Red Thread

Charlotte Higgins's Red Thread is a masterwork , an open-eyed analysis of the everyday mazery we face without even realising it, and an understanding of psychic and narrative architecture that's a pretty crucial piece of equipment for wherever and whenever we find ourselves lost. I read it on the balcony of a hotel in Rome... and it was as if the city itself opened playfully and thoughtfully around the reading experience in its amalgam of pasts and presents, histories and mysteries.

Charlotte Higgins's Red Thread is a masterwork , an open-eyed analysis of the everyday mazery we face without even realising it, and an understanding of psychic and narrative architecture that's a pretty crucial piece of equipment for wherever and whenever we find ourselves lost. I read it on the balcony of a hotel in Rome... and it was as if the city itself opened playfully and thoughtfully around the reading experience in its amalgam of pasts and presents, histories and mysteries.

Any bookshelf would be graced by the presence of [ Red Thread ]… [it] ask[s] readers to surrender to the unpredictable pleasures of getting lost … playful and gorgeously written .

A serious, substantial, scholarly and yet also highly personal book about mazes… Red Thread is a book to admire as much as to enjoy.

[ Charlotte Higgins ] is no ordinary author . Her thrillingly original book – it really is like no other – is itself a sort of maze of facts and thoughts, ancient tales and modern phenomena… on every page there is a sparkling idea or a fascinating piece of information . It is also beautifully written … a beautifully produced volume , full of colour illustrations of sculptures and paintings and tantalising maps of mazes.

In this beautifully produced and richly illustrated book… Charlotte Higgins takes us on a fascinating meander through the art and literature of the last 2,500 years… After reading this book you will see labyrinths everywhere.

The joy of travelling with Higgins … [is that Red Thread ] delights in the blinking movement from one subject to the next. In a few pages, we travel from Middlemarch to Ovid, from Arachne to Velázquez and his painting The Spinners and then back to George Eliot. It sounds dizzying; in truth it is illuminating .

This is a book to get gloriously lost in … It’s a lovely, wayward meander , combining memoir with surprising historical facts, unexpected connections and intriguing, imaginative speculations.

Higgins’ range is admirably, enviably broad… there is no shortage of visual pleasure in Red Thread .

Charlotte Higgins’ Red Thread is subtitled “On Mazes And Labyrinths” but is much more than that. It takes a nimble thinker to link the ancient stories of the Minotaur to archeological fabrication in the Edwardian era and to Arnold Bennett and the Potteries... [one] of the most interesting books this year .

Fascinating … enriching … very satisfying .

Charlotte Higgins is the acclaimed author of Under Another Sky , which was shortlisted for awards including the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) Prize for non-fiction, Red Thread , which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week and won the Arnold Bennett Prize, and Greek Myths , which was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year. She is chief culture writer of the Guardian , a past winner of the Classical Association prize, and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. She lives in London.