“Witty, gossipy and profoundly researched”
— Christopher Hart, Sunday Times
– Full review →
“Hilarious and riveting … beautifully written and compulsively readable, Splendour and Squalor is popular history at its best”
— Max Dunbar, 3AM Magazine
– Full review →
“Scriven avoids being judgmental. He treads a fine line between elegy and disapproval. By pitching his tone right, and providing plenty of juicy details, he has produced a work of wide appeal”
— Oliver Marre, Observer
– Full review →
“Scriven guides us through each catalogue of errors with relish and wit”
— Christopher Silvester, Daily Telegraph
– Full review →
“Compelling…so riveting that it is hard to put down”
— Edinburgh Evening News
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“It is perhaps just as well that the hereditary principle has been eradicated from the House of Lords…Scriven has had huge fun telling these grisly tales”
— Roger Lewis, Sunday Express,
Top Reads & Winning Book Titles of 2009
– Full review →
“A rich pudding of a book, full of fruits and nuts…the author’s ornate, antique style, admirably suited to the subject”
— Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
– Full review →
“Witty, compassionate, thorough, erudite and fascinating”
— Steve Meacham, Sun-Herald (Australia)
– Full article →
“Wickedly entertaining”
— Yorkshire Post
– full review
[PDF file Yorkshire Post 05.12.09] →
“Compelling reading”
— Christopher Gray, Oxford Times
– Full review →
“A guilty pleasure”
— Saga
“A gossipy and intriguing social history”
— The Times
“Fascinating”
— East Anglian Daily Times
– full review
[PDF file East Anglian Daily Times 05.12.09] →
“Compelling…written beautifully”
— Jersey Life
“It’s fantastic: I was gripped – and appalled”
— Selina Hastings, author of The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham
“A masterpiece…Scriven is a superb writer”
— Peter Oborne, Chief Political Commentator on the Daily Telegraph, author of The Triumph of The Political Class
“Utterly riveting and a total and lasting pleasure…a modern classic of group biography”
— Valerie Grove, author of So Much To Tell
“An excellent book, tremendously enjoyable”
— Dr Terence Dooley, senior Lecturer in History at the National University of Maynooth, author of The Decline of The Big House in Ireland
With thanks to www.thepeerage.com
© 2024 Marcus Scriven