Acclaim for The Great Fire of London
"Popular narrative history at its best, well researched, imaginatively
and dramatically written. . . . The author marshals his story and his
mass of contemporary quotations with great skill."
-Times Literary Supplement
"The brilliance of its narrative chapters . . . a marvelous eye for
evocative detail. Hanson's prose is animated by the ferocious energy of
the fire and seems to be guided by its inexorable movement. He creates
the literary equivalent of the special effects in a disaster movie. . .
. A rich mixture of imagination and research."
-The Daily Telegraph (London)
"He writes with knowledge and verve. As if making a television
documentary on a natural disaster, he includes a gripping technical
chapter on the mechanism and chemistry of combustion. This works
brilliantly. . . . The book gains immeasurably from the author's eye for
detail and from his understanding of the beliefs and prejudices of the
day. . . . Informative and lively account."
-The Sunday Times (London)
"The best depiction of the Great Fire seen to date. . . . He manages to
describe not only the atmosphere of the event itself, but also the
experience of living in seventeenth-century Britain."
-Soho Independent
"A riveting book for those who like their history with a bit of
mystery."
-The Brisbane News
"A rollicking good yarn."
-The Age (Melbourne)
"Blends high-class original research with a narrative style that mimics
fiction. . . . Horrific subjects have served this man well and he has a
knack for plugging into the dark themes that run like molten rivers
beneath our social veneer."
-New Zealand Herald
"Neil Hanson's descriptions of the inferno are like CNN reports from
Kosovo."
-Camden New Journal
"It's not the technical data which makes the book so riveting though.
It's the flair with which Hanson invests his account with qualities
usually reserved for novels-narrative drive, persuasive character
sketches, vivid scene stealing."
-Sunday Star Times (New Zealand)
