Waverley is the first great historical novel and should be ranked alongside Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma or Tolstoy's War and Peace, both of which are bathed in the blaze of Scott's molten genius

No author - not even Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith or JK Rowling - has ever been as critically acclaimed and commercially successful as Scott

Scott was one of the most influential of all writers with a profound effect on all the literatures of Europe and North America. He invented the historical novel and greatly enlarged the scope of the novel as a literary form. Only Shakespeare can equal him as a creator of characters

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. – It is not fair. He has Fame and Profit enough as a Poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths.– I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it – but fear I must

With 22 novels, six poetical marathons and 11 more prose works under his belt, the most celebrated Scotsman of his day was the first author ever to be a best seller in all three genres. What other writer, dead for 170 years, still has fishing boats and a football team named in his honour?

The best novel by Sir Walter Scott

A highly successful literary thriller with one eye on a shocking chapter in the nation’s genuine history and another on the potential for authorial invention

Offers a chilling alternative view of the direction the Second World War might have taken had the man who later became the Duke of Windsor…remained on the British throne

A crafty and pitch-perfect novel of Nazi sympathizers and secret agents in wartime London

It is Taylor’s achievement to have written a tense, page-turning thriller, enriched by acute social observation, within which unfolds a subtle meditation upon where the quest for peace ends and the path to treason begins

A highly successful thriller

The novel is much more than an intriguing exercise in alternative history… This is as skilful and enjoyable a novel as you can ask for, the work of a master-craftsman

A fascinating foray into the 'what if?'… Ingenious and extremely plausible

A gripping and highly convincing novel… Here are intrigue and clever parallel narratives… One emerges from immersion in this tantalizing creation admiring both Taylor’s art and the cleverness of his imagination

This is a gripping tale of intrigue

A splendidly disrespectful counterfactual history that questions the perceived patriotism of King Edward VIII and his notoriously pro-Hitler views

A witty, meticulous detailed alternative version of the second world war

While readers will delight in the excitement and adventure of this story, they will also learn about the poverty and difficulties faced by many children throughout the world and about the consequences of corruption in government

The chase leads them throughout the city, exposing the great disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots," and the huge injustice this represents. They face moral dilemmas throughout and, ultimately, make good decisions. Their intelligence and characters make the condition in which they live seem even more unfair

An exciting read full of suspense. This will appeal to boys and to girls, and could act as a stimulus to classroom discussion of poverty, child workers, recycling in third world countries and the misuse of economic and political power