Holroyd has a wonderful eye for detail...an entirely captivating biography...one of the glories of the form
Guardian
It has all the tumbling narrative, spicy detail and easy empathy that determine his midas touch... shows Holroyd yet again pushing the biographer's art to new imaginative planes
Financial Times
Magnificent - not just as a fascinating exercise in group biography, but as a masterpiece of comic writing...such<i> joie de vivre</i>
New Statesman
This is a fabulous cavalcade of a book, written with infectious verve and deep imaginative sympathy ... a joy to read
- John Carey, Sunday Times
Michael Holroyd has once again triumphed over a seemingly impossible subject. For so capacious is this tale of two great actors and their descendants that he has written a sweeping social history of theatre in the late 19th and early 20th-century England. Deftly plotted, with an infectious verve that springs from his delight in the waywardness of human nature
- Frances Spalding, Independent