Michael Alexander is much the best translator from Old English. His Penguin Beowulf is much to be recommended, but so too is the volume entitled The First Poems in English

Magnificent... funny and sad, by turns elegant and terse, romantic and brisk - evocative and entirely beguiling, a wonderful novel

Profound and original

A most unusual, fascinating novel...gripping transcontinental adventure

Brilliantly brutal

Splicing tales of Griselda's mission with Philomena's wartime trials, Belben's narrative ambles along at a pace suited to the war-battered world in which it unfolds. From this sentimental premise, she carves an epic tale devoid of syrup that cuts to the heart of our relationship with other cultures and other creatures

The novel offers a heart-rending account of the horses' experience in the Great War... Our Horses in Egypt, a radical experiment in narrative, has a sympathetic splendour, leading the blinkered humanist imagination into the realm of creaturely experience

Belben does not shy away from difficult themes...In this powerful novel, Belben celebrates the gift of not forgetting with the confidence and style of a writer who deserves to be a great deal better known

Here is a First World War story and a love story with a difference... Rosalind Belben is as unsentimental as she is skilful. Griselda's quest is perfectly paced, and the author's default tone is restraint mixed with irony. As a result she has conjured up a novel of unexpected potency

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

The greatest comic writer ever

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sublime comic genius

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in

Lovely

Moving and intelligent

Magnetic, unpretentious and bursting with one-liners

Jewell's readability and emotional intelligence make her the cream of pop fiction

Fans of chick-lit will understand when I say that this is a book you simply disappear into