PositiveIrish Times (IRE)A quixotic and nomadic seafaring writer, Raban was fascinated by the lives of the people he met ... A word stylist, Raban writes with delicacy but over-uses the phrase \'it must have seemed\', while his prose is sometimes florid. He is frequently melancholic and meditative, but his distinctive writing is characterised by precision and clarity.
Jan Morris
MixedThe Irish Times (IRE)While her views are thought-provoking and provide a social snapshot, they present a problem as the world has moved on and news events have overtaken her writing: Trump has since been impeached, Brexit has finally happened and Harry and Meghan have fled to Canada. Parts of the book are tinged with sadness. The most moving passages are about her once wife and now civil partner Elizabeth (they married in 1949), who has dementia ... Many of these pieces are trivial, some fall flat while others have a spark ...Thinking Again is a reflective collection but its underlying tone is melancholy with a sense of self-aggrandisement ... A weary resignation with the world persists in her musings, at odds with a writer who lived a restless and swashbuckling life. There are flashes of vivacity – she enjoys the power of certain words and can still turn an evocative phrase. An acerbic wit and gentle playfulness is apparent in some entries, and although many are insignificant, she is surely to be applauded for her indomitable spirit, battling on in the writing business in her tenth decade, reflecting life’s twists and turns when younger scribes would have called it a day.
Jan Morris
MixedThe Irish Times\"Her pieces include colourful stories ... Morris aficionados will not find much new material here since some stories are reheated from earlier work ... Her cheerfulness and passion are still to the fore... but the energy and inventiveness that characterises Morris’s writing capturing the genius loci is missing. There is an absence of any insight into the present world turmoil or of a light being shone on turbulent times.\
