RaveThe Spectator (UK)... rigorous, deft and entertaining history, though I did feel anxious on Magellan’s behalf as this investigation into his character and conduct proceeded ... By the time Magellan’s fleet sets out, at the book’s midpoint, you are itching for action ... This is not history as Jan Morris wrote it. You get little sense of the places described as they are now beyond one depiction of a statue of a historian in Princeton. And I disagree with Fernández-Armesto about seafarers. They are not irresponsible: most still make horrendously long journeys to support families they almost never see. But this book is a sparkling read. The author is a fierce judge, but mostly a fair one.
Philip Hoare
RaveThe Spectator (UK)An antic and original creation, it is not exactly a biography of the revolutionary Renaissance printmaker, painter and theorist of geometry and perspective ... Instead, Hoare has made a book as much for Dürer as it is about him. Dürer’s life and art are thrillingly encountered. But imagine writing a letter to a brilliant friend containing a portrait of them, filling the gaps between you with imaginative companionship ... No reader will forget studying the ‘Apocalypse’, ‘Melancolia,’ the ‘Angel’, the rhino or the self-portraits in Hoare’s company. Following him between them is deliberately dizzying ... Hoare abandons familiar conventions of non-fiction for a carnival of polymathic cross-reference, fantasy and structure by association. Then, regularly and carefully, the whirl stills and we stand in communion with the artist ... Hoare moves beyond his own hand, which has hitherto brought hybrid biographies, memoirs and tremendous books on the sea and whales, to make something reckless, marvellous and unforgettable. Dürer would have loved it. So will you.
Robert MacFarlane
RaveTelegraph\"Landmarks is a bigger book than it first appears. There is a manifesto quality to it, a more urgent beat than in his previous work ... The result is a step forward for Macfarlane and for nature writing ... The achievement of Landmarks is not just to return a lost vocabulary ... [Macfarlane] offers an enriched nature, seen through the eyes of our forebears, who knew it better, and more besides ... As for Macfarlane, every movement needs stars. In him we surely have one, burning brighter with each book.\
