About the Author

Adam Nicolson is the author of many books on history, travel and the environment. He is winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and the British Topography Prize and lives on at Sissinghust Castle in Kent. His most recent book for HarperCollins is Sissinghurst, a wonderful and personal biography of a place - the story of a heritage, of a vision of connecting once more buildings and garden, fields and farms and of how that dream was realised.

Reviews

'This scrupulously elegant account of the creation of what four centuries of history has confirmed is the finest English-language work of all time, is entirely true to its subject: Adam Nicolson's lapidary prose is masterly, his measured account both as readable as the curious demand and as dignified as the story deserves.' Simon Winchester

'Vivid, exhilarating, consistently intelligent, you can almost taste the air breathed by these Jacobean heroes, who gave English its most famous book. History at its best.' Simon Jenkins

'Unobtrusively learned, rich in curious and purposeful detail, an ideal balance between fervent enthusiasm and elegantly witty detachment....a brilliantly entertaining, passionate, funny and instructive telling of an important and gripping story....Adam Nicolson has written a thrilling and constantly absorbing book.' The Spectator

'A marvellous book: there are few more stylish or sensitive introductions than this to the personalities, the sights and the smells, as well as the words of Jacobean England.' Sunday Telegraph