John Julius Norwich: "I enjoyed it enormously and it taught me a great deal I didn't know."
Fictional Cities: "However you approach this book it will broaden your horizons."
Spectator: "Warmth, charm and eccentric scholarship."
Guardian: "So well brought off I expected sand to sift from its pages while I was reading. The evocation of the Lido in winter is especially sharp, that sense of it being (even considering the development thereon) still the wild walk of Venice with the Adriatic storm wrack fetching up along its shoreline. Excellent, if often dodgy, company is kept throughout: Byron of course (and Byron quiet at that, soberly asking that his grave should, like one in the Certosa cemetery, merely implore peace); Diaghilev being rowed to his burial, with the bill settled by Chanel; and many gallant and gay gondolieri-fanciers. Moreover Saikia can separate the didactic John Ruskin from the offduty Ruskin, who temporarily lost his little dog Wisie to the Lido waves, which returned the canine better and wiser. Smashing sections on the local intersection of early airplanes and futurism, and the invention of the film festival, almost casually, in 1932. All this and Cole Porter, too.within the site surrounding the buildings that have human occupancy or use as their purpose.
Russell Norman: "A masterpiece masquerading as a guidebook."
Venice’s historic bars and cafés offer a window on the city’s past and present. And there is a dazzling array of drinks to choose from―cocktails, aperitivos, wines from the Venice hinterland and around the Adriatic, spirits from the foothills of the Alps, not to mention impeccable coffee. Long time Venice resident Robin Saikia (The Venice Lido, Blue Guide Italy Food Companion) takes the reader on a fascinating tour, weaving history and anecdote into a fascinating web as he visits 26 Venetian bars and cafés and contemplates the city over 26 different drinks. This latest addition to the Blue Guides series of travel monographs provides an entertaining read and a fun to-do list, a great introduction to Venice for the first time visitor, adding wonderful depth and colour for those who already know and love the city.
In this moving dramatic monologue, Samuel Johnson celebrates the life of his favourite cat, Hodge, Robin Saikia perfectly captures the essence of Johnson and the spirit of the age. Johnson tells us how he came to like cats and how he came to own Hodge. He also gives a spirited account of his adventures in London coffee houses, his friends and enemies, and his passion for liberty and the rights of animals. There is an explanatory Introduction, and five appendices with relevant excerpts from the work of Leigh Hunt, Christopher Smart, Susan Coolidge, Percival Stockdale and Jeremy Bentham.
Giles Milton: “Strikingly original and idiosyncratic, Robin Saikia's Blue Guide Literary Companion London is a literary masterpiece. Opium dens, Turkish baths,
plague pits and a spectacular tiger fight in the East End … Even Prince Charles has a walk-on part. This is the finest anthology about London to appear in more than half a century.”
City-Lit Café: “If you want to read about London in all its delightful complexity (and with a refreshing lack of the obvious) Blue Guide Literary Companion is the ideal guide.”
Spectator: “Blue Guide Literary Companion London scores well, with Trollope spilling ink over a pompous colonel, and Keats struggling not to snigger as Wordsworth is buttonholed by a tedious fan.”