Simply superb

Extraordinary

Like her previous book, I was hooked after the first few pages. It’s as good as non-fiction could possibly get

Grippingly suspenseful … Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace displays a scalpel-sharp investigative mind, and it vividly conveys the immediate surroundings of the case, from the stench of the polluted Thames infiltrating Westminster Hall to the degradations of Victorian marriage, as evidenced in contemporary divorce cases

Summerscale strikes nonfiction gold for the third time

Summerscale’s brilliance lies not only in recognising the power of a particular story, but in charting, with beautiful precision, its strange echoes and reverberations

I’m all admiration: she has turned a sepia photograph, curling and tattered, into a film that runs through the mind in glorious and unimpeachable Technicolor

Mesmerising

Told with dazzling detail and exquisite tenderness, this non-fiction tale reads like a perfect novel

Utterly engrossing

Riveting

Absorbing … a rich and puzzled book

Summerscale puts this peculiar case in a wonderfully rich context of fads of the day … Her courtroom reconstructions are vivid and enthralling, her research is impeccable and her narration coolly authoritative as she draws together what was happening around her subject and makes Mrs Robinson’s volatile state of mind much more explicable

Fascinating

Marvellous

A gripping account of Victorian wife Isabella Robinson and her cause célèbre divorce trial

Meticulously researched

Sensational

Kate Summerscale has a knack for rescuing Victorian histories from obscurity and turning them into the most comprehensive books you’re likely to find in any non-fiction section … Thought-provoking stuff from a writer who, in putting the past in the dock, teaches us about who we are now

Moving, compelling and brilliantly executed