The English Roses her character where kids would stop and go, 'Wow! What would that be like?'" Binah's character was also influenced by Lourdes since Madonna felt she was often ostracized for being her daughter at school. Finally, "The English Roses" became a moral story with messages from Kabbalah, deduced from tales that Madonna had heard from her teacher. She also included messages about the perils of envy, ostracization, and assumption of other's lives. For "The English Roses", Madonna worked with illustrator Jeffrey Fulvimari, whose work on the book was described by Ginny Dougary of "The Sunday Times Magazine" as ""Madeleine" meets David
The English Bread Book considered the book "excellent, and we trust to be popular". Readers of the book, the reviewer thought, will become possessed of a store of useful knowledge, as well as scientific as practical, upon a question which is essentially that of every man, woman and child in the wide universe". In her work, "English Bread and Yeast Cookery", Elizabeth David writes that "The English Bread Book" heavily influenced and informed her work, and she owes Acton a debt for it. The food writer Elizabeth Ray observes that the book was less successful than "Modern Cookery", and was only reprinted in 1990.