Yates writes with a sympathy so clear-hearted that it often feels like nostalgia for his own youth, and yet he is also thoroughly uncompromising in revealing their capacity for self-delusion, their bewilderment in the face of failure

So consistently well-written, just, unsentimental and sympathetic

Read and weep

Yates's prose is as elegant and minimalist as ever... He simply tells the story - in easily comprehensible but perfectly pitched language

Everything Hermione Lee, who both writes and teaches biography, has written about the states of the biographer's art in recent years is worth re-reading

A pleasure to read: clever, witty, sceptical and sensitive

A firework display of mental brilliance

Grippingly vivid

Contains many incidental pleasures and fascinating facts

Provocative

A good story, flourishing characters, and the most persuasive narrative voice

A classic tale of the triumph of youthful naivety over middle-aged cynicism

Classic coming of age novel