and the secrets of 1990s Moscow archives into a tragic panorama.'

A seamlessly written and moving portrait of the soviet Union in miniature from the Revolution to the age of Yeltsin.

What is striking is how he has thrown himself heart and soul into the romance and emotion of his drama. The novel throbs with sex, maternal feeling, revolutionary fervour and terror ... Terrific stuff