"[An] elegant novel of poisoned love and intimate violence . Sharp and funny . a beautifully polished performance." --James Lakeman, The Times Literary Supplement "[An] assured and intriguing novel . Hensher's prose manages to be both immaculate and suggestive." --David Profumo, The Daily Telegraph "Remarkable . a stately, inexorable pavane of yearning and violence." --Jane Shilling, The Sunday Telegraph "[Hensher] is an intensely sophisticated writer, a critic of discernment and exquisite sensibility.

" --John Walsh, The Independent "Impressively stylish . written with a formal elegance, in counterpoint to the chaos of the characters' motivations." --Russell Celyn Jones, The Financial Times "Stunning; beguilingly complex." --Charles Osborne, The Sunday Telegraph "Set amongst the wigs and gowns of parliamentary officialdom, [ Kitchen Venom ] exposes the hidden tensions in apparently banal lives. The characterisation is incisive and the dialogue first-class." -- The Sunday Telegraph "His House of Commons is as tightly run as a lunatic asylum, as baffling as Lewis Carroll's Wonderland .[the plot] is at first intriguing then wholly beguiling, twisting tight its threads of power, betrayal, lust and love." --Michele Roberts, The Independent On Sunday "A brilliant, hateful work .

For what it's worth (and I did once work as a secretary to Margaret Thatcher) I think nobody has better described the trivial, as well as the grand, mechanisms of her mind." --Matthew Parris, The Spectator "Airy, felicitous, superintendent, Hensher releases his staggered secrets and recognitions in a smart but unpredictable procession of bad behaviours." --Jeremy Maule, The Guardian.