Beautifully evokes the period

Delightfully gossipy...irreverently lifts the skirts of the dolls of Versailles and rummages about underneath, exposing one gem of irresistible detail after another...A glorious tribute to a glorious age

La Mitford plonks the reader amid the seething snobbery and maniacal struggle for High Life that was the Sun King's regime... brilliantly acerbic

Her style is skilfully succinct; and her wit proceeds from uncommon shrewdness...readers will wish her her book were twice as long

Highly entertaining...written with her accustomed dash and gaiety, in a manner which frequently suggests one of her delightful novels... Because Miss Mitford is so at home in Versailles, she confers the same feeling of being at home upon a sympathetic modern reader

Gossipy account of the art, affairs and poison paranoia at Louis XIV's Versailles.

Delectable biography

Hardman’s Our Queen is the closest thing to an official jubilee portrait. It is thoroughly researched.

[A] superb book.

As this book immodestly reveals, Tony Blair was, and remains, a remarkable influence on politics, both domestically and internationally

What makes his memoir so absorbing as it swings from clever phrase-making and thoughtful contemporary history to wince-inducing self-analysis, is that he is the first of a generation of politicians to conduct their craft as if observing themselves from an amused an admiring distance - and then to write about it. No recent politician has examines his own motives and psychology quite so candidly

It is the small revelations about the character of Blair that make this book worthwhile

It's a gripping insight into the ex-PM's ten years of power . . . It will take a lot for many people to read his own take on the rise and fall of New Labour, but those that do might be reminded of the charm and vision that swept him to power

I have read many a prime ministerial memoir and none of the other authors has been as self-deprecating, as willing to admit mistakes and to tell jokes against themselves

Paints a candid picture of his friend and rival, Gordon Brown, and of their relationship