From The Persephone Quarterly Summer 2006 No. 30

‘I want to let you know what a lovely book I think Doreen is. Firstly, it’s so well written; secondly it brought back memories for me as a London child of that time! I was certainly emotionally scarred by well-meaning but badly advised parenting, which resulted in my partial evacuation – and at a much younger age. How I wish that Doreen could have stayed in the country!’ GC, Oxford

‘I read Princes in the Land shortly after I bought it – devoured it in a day and couldn’t put it down. What incredible insight into families and women giving up so much they eventually almost lose themselves completely. It was quite a desolate book, and yet reaffirmed children’s and women’s rights to establish their own paths in life.’ JB, Windsor

‘I loved The World that was Ours so much and was amazed by the Bernstein family’s heroism in the face of such grave political danger. The account of how they escaped South Africa was especially compelling, while one of the most beautiful aspects of the book is Bernstein’s attention to domesticity and how the experience of home and family life sustained, invigorated, and gave shape and colour to her commitments to social and political justice in South Africa and the broader world around her.’ EH, Chicago

‘The Hopkins Manuscript is a completely absorbing book, full of devastations and surprise - and bleak as hell with total justification. Indeed, quite applicable to the so-called here and now. It’s wonderfully done, a classic. And up there with all the great novels of this type – Wells, Lindsay... A shining discovery.’ TL, St Leonard’s
on Sea

‘R C Sherriff’s writing in The Hopkins Manuscript is as impressive here as it is in Journey’s End and although the stories are very different there are similarities in the strong and convincing characterisation… At first this seemed an unlikely choice for Persephone but it is actually totally appropriate in its picture of mid-twentieth century English life and the struggle of ordinary people to cope with approaching disaster. For me it ranks alongside They Were Sisters, Little Boy Lost, The Home-Maker, Miss Ranskill Comes Home and Doreen as a favourite Persephone title and I shall look forward to reading more of Sherriff’s work.’ JM, Amersham

‘I cannot say how absolutely superbly wonderful, pleasurable and readable Molly Hughes’s A London Child of the 1870s is. It must be sui generis and is easily in my top ten life books. Operation Heartbreak is equally superb – beautiful, beautiful – intensely readable.’ TF, Rhode Island

‘A London Child Child is on the surface just another nostalgic book about childhood memories but that first impression is deceptive. One needs the perceptive, even poetic preface by Adam Gopnik, pointing up the reality of Molly Hughes’s autobiography and the background of life in Victorian London, to fill in the things left unsaid and to remind one that happiness and tragedy are only a step apart. It is only by being aware of this that one can judge the depth of Molly’s artistic achievement. “We see light only because the shadows set it off,” says Gopnik. In happier vein, there were, in the chapters about the grandparents’ house in Cornwall, similarities with Mary’s beloved Charbury, also in the West Country, in Mariana, and the description of the journey thither and its preparations reminded me also of the journey to Bognor Regis of the Stevens family in your forthcoming The Fortnight in September.’ DT, London EC2