The beautiful, revelatory biography of Jim Ede and Kettle's Yard that we have been waiting for. I loved it

Freeman's attention falls on each particular of Ede's life and turns it over like a polished pebble in a jacket pocket. Along with his gallery, this book is the legacy he might have wished for

Gorgeously written

If ever the spirit of a gallery is captured within hard covers, it is Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, in this beautiful, original biography of its founder... Freeman's writing has Ede's flair, grace and insight

An impassioned biography

An excellent biography of Jim Ede. Reading Laura Freeman's luminous study of the curator and collector, I can't help but picture the gallery and house he built - the haven of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge

Freeman has done a wonderful job here in conveying with absolute precision why Ede mattered and what made him different from his Bloomsbury contemporaries

A thorough and entertaining biography... Excellently paced

Meticulously researched, sympathetically told, the book is infused with the spirit of Kettle's Yard

Ways of Life is a portable Kettle's Yard, an entrancing book of immense and curious beauty

Laura Freeman has more than done her subject justice. It is a complicated story, lucidly told and neatly illustrated

Over the many years that I've been visiting Kettle's Yard, it's as if the place has become a dear friend; now with this beautifully constructed book I am able to meet the man whose presence and artistic acuity can be seen in every room and in every careful juxtaposition of images. Wonderful!

A cabinet of curiosities... It tells the story of a life and a century

A triumph... Its exactly the right tone of thoughtful, critical affection... The witty sentences are fine things, illuminating and illumined, conveying the way light is bounced around Kettle's Yard as it shines from candlesticks and picture frames

A captivating biography

An extraordinary tale and could not have been told better or with more sensitivity. Her book will make anyone want to pay an immediate visit

A deeply researched book

Addictive from the get-go... Freeman is a deft storyteller

Freeman brings characters vividly to life on the page, recreating the lively circle that joined in Ede's many activities with sympathy and panache... Ways of Life conjures his spirit and continues his mission in style

Highly original… Admirers of that secular sanctuary will adore this book

A superb achievement ... a lucid, totally compulsive read from beginning to end, chilling as well as profoundly empathetic in tone

Utterly brilliant. This gripping account of East Germany sheds new light on what for many of us remains an opaque chapter of history. Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-WW2 Europe

A gripping and nuanced history of the GDR from its beginnings as a separate German socialist state against the wishes of Stalin to its final rapprochement with its Western other against those of Gorbachev. Beyond the Wall is a unique fresco of everyday reality in East Germany. Elegantly moving between diplomatic history, political economy and cultural analysis, this is an essential read to understand not only the life and death of the GDR but also the parts of it that still survive in the emotions of its former citizens.

Superb, totally fascinating and compelling, Katja Hoyer's first full history of East Germany's rise and fall is a work of revelatory original research - and a gripping read with a brilliant cast of characters. Essential reading

A beyond-brilliant new picture of the rise and fall of the East German state. Katja Hoyer gives us not only pin-sharp historical analysis, but an up-close and personal view of both key characters and ordinary citizens whose lives charted some of the darkest hours of the Cold War. If you thought you knew the history of East Germany, think again. An utterly riveting read

A fantastic, sparkling book, filled with insights not only about East Germany but about the Cold War, Europe and the forging of the 20th and 21st centuries

The joke has it that the duty of the last East German to escape from the country was to turn off the lights. In Beyond the Wall Katja Hoyer turns the light back on and gives us the best kind of history: frank, vivid, nuanced and filled with interesting people

A refreshing and eye-opening book on a country that is routinely reduced to cartoonish cliché. Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the ordinary East Germans who built themselves a society that - for a time - worked for them, a society carved out of a state founded in the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism

A colourful and often revelatory re-appraisal of one of modern history's most fascinating political curiosities. Katja Hoyer skilfully weaves diverse political and private lives together, from the communist elite to ordinary East Germans

Katja Hoyer is becoming the authoritative voice in the English speaking world for all things German. Thanks to her, German history has the prominence in the Anglosphere it certainly deserves.

Katja Hoyer brilliantly shows that the history of East Germany was a significant chapter of German history, not just a footnote to it or a copy of the Soviet Union. To understand Germany today we have to grapple with the history and legacy of its all but dismissed East

Katja Hoyer's return to discover what happened to her homeland - the old East Germany - is an excellent counterpoint to Stasiland by Anna Funder