Ukrainian Lessons

Ukrainian Lessons is a brilliant and unforgettable book. It is an intensely moving meditation on war, memory and loss written with compassion and anger and love. I want everyone I know to read it

Edmund de Waal

This book is a gift and an act of courage. Ukrainian Lessons teaches us how war makes art, and how the artist tells us the truth of war. Charlotte Higgins has written a survival manual for our blood-stricken times

Jacqueline Rose

Miraculous reading; a book that blows your heart open to the atrocities of invasion and the rich wonders of Ukrainian art. Never has a work of non-fiction so inspired and moved me. Charlotte Higgins leaves you galvanised and furious.

Fiona Benson

Charlotte Higgins has poured such heart, erudition and humanity into this intensely moving and gorgeously written book. Ukrainian Lessons is a superb achievement, distilling why, for so many Ukrainians, art has become a fierce and necessary response to war... Every page is unforgettable

Rachel Clarke

An excellent book. A moving testament to the horror of the war in Ukraine and the vital role of culture in fighting it.

Henry Marsh

A book for our times, bringing to life remarkable people and places, and the beating heart of humanity and war, all brilliantly wrought by a uniquely present and special writer

Philippe Sands

Russia's ultimate aim is to destroy Ukrainian identity and culture. Higgins takes you into the thick of this literal culture war, where art meets murder. The way she moves between epics and epochs enables you to see the Ukraine war in its true meaning - as the struggle for a people's identity

Peter Pomerantsev

Few writers have deepened our understanding of the human experience of the war more than Charlotte Higgins... In Ukrainian Lessons, all of her work - of risk and reporting and study - has combined to produce an unassuming masterpiece of journalistic memoir. Here is a book that must be read by anyone hoping to fathom this ominous decade of European history

John Jeremiah Sullivan

A beautiful, erudite, heartbreaking book. Charlotte Higgins conveys a deep understanding of the centrality of culture to the Ukrainian cause, as she examines whether art can have redemptive power in a time of war. But it is the quality of her prose that sets this book apart. I loved it.

Lindsey Hilsum