Described by his physician as a ‘sensitive person in brutal surroundings’, Richard Dadd, the Victorian painter who studied at the RA, was incarcerated in Bedlam for patricide at the height of his career. Haunted by childhood fairies and Shakespeare’s sprites, Dadd painted fantastical otherworlds that transported him beyond the hospital’s walls. Miller illuminates Dadd’s plight through a first-person narrative, and brings his paintings to life with vivid ekphrasis.

— Daisy Taylor, Royal Academy Magazine

Disturbing

— New York Times Sunday Book Review

Poignant and haunting

— The Guardian

…brilliant at voices, whether English northern, Home-counties genteel, American brash, Arabian or Indian. From Barbara’s letters to an unloving son there emerges a wonderfully rounded character, capable equally of observation and compassion. Where other Western women see ‘farce and food for gossip’ in the monstrous ways of the male Arab, Barbara perceives ‘tragedy, betrayal and cruelty…….’ Clearly, Miranda Miller had a fairly rotten time in Saudi Arabia. The result is riveting: a culture shock sharp enough to send me back to the Koran, where it is indeed written that women are inferior to men and may be beaten, and that men in paradise will be served by bashful virgins.

— Janice Elliott in The Independent

Miranda Miller’s sketches are sensitive, exact, often very funny. Brainless women shop in the gold souk; men count their cash; behind every expatriate door ferments illicit liquor, with its “alchemical bubblings and gurglings, ready to explode when the temperature rises.”

— Hilary Mantel in The Daily Telegraph