What a wonderful book this is. Like the interlace stonework on an Anglo-Saxon cross, Janina Ramirez's themes are interwoven with a consummate skill.

Ramirez blasts a powerful spotlight into the so-called Dark Ages and reveals a vibrant world, awash with colour and character.

A wonderful book

Entertaining ... carefully composed

Those who were recast as saints achieved a superhuman status, their real lives often obscured by hagiographies rich with legends of miracle-working from beyond the grave. Janina Ramirez's book portrays them historically – as living, breathing personalities within the world they knew, the places we have inherited. Her enthusiasm and instinct for relevance should welcome a broad new audience to medieval Church history.

If you have 18 euros in your pocket and at least two days left to live, then you should do one more thing to die without regrets, and that is to read this book.

This lyrical saga...succeeds both as a revelatory tale of the artist as young man and a gripping portrait of the young Jewish state itself.

Detailed and beautiful...as he writes about himself and his family, Oz is also writing part of the history of the Jews... We are in the hands here of a capable, practiced seducer.

Horrifying and heartbreaking … By recounting such striking heroism, he allows us at least to ponder whether, had more good Germans come forward, it all might just have been stopped

Inspiring ... In the gathering shadow of the Holocaust, Josef Hartinger's dogged decency may redeem the German race

All the more startling and important for bringing to life an episode so little known

Finely researched and deeply disturbing

Gripping, revelatory account

Absorbing

Extremely well written, taut and evocative... Despite its complex subject, Butcher makes this an easy and engaging read with his breezy style and fascinating encounters

Illuminating... Butcher achieves something remarkable with Princip. He promotes him quite plausibly from mad man to everyman; a warning to the future whom the future foolishly forgot

Arguably the most important story of the war

As a travel writer, Butcher takes some beating. He packs balls as well as ballpoints

A triumph of storytelling... [A] highly original gem of a book

Informative and powerful

A page-turning exploration of how the forgotten past continues to inform the present... Important, and relevant

[Princip’s] story as Butcher now tells it has a resonance far beyond the Balkans

Elegant, horrifying and enlightening… A book which is not only a good piece of detective work, it is the finest contribution so far this year to the rapidly expanding literature on the Great War

Tim Butcher has produced the most imaginative and singular book on the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War to date. It is a lot more than a study of Princip… It is a piece of expeditionary journalism, an investigation in time, place and spirit, of the highest order

A revealing insight into the mind and journey of the boy who escaped the narrow confines of his village, and whose political aspirations for his native country had such far-reaching effects on the world

Utterly absorbing… If journalism is the first draft of history, Butcher marries both disciplines with boldness and originality – as well as sympathy for his shadowy subject

Insightful and entertaining, this blows the cobwebs off the history of that day

Positive proof that fact can be as gripping as fiction…rich and timely… Amongst so many books published around the anniversary of the First World War, this one stands out

A fascinating investigation… An absorbing read

Despite its serious subject matter, the book is a rollicking read, full of amusing details and sarcastic humour

A brilliant and haunting journey through the Balkans

In the centenary year of the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, what better read than Tim Butcher’s The Trigger

[A] fascinating and lively history

Very complex – but you will grasp it

A fascination exploration

Highly readable but profoundly researched, The Trigger represents a bold exception to the deluge of First World War books devoted to mud, blood and poetry

a fascinating original portrait of a man and his country