Tides of War

A vivid account of a couple of years in the Peninsula Campaign and a sympathetic portrait of those left behind

Joanna Hines, Literary Review

A delicious novel by an experienced author who captures the scientific atmosphere of the early 19th century with a devastating study of infidelity

Colin Gardiner, Oxford Times

Dazzling - I love this book. It's beautifully written, the characters are deeply involving and the historical settings are so right - in short, Tides of War is a triumph

Simon Schama

Marvellous... Her descriptions are wonderful

Sunday Times

Tillyard perfectly inhabits her period... Gradually the plot's threads tighten to reveal a perfectly sprung novel

Daily Telegraph

Hugely enjoyable... Intelligent, classy, entertaining

The Times

Tides of War is elegantly written, with passages of verve and...poignancy

Matthew Dennison, Independent

A thrilling romance brought to life with exquisite detail

Prima

A perfectly sprung novel of the sort that owes more to Hilary Mantel and David Mitchell than Patrick O'Brian or Bernard Cornwall

Daily Telegraph

Love, betrayal, war and peace charge this powerful debut

Fanny Blake, Woman & Home

One of the most assured debuts in years...a modern novel that is the perfect answer to anyone who thinks the past is out of date

Amanda Foreman, Financial Times

Tillyard writes in fluid, largely understated prose and her descriptions are wonderful

Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times

Tillyard is a fluent and attractive chronicler of detail and some of her imaginative liberties are ingenious

Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph

A prodigious talent able to combine meticulous research with novelistic devices...there is much to enjoy and admire

Norma Clarke, Times Literary Supplement

Fluently written and impeccably researched

The Lady

It is time we stopped thinking of the historical novel as a genre, and an inferior one at that. If its ostensible subject matter means that it doesn't attempt to tell us how we live now, nevertheless a novel set back in time may, if it is good, say as much about what it is to be alive as one set in the next street or another country today. Tides of War is such a novel. It is diverting, but not a diversion

The Spectator

Gripping

Easy Living

This saga of lives swept up in the Peninsular War recalls Georgette Heyer at her best...impossible to put down

Kate Saunders, Saga

A well written, engaging read...beautifully observed

History Today

Seldom, since reading Jane Austen, have I so wanted to slip between the pages of a book and become one of its characters… She makes fiction as real as history and considerably more compelling

Lucy Kellaway, Financial Times

The real life players of the Napoleonic era spring to life

i

Compelling

Big Issue

Highly assured and almost educational with its broad sweep of history

Jane Housham, Guardian

Tillyard’s achievement is in this original portray log the Regency era and its relevance to our own time

Philippa Williams, The Lady