Light writes beautifully. With such colour and with perception and lyricism she clads the past….Common People is part memoir, part thrilling social history of the England of the Industrial Revolution, but above all a work of quiet poetry and insight into human behaviour. It is full of wisdom.

This book is a substantial achievement: its combination of scholarship and intelligence is, you may well think, the best monument you could have to all those she has rescued from time’s oblivion.

Evocatively written…a thrilling and unnerving read

Exquisite…Barely a page goes by without something fascinating on it, betraying Light’s skill in winkling out the most relevant or moving aspects of her antecedents’ lives, which echo through the generations.

[A] short and beautifully written meditation on family and mobility.

Intellectually sound and relevant…a refreshingly modern way of thinking about our past.

Light [is skilled] in probing dark corners of her ancestry and exposing their historical meaning…packed with humanity.

Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, Alison Light makes her family speak for England.

A remarkable achievement…should become a classic.