'A perfectly lovely book, justly sympathetic to a most remarkable and enigmatic man whose scholarship enriches us still, centuries after the completion of his astonishing and entirely solitary work.

In telling Alexander Cruden's story so impeccably Julia Keay shows herself to be a biographer of rare talent.' Simon Winchester 'Julia Keay deserves our thanks for bringing to life a man so alien to our present sensibilities, and in many ways so attractive. This is a beautiful book.' Sunday Telegraph