Ancestry

Simon Mawer Press Reviews

'Utterly absorbing... so cleverly constructed and beautifully written' -The Times

'Moving and exhilarating' - Spectator

'Gripping,an intriguing blend of archival research and fictionalised accounts of the life histories of his own forebears... I won't forget these women whose DNA he is so proud of inheriting, or the voices he conjures for them... They were anything but ordinary' - Financial Times

'Mawer writes movingly about the privations of military life and the hardships endured by women in the Victorian era... His prose is measured and elegan't - Sunday Times

'Told with brio, the gutsy narrative evokes the messiness and fragility of everyday life in the nineteenth century... I was moved by Mawer's defense of storytelling as a vital tool of historical recovery' - Daily Mail

'An astonishing blend of historical fiction and imaginative non-fiction, Ancestry is a book that will stay with me forever... A beautiful, haunting and extremely moving testament to what men and women without means or agency must endure to keep their families together and what we owe - and can learn from them in turn'- Natalie Jenner