Orator

Edwards has crafted an intimate and deeply informed portrait of a man struggling to make sense of his world’s slide into civil war and chaos… Compelling and beautifully written

Eve MacDonald, author of Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire

It is a very tall order to make readable sense both of the brutal politics of late-republican Rome and of the complex inconsistencies of Cicero’s own character – but Catharine Edwards has carried it off superbly. Written with grace, pace and scrupulous annotation, Orator is an exemplary historical biography

Peter Wiseman, Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Exeter

Wonderful... Edwards has done a marvellous job of showing us Cicero the man, the scholar and the politician in highly entertaining style

Emma Southon, author of A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women

A man of thought in an age of thugs, a pen amongst swords: every age needs its Cicero and Edwards has written a resonant Cicero for ours

Peter Stothard, author of Palatine: An Alternative History of the Caesars

A wonderful book. The complexities and paradoxes of Cicero’s character are as fascinating as those which characterised the Roman Republic in the final decades of its existence – and no biography I have read does richer justice to both

Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and co-host of The Rest is History

Orator brings Cicero to life as a brilliant, complicated, flawed human being; it is also an ideal introduction to the end of the Roman Republic

Harry Sidebottom, author of A Day in the Life of a Gladiator

A good biography of Cicero and the bloody age in which he tried to maintain the old ways... Edwards rehabilitates him as the greatest orator of the Roman world

Patrick Kidd, The Times

A pacy narrative... Edwards brilliantly presents the much neglected Cicero, Man of Action

Spectator

Compelling... A truly informative account of Rome in crisis

Literary Review

A triumph... as thrillingly entertaining as Robert Harris's celebrated trilogy of Cicero novels

Observer