The Last Asylum

Eloquent, compassionate, and utterly absorbing. A book about family and friendship, about the complexities of memory, about care and the failure of care, The Last Asylum is the best sort of memoir, transcending the purely personal to confront a larger social history.

Sarah Waters

This superb book combines both the experience of the patient and the eye of the historian. Riveting, insightful and relentlessly honest, it is both social history and memoir, and makes an important contribution to contemporary debates on the treatment of mental distress

Darian Leader

We believe our response to mental illness is more enlightened, kinder and effective than that of the Victorians who built the asylums. Can we be sure? Barbara Taylor's sombre investigation, calling on personal experience, challenges complacency, exposes shallow thinking, and points out the flaws and dangers of treatment on the cheap. It is a wise, considered and timely book

Hilary Mantel

Beautiful . . . it is hard to write well enough about this book because it is so good

Susie Orbach, Independent

Moving, brave and intelligent

Susan Hill, The Times

Exquisitely written and provocative

Sunday Times

Dazzling . . . a tale that compels you to keep turning the pages . . . a great achievement, full of life and hope

Sunday Telegraph

Powerful

Guardian