"Waugh, along with P. G. Wodehouse, was one the greatest users of the English language. Both men just loved words and how to use them to their unusually best advantage. Anyone trying to master the English language would do well to study either one. Any of Waugh’s novels is impressive, but this one may be the best."

"Along with “In Our Time,” this is the book in which he reinvented the English language and helped invent the postwar, modern sensibility."

"One of the most lyrical novels in English, and a perfect fable about the limits of the great American dream of self-invention."

"Wodehouse is, sentence for sentence, the funniest writer in the English language, and this is his best, most shapely and finely crafted, novel."

"One of the great technical innovators of the English novel, glittering, subversive, poignant and funny - inimitable but an inspiration to generations of writers since."

"I’ve learned more from Berry than anyone else about how best to engage with nature, and how to write a sturdy and pleasing English sentence."