Aristocrats

Engrossing

Karen Robinson, Sunday Times

A dazzling achievement: an extraordinary story told by a phenomenally gifted writer. Within its gripping narrative lies a wonderfully rich reconstruction of the world of the Hanoverian elite, its virtues and vices wittily and movingly related

Simon Schama

Aristocrats is a wonderful panorama of a book

Victoria Glendinning, Literary Review

Their story is on one level as hard to put down as any of the fashionable French novels that were Caroline's favourite reading. On another it re-explores a century's history seen, so to speak, inside out through the eyes of four remarkable women who started young, lived long, did much, wrote more and have found a scarcely less remarkable biographer in Stella Tillyard

Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph

Tillyard's moving and often brilliant book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of aristocracy and enormously entertaining reading for everyone else

Linda Colley, Observer