Every Valley

A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure, beautifully told. Unforgettable

SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE

A mesmerizing journey through one of the most fascinating and creative moments in human history

AMANDA FOREMAN

A book of power and glory, brimming with emotion and dazzling in its reach

STACY SCHIFF

Charles King shows how Handel’s epic work, the Messiah, sprang not from one solitary composer’s genius but from the dramatic interplay of eighteenth-century lives and their times. Fascinating and accessible to all

HENRY LOUIS GATES JR

Vividly depicting life in Britain during the turbulence of the 1700s, Charles King celebrates Handel's Messiah as a glorious beacon of hope

ELAINE PAGELS

An absolute delight, beautifully told – and featuring a veritable Who’s Who of the Georgian era

PETER FRANKOPAN

Charles King’s erudition is remarkable but never obtrusive, for he is a wonderful story-teller. Every Valley is eighteenth century history as page-turner, evoking both tears and laughter

ARCHIE BROWN

Engaging and enthusiastic . . . King handles a very large cast of characters and source material with energy, intelligence and aplomb

Freya Johnstone, Literary Review

Fascinating . . . King's narrative is wide-ranging, taking in not just the ailing composer and his circle – such as Thomas Coram, instigator of London's Foundling Hospital – but . . . how the Messiah coincided with the birth of the Enlightenment . . . In King's telling, the "Hallelujah Chorus" is just one rousing highlight among many

Michael Prodger, New Statesman

In an engagingly written story . . . Charles King explores the background to a work which he considers the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. King’s discursive and genial approach . . . make for enjoyable reading . . . a bird’s-eye view of Georgian London, seasoned with apposite quotes from leading literary figures of the time, including Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift

BBC Music Magazine

An adroitly threaded account of Handel’s life and achievements [that] opens out to a colourful gallery of 18th-century personalities who played a part in making Messiah what it was . . . lively . . . readable, well researched and rich with detail . . . an engaging narrative . . . full of understanding, setting a good example for any who would write about music . . . thoughtful and wide-ranging

Gramophone

An interesting biography dealing with events and characters with whom Handel’s life became entangled

Church Times

Charles King’s fascinating history of Handel’s most famous work shows it in a whole new light . . . his book humanises the work’s exalted creators and demonstrates that the Messiah is not a pompous manifesto of faith but a troubled, often desperate quest for consolation . . . King . . . does a fine job of implicating Handel in the conflicts and contradictions of an unsettled society

Peter Conrad, Observer

What is it that thrills audiences and lifts the hearts of singers? In Every Valley Charles King . . . sets out to explain the Messiah’s enduring popularity . . . King interweaves the lives of several people directly or tangentially connected with it [and] accompanies these with analyses of Georgian life and thought . . . the result is a densely textured history of the era . . . [that] vividly evoke[s] its origins, creation and impact on eighteenth-century society, while also suggesting the message it conveys to our own

Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books

King uses Handel’s Messiah, possibly "the greatest piece of participatory art ever created", as a hub whose spokes radiate outward to a host of key historical forces and personalities that characterize 18th-century Britain

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Compelling. King transforms Handel's world into a place we can all recognise and understand as the foundation for our own

Washington Post

A splendid writer . . . a meticulous researcher, [King] delivers surprises . . . fine and vivid sentences . . . fascinating

The Atlantic

A work of vivid social and cultural commentary, it functions also as an in-depth study of artistic creation, how Messiah came to be, but also of the unstoppable spigot that was Handel’s musical imagination

John Adams, The New York Times Book Review

Smartly written . . . In explaining the social and biographical background of the story of Messiah, King brings the masterpiece to life — and keeps it alive

Washington Examiner

A book rich with quirky characters living under strange circumstances: eccentric royals, visionary benefactors, financial collapses, theatrical triumphs and career meltdowns . . . we are plunged into the hectic mayhem of London life

The New York Times