A deserving winner of the Orwell Prize

[An] incendiary, eloquent account... A brilliantly researched indictment which argues that torture is endemic in the military

For all its forensic detail, the book grips us emotionally, and has as keen a sense of storytelling as a horror story or courtroom drama. Ultimately, the greatest achievement of this incendiary, eloquent and angry book is that it humanises Mousa beyond the iconic and infamous figure he has become in his death

This is a landmark book. Fluently, meticulously, A. T. Williams allows us to understand both the murderous nature of colonial war and the insidious moral corruption behind its institutional facades

What to do after reading it? some might put this book away and try to forget about it, the way you would a bad dream. Others will feel changed by the awareness. A few will channel their feelings into action. There can't be any better definition of political writing at its most excellent

Andrew Williams is an academic lawyer with the tenacity of a detective and the literary flair of the best kind of investigative journalist, and his account of the fate of Baha Mousa, a young Iraqi man who was beaten to death by his guards in a British military prison, is one of the most important pieces of writing to come out of the Iraq War.

Anyone who hopes to avoid repeating the such calamities in future wars should read this book

Of immense value to anyone interested in the conduct, and misconduct, of war in our time

Brilliantly lucid

Clark is a masterly historian ... His account vividly reconstructs key decision points while deftly sketching the context driving them ... A magisterial work

This compelling examination of the causes of World War I deserves to become the new standard one-volume account of that contentious subject

A brilliant contribution

Clark is fully alive to the challenges of the subject ... He provides vivid portraits of leading figures ... [He] also gives a rich sense of what contemporaries believed was at stake in the crises leading up to the war

In recent decades, many analysts had tended to put most blame for the disaster [of the First World War] on Germany. Clark strongly renews an older interpretation which sees the statesmen of many countries as blundering blindly together into war

A warm, affectionate portrait of the ballet world, and of success tinged with sadness

Thrilling

Utterly fascinating, and grippingly well-written. With extraordinary skill Wade Davis manages to weave together such disparate strands as Queen Victoria's Indian Raj, the 'Great Game' of intrigue against Russia, the horrors of the Somme, and Britain's obsession to conquer the world's highest peak

Davis’ descriptions of the trenches – the bodies, the smell, the madness – are some of the best I’ve ever read

Sheds new light on history that we thought we knew... meticulously detailed and very readable

The miracle is that there isn’t a dull page. As it moves towards its deadly climax, the story hangs together as tightly as a thriller. Into the Silence is as monumental as the mountain that soars above it; small wonder that it won the 2012 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction … Once you start wandering the snowy passes with Mallory and the lads, you won’t want to come down again. There can be no better way, surely, to spend a week in winter

He sees the climbers as haunted dreamers, harrowed by their desperate experiences in the First World War, living amid romantic dreams of Imperial grandeur and the elemental, sublime grandeur of the mountain

This is the awesomely researched story of Mallory, Irvine and the early Everest expeditions. It puts their efforts and motivations into the context of Empire and the first world war in a way I don’t think previous books have ever managed

A vivid depiction of a monumental story…Wade Davis’ passion for the book shines through and I can only hope that his next book doesn’t take as long to write as I will certainly be reading it