Her story - and the way she tells it - is fascinating

A charming and intelligent account

Hobbs's story is both enlightening and endearing

His book is a damning indictment and a triumphant witness. Brief, wrenching, it is surely the freshest and most sensitive account of those times

A sombre, magnificent book

This vivid first-hand account of the experiences of an ordinary infantryman, Somme Mud reaches us as the voice of an ordinary, but highly literate, private soldier who simply endured the horrors that surrounded him and got on with his job

In its honesty and earthiness it has quite justifiably been compared with All Quiet on the Western Front... A frest look at life in a front-line trench

An important, outstanding book

Keegan tells the story of war between the industrial North and the agricultural South, and that's very good. But what I loved most, and what Keegan is always superb at, is analysis

You would be hard pressed to find a better written one-volume history of this epic struggle

Illuminating

A captivating narrative, huge in scope

Carter deftly interpolates history with psychobiography to provide a damning indictment of monarchy in all its forms

A depiction of bloated power and outsize personalities in which Carter picks apart the strutting absurdity of the last emperors on the eve of catastrophe

Takes what should have been a daunting subject and through sheer wit and narrative élan turns it into engaging drama. Carter has a notable gift for characterisation

Facts and figures say a great deal, but the most compelling accounts come from those who featured in the battle. Like any good author, Holland allows the participants to tell the story in their own words