Ian Mortimer is among the best: a conjuror who is always bright, engaging and well-informed… Any tour of late 17th-century Britain is guaranteed to be exhilarating. And with Mortimer in charge, one always travels first class

Ian Mortimer is a historical truffle hound… The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain is just such fun to read… Mortimer writes with real freshness and enthusiasm,... His book is a delightful read.

This entertaining tourist guide brings the late 17th century alive…The latest Time Traveller’s Guide will entertain and inform anyone with an interest in this extraordinary period

Thoroughly entertaining… It is crammed with insights, facts and enjoyable anecdotes, which create a sense of the experience of living in Britain between 1660 and 1700… This is a compelling book and one of considerable erudition… This is the book that will provide the most richly colourful account of Britain in this period

Everything you wanted to know about these fair isles between 1660 and 1700... Exciting times.

Mortimer composes his vivid mosaic of life between 1660 and 1700 through the fancied experience of a time traveller

Entertaining and demotic rather than a work of scholarly nitpicking

When it comes to (armchair-based) time travel, he’s your man. If you have yet to experience his in-the-now approach to history, I envy you. What strange words and weird customs you will learn… Our guide’s treatment of the past is, as ever, a case of great knowledge worn lightly. He is by turns funny, scholarly, poignant and almost always fascinating… As a way of meeting our ancestors almost face to face, there is something magical about his writing

Ian Mortimer manages to inform and delight in equal measure

Enthralling and detailed

A fascinating and involving angle on history

Words of contemporaries including Pepys, Mariner Edward Barlow and Celia Fiennes bring to life the changes of the period

Irreverent, witty and beautifully democratic, this is a delight.

A superb period to read about… Mortimer describes London brilliantly with its old walls and teeming streets.

History at its most entertaining.

Intriguing, informative and entertaining.

Joe Moshenska’s wonderful and sparkling biography pays [Sir Kenelm Digby] fitting tribute.

[Digby’s] story has been a long time finding a narrator, but this book has been worth waiting for.

Reads like a thrilling historical novel but amazingly happens to be nonfiction.

The reason Varoufakis seems to have captured the imaginations of so many is that his words about the European crisis speak universal truths about democracy, capitalism and social policy

Like all great story tellers, Varoufakis’ literary flair is not just a function of stylistic prowess. He gets right inside the fears, desires and external constraints of the key players in the complex history of the Eurozone … Reading And The Weak Suffer What They Must? is like reading a gripping thriller. It is a page turner because the plot itself is a relentless sequence of astonishing twists and turns driven by the cunning ingenuity and hubristic folly of its key protagonists … This book is not just illuminating. It is a call to moral awakening and to intelligent, determined and humane political action

Beautifully illustrated… [It] overflows with entertaining detail.

Tinniswood uses lively local detail.

[It] combines a panoramic view of life and architecture in the interwar years with pin-sharp detail and the sort of springy prose that comes with complete command of the material.

This is a lively and hugely entertaining history… It’s packed with very funny anecdotes… A delight.

Tinniswood paints a vivid portrait of the period

A detailed and appreciated look at the phenomenon [of country houses]… Tinniswood writes elegantly, in complete charge of his material. The book is a joy to hold in your hand.

Wittily written and beautifully illustrated, Tinniswood’s book recreates a world far more peculiar, but at times rather more enviable, than any fictional version.

[A] compelling volume of social history.

[A] brilliant book about life in the English country house.

A scandal-packed glimpse into the glamourous Downton Abbey-esque world of English country houses… ****

A probing psychological account.