Gripping, superbly well-researched...he ratchets up the tension as the doomed ship speeds towards the inevitable. Though you know it’s going to happen, you keep praying that it won’t, right up until the moment when the torpedo strikes. You feel this way because Larson makes you care...Thanks to Larson’s vivid narrative, you are there with those passengers in the thick of it. It may have happened 100 years ago, but this masterpiece made it feel like yesterday.

A fascinating, well-researched read.

With practised skill Larson confronts the emotional pathos of wartime tragedy.

Vivid...Larson tells his story well.

Larson's irresistibly pacey narrative moves between the various scenes of action, conjuring them up in vivid detail...the sources are remarkable...[his] detailed conversational endnotes are an added bonus.

A gripping piece of narrative history which moves almost with the same speed as Schwieger's torpedo.

Larson has an eye for haunting, unexploited detail...illuminating...suspenseful.

The master of popular non-fiction...a gripping account.

Larson's page turner brings the disaster to life.

Larson's approach to history resembles a novelist's... a rattling read.

Gripping...absorbing...however, it is when dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy, along with the attendant conspiracy theories, that Larson breaks new ground. I found it very hard to put down.

Larson . . . writes non-fiction books that read like novels, real page-turners. This one is no exception . . . thoroughly engrossing

Dadland [had me] gripped from beginning to end.

Extraordinary, brutally honest... One of the great pleasures of the book is the quality of the writing

Mixes intimate memoir, biography, history and detective story: this is a shape-shifting hybrid that meditates on the nature of time and identity… For all its vigour and comic zest, Dadland is a careful and tender discovery that patiently circles around a man who spent his time mythologizing and running away from himself

I was completely caught up in and learned so much from this remarkable, haunting and uplifting memoir

Continually interesting and often moving... The fruits of her research into her father’s war and espionage contacts are fascinating, but the real success of the book is the understanding the author acquires of the waywardness of experience, and of the complexity of family relationships

She tells his story, piecing together documents from his military past, with poignancy and humour

A superb evocation of an extraordinary man

Utterly absorbing … I can’t recommend it more strongly

The beauty and boldness of this memoir - pieced together from pictures, letters, diaries, cuttings and military archives - is in its healing honesty and the complex, flawed character of Tom, and his daughter's unbroken spirit in the aftermath of her father's derring-do and deep family damage

Her tragicomic memoir about her relationship with her eccentric WW2 veteran father [...] explores family breakdown, dementia and the effects of war and peace on the psyche -- as well as the fierce power of daughterly love

Book of the Week: When Keggie Carew started to investigate her father's past, she knew she was in a race against time... vivid accounts of her father's past exploits are punctuated with painful bulletins detailing his mental decline ... An extraordinary life and a sui generis debut.

An engaging, funny and evocative depiction of war, snobbery, deprivation, insanity, dementia and ghastly relatives. The author captures the flavour of every scene she describes... holding the reader's attention with masterfully constructed intercut sequences of ancient, recent and modern family history

This is in part a work of reconstruction, unravelling Tom's life, partly a family history, and it's fascinating

This is a story of journeys, love, loss, memory and family and Boy's Own daring... beautiful, nostalgic, moving, shocking, swashbuckling and simply unputdownable

I’m halfway through Dadland by Keggie Carew and OH THIS BOOK. Beautiful and fierce and brave. Memory and war and family and loss and, well, wow.

I loved Dadland for its tenderness, humour and candour. It has begun to open the door for me to what may well lie ahead in my life, in so many of our lives, in terms of ageing parents. And it has also taught me something deeply moving about tolerance, and about love

A wonderful, haunting and beautifully written memoir... I found myself laughing out loud at times and, at others, unable to hold back the tears... An absolutely stunning book

Dadland has the weight of family love but fizzes along in accessible and dynamic prose, highly recommended

A mesmerising performance by a natural storyteller gifted with the most seductive material possible, in the wild and wonderful life of her exasperating Irish father. Pain and annoyance is transmuted into pure narrative gold, as Keggie Carew interrogates the legend of this wartime adventurer and the bitter comedy of his domestic relationships and his late decline. A brave, risk-taking tale that alarms, delights and moves. As soon as you come to the end, you want to start again, to see if those things really happened

You love these people from the first page ... As Tom's life falls apart memory by memory, Keggie is picking it up again and her storytelling is spell-binding. Effortlessly readable, this is a delight combining laughter - and tears, yes, quite a few of those.

Compelling

A moving memoir-cum-biography.

By some margin my Book of the Month... A detective story, a family history, a thrilling tale of derring-do, and the most distinctive and affecting memoir I’ve read since H is for Hawk.

Utterly remarkable, and beautifully evoked… Dadland is a completely riveting, deeply poignant “manhunt” for which I predict great things.

Dadland, by Keggie Carew, is being tipped for award-winning breakout success in the vein of H is for Hawk

It’s an exorcism, ghost-hunt and swim through the archipelago of her father’s shattered self… The author’s descriptions have an easy lyricism.

The old question 'what did you do in the war, Dad?' has never had a more surprising or moving answer.

Warm and funny, sometimes regretful and sad, but overall a read like a rollercoaster. Wonderful.

You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I'd give up right now

You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I’d give up right now… This gripping book, written with real verve and a narrative expertise that wouldn’t shame a veteran.

A brilliant, bittersweet biography.

Keggie’s writing is immersive… She writes with a warmth and generosity about her father, a man who was a genuine character and hero.

Dadland is deeply personal. But it is also the story of our generations: people touched by war and by Alzheimer’s