`Quirky, amused and tres British' JULIAN BARNES

`A collection of true stories, culled from Robb's insatiable historical reading and lit by his imagination . . . So richly pleasurable that you feel it might emit a warm glow if you left it in a dark room' JOHN CAREY, Book of the Week, Sunday Times

`Robb has focused on what really matters, the human beings who shaped, or who were occasionally defeated by, their city . . . . Marvellously entertaining, boundingly energetic and original' PHILIP HENSHER, Daily Telegraph

No-one knows a city like the people who live there - so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages? Taking us from 1750 to the new millennium, Graham Robb's Parisians is at once a book to read from cover to cover, to lose yourself in, to dip in and out of at leisure, and a book to return to again and again - rather like the city itself, in fact.

`If you delight in the historical equivalent of finding a tiny restaurant frequented only by locals . . . then Robb will sate your appetite' Evening Standard

`The great and daring trick Robb pulls off is to make the familiar so unfamiliar that in every sense it is like seeing the city anew' Observer