An in-depth and informative book, written in a fresh and lively style and with an easy-to-read layout, it takes the reader through Liverpool’s past to its colourful and ever-developing present making it an absolute must-have for everyone who lives and works in the city, and for anyone elsewhere with an interest in Liverpool’s astonishing history. With breath-taking photographs by Guy Woodland, ‘Liverpool: The First 1000 Years’ is not only visually stunning but provides a unique insight in to the lives and workings of this great city, past, present and future.

This book explains why the city went on to win World Heritage status and European Capital of Culture – an essential addition to every bookshelf.
 
‘A very fine coffee table, up-beat book which reflects the new spirit of confidence in the future of the city. It covers all aspects of life with a breezy and informed style. Where it really shines is the imaginative lay-out and warm pictures (how many times a year the sun shines like that I am not sure! but the photos have been chosen and set up with great care – witness the one of the sun rising on a summer's morning behind the Anglican Cath. as seen from Wallasey! Would make a great present.’
– Professor Iain Taylor, Halifax, Nova Scotia

‘Your book arrived this morning, and I've spent all afternoon reading it (ignoring my daughter's pleas to help her draw arms on fairies, feed her etc). I just wanted to let you know that I think it's wonderful – you've done the city proud. Although negative things are necessarily mentioned, the overall impression is of the Liverpool I love – characterful, vibrant, full of history and culture, unique. I've learned loads of things I didn't know, too. The photography is wonderful, and the layout of the book is really good. I like the little snippets of information dotted around the main text, making it a book to be dipped into as well as to sit down and read seriously. Many, many congratulations! Thank you for a book I'll treasure.’ – Sue Haasler, novelist

‘LOVE THE BOOK! I'm fortunate to have at least one friend with taste and he gave me your fabulous book for Christmas. I thought I'd found my favourite Liverpool book in Quentin Hughes 'Liverpool: City of Architecture' – which you quite rightly describe as 'delicious' – but your's is even better! It's a beautifully honest, unpretentious piece of work that celebrates the achievements of the city yet acknowledges we've still got some way to go.’ – Andy Green, journalist

From Hansard, quoting a debate in the House of Lords 20 March 2002:
 ‘Liverpool became a great port, which it still is. All that activity produced .... an ideal breeding-ground for creativity. Arabella McIntyre-Brown says in Liverpool: The First 1000 Years – a splendid book that, I am sure, most noble Lords will have read: "Liverpool is not really an English city: from its earliest days as a port, Liverpool has attracted people from other places; people with an appetite for the new and the different; people with the courage to travel and explore; people with ideas and people with the guts to back them. This is not a place for quiet contemplation, but for doing, changing and trying".
‘As a result of what I have learned about Liverpool, I should very much like to visit the city and hope that I shall be able to arrange to do that soon.’ – Lord Luke

A definite ‘must have’ for anyone remotely connected with the fair city of Liverpool: well researched and well written. Arabella McIntyre-Brown takes us through the city’s past to the present day in an easy style, coupled with some magnificent photography by Guy Woodland; even the most uneducated of us can’t fail to be impressed and also to learn from it.
Destined to a be a coffee table book in my house for many a month it is one of those books that you can’t help picking up. I find myself suddenly becoming an armchair expert on Liverpool. “Did you know that…” seems to be one of my main topics of conversation these days.
A bestseller in Liverpool the book is making in roads across the globe: the publishers are also getting orders from the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and China.
A truly wonderful book and a great present for any Liverpool ex-pats.
– Martin Brocklebank, Speakeasy, Milton Keynes

A past life
 What are we to make of Liverpool: the First 1000 years? It's a glossy hardback book, superbly illustrated. But what precisely is it?
It isn't an academic history of Liverpool, although anyone who takes on board all its contents will be far better educated than most about the forces and people that have shaped Liverpool over the centuries. And Liverpool University has given the book its backing.
It isn't a guidebook, either, although any tourist who buys a copy on a visit to Liverpool will then know far more about the place than most of the natives.
Nor is it a scrapbook of gee-whizz facts about Liverpool, even though every page is crammed with them.
Yet it has elements of all three. Author Arabella McIntyre-Brown compresses the early history of the city with enviable concision in the first chapter. Then she and photographer Guy Woodland go walkabout for the rest of the book, both in the literal sense of exploring the length and breadth of the city and in the metaphorical sense of rummaging around in little-known corners of Liverpool's history and society.
Everywhere there is some sort of gem. The mischievous question 'Did you know...?' hangs over every page.
Did you know the Wurlitzer organ was invented in Birkenhead? Did you know the governor of Hong Kong is a Liverpool University graduate? Did you know that the Liverpool Motor Club is the oldest in Britain? Or that the Liver Building clock was started at the precise moment of King George V’s coronation, thanks to a telephone link from Westminster Abbey?
The deeper you dig into the book, the more impressive it becomes. Arabella McIntyre-Brown writes with all the enthusiasm of the incomer, someone who is a Liverpudlian by choice rather than by accident of birth.
She is not totally blind to the defects of her adopted city, its often all-too shabby treatment of minority groups, its tendency to fall back on nostalgia when all else fails. But her tone is nevertheless upbeat: Liverpool has managed its first millennium, now here's to the next.
It may not be a history. It may not be a guidebook, or a scrapbook. But it is as good a handbook to the business of promoting Liverpool as you are likely to see.
One final thought: if every estate agent who sold a house to an incomer, if every company who brought in a non-Liverpudlian to work in the city, were to present a copy on completion of the deal, then this book would also be a thumping commercial success.
– William Leece, Liverpool Daily Post