An extraordinary story, packed with drama, incident and great characters...Combines a clear and powerful narrative with shrewd judgements, illuminating vignettes and fresh and telling detail

A heady mixture of heroism, incompetence, devilish tactics and plain good luck. Those wishing to immerse themselves in this golden age of British military success will relish David's fine piece of history

He conveys the temper of soldiers' daily lives and their attitude to fighting beautifully...his description of the Battle of Waterloo makes one's heart beat faster

At a time when the Army is facing cutbacks while being expected to fight distant, unpopular wars on a shoestring, David's book could not be more topical

Filled with swashbuckling derring-do, the reek of blood and gunpowder, combined with shrewd analysis of power, war and psychology

Highly readable.... Saul David is particularly good at battle scenes, and the incredibly violent 150-year period leaves him spoilt for choice....His insights are thoughtful and his prose style compelling

A rollicking account of the rise of the British Army ... the life of the humble redcoat, from the Restoration to Waterloo

Superb ... One of the great mysteries of history is how Europe's great powers could have stumbled into World War I ... This is the single best book I have read on this important topic

A meticulously researched, superbly organized, and handsomely written account

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