a selection of reviews  

International Herald Tribune

'Mulvagh has created the most compelling fashion biography to have come out in years...In Mulvagh's lucid prose, Westwood's character and contribution to fashion are dissected dispassionately, but sympathetically.' Suzy Menkes

Financial Times

‘Nobody could read this book and not understand why it is that Westwood continues to interest and infuriate in equal measure. ‘  Lucia van der Post

Mail on Sunday

‘A commanding study. Westwood’s life is rendered with intensity and precision.’ Simon Garfield

Observer

‘A very good book: immaculately researched and full of original observations.’  Stephen Bayley

Observer

'The real Brideshead, as Jane Mulvagh points out, is Madresfield in the Malvern Hills...disreputably beguiling'

The Daily Mail

'Madresfield is a scholarly, evocative and beautifully written study, in which Jane Mulvagh builds up a thrillingly vivid historical portrait.' Selina Hastings

Country Life

'A brilliant book, one of the best recent monographs on an English family and their country house...I wholeheartedly recommend this book. it is clever and beautiful.' 

Independent on Sunday

'Covers 1,000 years or so of country house history, and comes crammed with eccentric earls and fantastic law-suits...the seductions of the house itself...burned in Waugh's imagination.'

The New Statesman

'An affectionate and lavishly illustrated history of the house and family.'  Lewis Jones

The Daily Telegraph

'Mulvagh is a tactful tour-guide with a convincing appreciation of the periods and materials that have enriched the place...She sets the reader at ease, and generally knows how to prick our interest, even when the core subject presents obstacles.'  Nicholas Shakespeare.

The Times

'Mulvagh is an assiduous researcher and writes in an engaging style of graceful anecdote.' Jane Shilling

The Guardian

'...her animating touch resuscitates the past and recalls a group of haughty ghosts in fallible flesh. i loved the tour, perhaps because I would rather read about Madresfield than spend a weekend in one of its guest rooms.' Peter Conrad   

Independent on Sunday

'A high-class guidebook in which the human exhibits can be quite as exotic as the object d'art.' D J Taylor