RaveThe Sydney Morning Herald (AUS)An enchantment of a book ... Everything Dench utters comes with expert technical knowledge ... This is one of the wisest books about Shakespeare, and it has all the more emotional depth for the fact that it is grounded in a lifetime’s experience and is full of rich anecdotes.
Judi Dench, Brendan O'Hea
RaveThe Sydney Morning Herald\"This is an enchantment of a book. It reflects the considered views of Judi Dench, a great actress now in her ninth decade, nearly blind, who has a photographic memory of her life performing the plays of Shakespeare. Her interlocutor in these conversations is Brendan O’Hea of London’s Globe Theatre and the effect is ravishingly sane and deep and wise ... This is one of the wisest books about Shakespeare, and it has all the more emotional depth for the fact that it is grounded in a lifetime’s experience and is full of rich anecdotes ... If you want to turn a child onto Shakespeare give them this book. And if you want to revisit the great Shakespeare you have seen or heard or read, buy it for yourself. It is full of romance and ribaldry and a deep sense of how the spirit of play can touch on the mystery of what Shakespeare gives us.\
Matthew Sturgis
PositiveThe Sydney Morning Herald (AUS)... [an] ample and compelling biography, full of enthralling quotes (and, for what it\'s worth, new bits of dirt).
Richard Ford
PositiveThe Sydney Morning Herald (AUS)Like Chekhov, Ford doesn’t write stories that are exercises in the lyrical mode but are bits of fiction that are whatever lengths they need to wrestle their subjects to the ground. The other distinctive thing about these shorter pieces, which often read as novel-like in their range and ambit, is that each has an Irish aspect to their subject matter that seems to reflect Ford’s time at Trinity College Dublin while also hovering around the states of Louisiana and Maine like semi-private fetishes or obsessions ... Grief and love are central to these stories, which show an old master at the height of his powers ... tremendous range and consistency. They have an elasticity that allows Ford to lasso any stray or poignant perception that floats into view. Yes, they are, by design, Irish, New England and Southern, but this deliberate vista of designations contain and disclose worlds.
