I have never seen or read anything that brings the First World War quite so vividly alive.

Does [it] count as a book of the year? It's certainly my meticulously illustrated panorama of the year.

Monumental.

Sampling this later photographic narrative, published ahead of next year's First World War centenary, left this reader feeling like Tommy Atkins after one of the Great Wa'’s artillery barrages: shell-shocked.

A spectacular pictorial history.

More than 500 pictures follow the conflict on multiple fronts.

This is rich, riveting and often appalling visual history.

Showing the changing nature of photography, it also shows the extreme depth of the human loss incurred.

This has an astonishing photo on the cover... And there’s no let-up in quality inside. Mark Holborn and Hilary Roberts – she is the Head Curator of Photography at the Imperial War Museum – have done a terrific job of putting together the most arresting images of the war.

[A] handsomely produced volume... Unforgettable pictures.

Superb

Wonderful… Some of the shots will be well known to you, but most will not and, as a collection, portray an image of just what those seemingly well-laid-out lines meant for those who fought there.

This is a remarkable book which I read overnight. It's gripping, touching, eye-opening and pitch perfect about a period of time almost lost from view. Gillian Lynne's tenacity's palpable from the outset. Definitely one to savour and treasure.

In A Dancer in Wartime, Gillian Lynne canters through her amazing experiences like the thoroughbred she is

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