“ …a judicious and well-written account of the minister, his policies and his reputation… Maxwell is alive to the ambiguities of the concepts of reform and Enlightenment and he offers one of the best readings of the period to have been produced in recent years.”
Jeremy Black - History


“…a remarkable achievement…Pombal represents an immense advance on anything previously published on its subject in English and, so far as I know, there is nothing comparable to it in any language.”
Derek Beales - The New York Review of Books


“Professor Maxwell’s study is one of the most important books on the European ancien régime to have appeared during the past decade. Scholarly, accessible and notably outward-looking, it successfully puts Portugal and its remarkable minister on the map of eighteenth-century Europe.”
Hamish Scott - History Today