"Leach publishes, as an appendix to her excellent book, long extracts from Dodgson’s love poetry, which was written between 1859 and 1868, a period of emotional turmoil and depression. Some of the poetry, in her opinion, is ‘mediocre’, and so it is, but ‘all of it is honest, providing, even at its most rambling and self-indulgent, a rare insight into his heart and mind during this strange and troubled period of his life’. In a poem called ‘Stolen Waters’, the love-lorn Dodgson first eulogises, then laments the loved one: ‘She was lithe and tall and fair/ And with a wayward grace/ Her queenly head she bare’. (Surely not little dark-haired Alice Liddell?)...."

Patrick Skene Catling, The Spectator

"...Leach's book is less straight biography, than a sort of biographical detective story, reminiscent at times, of Humphrey Carpenter's portrait of Robert Runcie. The picture with which she replaces the former confected image is far from definitive. The destruction of essential documents, like the pages ripped from his journal, would alone have seen to that. But even if the verdict is sometimes no more than 'not proven', the investigation is well worth the scholarly struggles involved. We are nearer now than before, I think, to the man who wrote Alice"

David Mckie, The Guardian