This is the only book on the Crimean War anyone could need. It is lucid, well-written, alive and sensitive. Above all, it tells us why this neglected conflict and its forgotten victims deserve our remembrance

This is a heart-rending book ... its importance cannot be overestimated ... This book should be made compulsory reading in Russia today

A wonderful subject, on every level, and with Orlando Figes it has found the historian worthy of its width and depth

Figes is a first class historian... [he] proves an excellent guide to the vagaries of the battlefield, the suffering of the ordinary soldiers and the way in which the war became a crucial part of late-Victorian patriotic mythology, contributing to a new ethos of muscular Christianity

Orlando Figes ... is back doing what he does best - telling us things about Russia and the world that we did not know, and proving that they are important to our understanding of the world today ... With his deep understanding of Russia and its uncomfortable opposition in the world, Figes elegantly underlines how the cold war of the Soviet era froze over fundamental fault lines that had opened up in the 19th century

It is a fine stirring account, expertly balancing analysis with a patchwork of quotation from a wide variety of spectators and participants, together with an impressive narrative across the vast panoramic sweep of the war ... However, the book's true originality lies in its unravelling of the Crimean War's religious origins

Keenly judged, vivid history of a bloody and pointless conflict

An exhaustively researched, beautifully written book

One of our most engaging narrative historians, Orlando Figes has produced with his latest book a rollickingly good account of a war that shocked mid-Victorian England ... intelligent and reliable history ... Figes is a stylish and compelling narrator

An impressive piece of scholarship ... a concise portrait of the political situation of the time

A stellar historian. As ever, it mixes strong narrative pace, a grand canvas and compelling ideas about current geopolitical tensions

A sparkling and in passages brilliant account ... it stands amply and slendidly on its own two feet

A first-class historian, as his splendid new book, an epic account of the Crimean War of 1853-56, amply demonstrates

A model of wide-lens military history

Wonderful ... an amazing panoramic view ... I've rarely read anything like it

A masterful account of lost and stolen lives

Awesome ... one of the most unforgettable books I have ever read. I defy anyone to read it without weeping at its human suffering, cruelty and courage ... in this book these righteous heroes have their rightful memorial

Innovative and most important

Compelling and engaging ... an excellent read

Edgerton's well-researched volume bursts with data that reveal Britain's true strength even when supposed to be in critical condition

Britain's War Machine offers the boldest revisionist argument that seeks to overturn some of our most treasured assumptions about Britain's role in the war ... Edgerton [is] an economic historian with an army of marshalled facts and figures at his fingertips ... This is truly an eye-opening book that explodes the masochistic myth of poor little Britain, revealing the island as a proud power with the resources needed to fight and win a world war

Masterful Britain's War Machine promotes the notion that the United Kingdom of the Forties was a superpower, with access to millions of men across the globe, and forming the heart of a global production network