[In Stained Glass] we have what can unblushingly be called a rattling good yarn, a firmly built and racy thriller, a perfect read for a wet English summer.

More than that, though. Buckley doesn't shirk the job of taking his fiction where his history leads him. We get a clear picture of the politics of that republican gadfly, his attitudes to the Cold War, to communism, to NATO etc. Interesting stuff and well, not to say expensively, served in a high class fict-o-mix.

Melvyn Bragg, "West and East," in Punch (© 1978 by Punch Publications Ltd.; all rights reserved; may not be reprinted without permission), Vol. 275, July 12, 1978, p. 70.∗