This is a compact, stimulating, and at times surprisingly polemical account

Napoleon helped shape modern French politics, as much as he determined the nature of modern warfare... Dr Gates's book is a sure guide to the wars whose effects were felt well into the twentieth century

A searing indictment of British Foreign policy

The city is fortunate to have found such chroniclers as Davies and Roger Moorhouse.

Combines a relaxed and unfussy style with a thorough knowledge of the period and a sharp eye for detail. Elizabeth's life makes for a compelling story and Starkey tells it well

The best political diarist of our times

Reading A. N. Wilson's The Victorians provides ongoing pleasure in handsomely researched, beautifully written prose about an age which we have come to think disparagingly. We thought wrong

The Victorians was one of the books that gave me greatest pleasure during the past year... A brilliant evocation of an age

Rarely have author and subject been found in such deep and contented harmony... Wilson's tour de force

Wilson's panoramic survey is the best attempt so far to describe and explain what was happening in that fascinating time

The Victorians finds Wilson writing at the height of his powers

I can't recall a history book furnishing so many laughs en route ... The Victorians is a work of scholarship, a labour of love, a persusasive polemic