Thoroughly researched…a good summary of the character shown by railwaymen and women

A change to my diary found me returning home from York this morning by train and bus, so I took the opportunity to start reading your manuscript. I enjoyed so much what I was reading that I kept going through the afternoon and finished it off. I think you're on to a winner!

Stirring, awe-inspiring and quirky. 4 stars

Comprehensive and compelling

Hugely enjoyable

As gripping as a fictional thriller…It is the human tales of evacuees, locomotive cleaners, crews, porters and ticket collectors that make this such an enthralling read…Michael Williams has written this book in an easy reading graphic style bringing to life the heroics and anecdotes of those he interviewed. His journalistic style makes this a compelling read 4 stars

Exhilarating ... Both in its modernist sense of "time in flux" and in its style, Red Fortress is at the furthest possible remove from Soviet schoolroom sermons about "the period of feudal atomization" and the rise of the centralizing state ... This is a book of detail and imagination ... a neohistorical account of the Russian past ... Red Fortress made me remember the open-mouthed delight I took when, hardly old enough to know where Russia was, I studied the émigré artist Boris Artsybashev's elegant, aetiolated portraits of medieval Russian princes

Red Fortress is a tour de force, as readable as it is extensively researched ... It never flags through nearly 10 centuries of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet history ... [Merridale] is both mythbuster and pilgrim, captivated by her subject even while turning an eye of scholarly detachment to it

One of the best popular histories of Russia in any language

Immensely readable ... Merridale recounts [the Kremlin's] eventful history with great skill and tremendous narrative verve

Merridale is a historian by training, but she has a detective's nose and a novelist's way with words

As with many important books, the reader will wonder why nothing like Catherine Merridale's work ... has been written before ... Merridale has succeeded in stripping off the veneer... She has the skills to get guardians of secret places talking and to negotiate access with Russian archivists, and thus penetrate the inner workings of the Kremlin. At the same time, she has a feeling for the site that brings dry archaeological and architectural facts to life: few writers can write the biography of a city or a citadel ... The Kremlin's history is likely to be frozen for decades to come. This unique and stunningly well-illustrated book is going to be a definitive study for just as long

Catherine Merridale's sparkling new book shows that it is people who dominate architecture

As usual, [Merridale's] engaging writing style combines a keen eye for detail with a human touch

[A] superb history of the Kremlin ... pages of lucid prose

A thoughtful critique of privacy . . . blows apart our patronising attitude towards the Victorian family

Rigorous and relevant

Pries open the most astounding archives to uncover what our recent ancestors tried to hide

Remarkable, moving and surprising . . . drawing on divorce courts, hospital records and adoption agencies, Cohen debunks many myths

Groundbreaking reporting and character-rich storytelling... Passionately written...almost makes one nostalgic for a time when novels were so important that even the CIA cared about them

A sparkling and fascinating account

Well-paced narrative...of great relevance today, when such conflicts seem (but only seem) to have disappeared.

Immensely compelling

Meticulously researched

The true strength of this meticulously researched book is the placing of the revelations into the context of a compelling human drama

Engrossing

[An] outstanding treasure of literature

Impeccably researched, and moving, this book breaks new ground