One Hundred Summers

Charming, honest, beautifully written and lyrical. This is a wonderful family memoir – the real Swallows and Amazons! * Kate Mosse * Brimming with unforgettable characters and jaw-dropping personal experience, Vanessa Branson's memoir is both quirky and heartwarming. Written with great compassion, Branson’s joie de vivre is infectious. This is a book where fact is certainly far more colourful than fiction. * Freya North * An elegantly written contemplation on family, fame, marriage, betrayal, ancestry and ambition. * Anthony Horowitz * Vanessa Branson has a warm, personable style and a descriptive sensibility for the most exquisite detail. One Hundred Summers is gloriously transporting. * Annie Lennox * The book is an irresistible tour through a life of great luck but also great spirit and a fair share of pain. It skilfully shows how the lives and times of parents and grandparents set us up and echo through the generations, and how lessons learned in early life can make sense later. * Amy Liptrot * Warm, intelligent and acutely honest … Stepping out from the dazzle of her famous brother, Branson shines in her own form, taking on the generations of a very British family, with all their foibles and eccentricities, their flaws and triumphs to make a whole picture of a modern woman with a big heart and an unstoppable energy … The characters step from the pages as fresh and magnetic as if we’d met them at a summer party. * Raffaella Barker * Ness has captured our childhood years, those years of innocence and joyous eccentricity, with an unerring voice. She’s captured the years that followed too and, let’s be honest here, I’m not sure we can describe those as being quite so innocent! A reviewer of my autobiography once wrote of it that it was “a kiss and tell, warts-and-all story, written by the author himself”! In this enthralling book, Vanessa has capped that many times. It makes for a gripping read. She’s led an extraordinary life and just happens to be one of the most creative people I know – and I’m only a little biased! * Richard Branson *