'This is the best available single-volume collection of Irish poetry yet published.'

'...excellently edited, exceedingly confident, historically revealing and frequently surprising. The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry is a feat. It is the largest anthology of Irish verse yet spanning 1,500 years - and is more comprehensive than predecessors in its inclusion of a large quantity of pre-Yeats material and translations from languages other than Irish and Old English. A third of the 200+ translations are being published for the first time. It is, as Seamus Heaney says in the preface, the most confident anthology of the country's verse ... Patrick Crotty, the editor and a professor of Irish literature at Aberdeen University, should be congratulated for the precise, considerate and independent thinking he has brought to his selections."

This is a magnificent anthology...The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry is so rich in its inclusions, so superbly organised, showing such breadth of scholarship and (in general) felicity of judgement...applause for a great achievement...

'The great length of the anthology allows brave decisions...the discrimination, imagination, deftness and heft of the whole is masterful. Much more than an anthology, this is an alternative history of Ireland, in poems that burn into the mind - the newly minted no less than the canonical.'

Heaney occupies his rightful place in the year's stand-out anthology: The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, edited by Patrick Crotty. From bards of the eighth century to Nick Laird (born in 1975), with ample space for translations from the Irish (over many centuries), for ballads and songs and rhymes, this sumptuous 1000-page gathering will last many winters out.

Patrick Crotty's Penguin Book of Irish Poetry threw a capacious net over many centuries, including a rich haul of wonderful new translations from the Irish, many by himself (as well as Heaney and others).

This most French of all French writers . . . One thinks of her as the female voice of Paris . . . It's as if all the house fronts of Paris were cut away and we could see men and women talking, dressing, brooding, loving

Misogynistic violence, ancient myth and modern rage confront each other in moving and dynamic verse.

Benson is one of the finest English poets writing today.

[Benson] is bravely and unfashionably, a high Romantic.

[Wroe] captures here the essential spirit of the saint – himself a poet after all, whose work has never died – making this a delight to read. A book not to be missed.

This is a book full of complex engagements with the word and the flesh, and the counterpointed rhythms of the sacred and the secular. Wroe’s book is a praise song, vindicating the worlds beyond our rationalist compass.

The spiritual is vivid through quality and vitality in this poetry. Wroe’s writing method is incarnational, translating the apparently mundane into rich parables.

An elegant hardback with ambitions beyond the poetry shelves… Ann Wroe’s unusual and impressive book is less a Life of Francis than a series of…epiphanies and personal revelations inspired by his imagined company.

This joyous and thoughtful tribute leaves you wanting more.

By Jove! It's a ripping old yarn... Dashed agreeably close to the master.

A hugely enjoyable caper

There are laughs and admirable ingenuity in Schott’s confection

A book that is so close in spirit and style to the PG Wodehouse originals it’s like the real thing

Top-notch fun.

Succeeds triumphantly, both as light entertainment and as a tribute to the master

In his first foray into PG Wodehouse homage/imitation/pastiche (whichever it may be) Schott appeared to hit the Wodehouse target dead on.

Jonathan Coe's Middle England is brilliantly insightful on the times we are living in

Let me add to the chorus of praise for Jonathan Coe's new book Middle England. Easily my favourite of his since What a Carve Up! Which did for Thatcherism what Middle England does for Brexit

An astute, enlightened and enlightening journey into the heart of our current national identity crisis. Both moving and funny. As we'd expect from Coe

From post-industrial Birmingham to the London riots and the current political gridlock, it takes in family, literature and love in a comedy for our times

Coe can make you smile, sigh, laugh; he has abundant sympathy for his characters

This book is sublimely good. State of the (Brexit) nation novel to end them all, but also funny, tender, generous, so human and intelligent about age and love as well as politics

Probably the best English novelist of his generation

No modern novelist is better at charting the precariousness of middle-class life

An angry and exuberant book

Jonathan Coe has established himself as one of the most entertaining chroniclers of our times

You can't stop reading....I was haunted for days