I read The Race to Save the Romanovs in more or less in a single sitting. It’s absolutely marvellous – packed with details, beautifully paced and told me lots of things I didn’t know.

What I always love about Helen Rappaport’s books is that they appeal to the heart as well as the head. She’s a writer of great compassion.

A groundbreaking book... [which] prove[s] that, even as the centenary of their deaths by firing squad at Ekaterinburg approaches... there remain fresh angles and, crucially, unused evidence pertaining to the Romanovs.

Highly entertaining... Rappaport introduces us to a colourful array of con men, charlatans and fantasists involved in ideas to free the Romanovs... She is a vivid storyteller

Gripping... Rappaport has uncovered many missing pieces in the story, from the diplomatic wrangling over the tsar’s fate to a number of "hare-brained" rescue schemes hatched by monarchist sympathisers.

An intriguing work of investigative writing

An eye-opening, entertaining and energetically researched story

[Rappaport's] finely researched history is a devastating account of the missed and bungled opportunities to save the Romanovs.

A shocking story grippingly told.

An eye opening, entertaining and energetically researched story.

A riveting account of human heroism in the face of overwhelming odds … Fairweather’s storytelling is simply masterful

Impossible to believe if it were not so meticulously researched … a page-turner, a remarkable inside-view of the Holocaust, and also as a testament to all that is best in the human spirit

As riveting as any page-turner and as profound as any great work of literature as it reveals humanity’s capacity for both courage and savagery

Witold Pilecki is one of the unsung heroes of World War II. Jack Fairweather has brought Pilecki's story to life with a rich array of primary sources that reveal his role alerting the world to Auschwitz's horrors and its transformation from a concentration camp to the epicenter of the Holocaust. In doing so, Fairweather reminds us that the Nazi leadership didn't start the war with the idea of the Holocaust fully formed - its policy emerged through a series of experiments in mass murder, which Pilecki was able to witness and report on with remarkable courage and tenacity.

Full of vignettes and deftly drawn characters ... the story of Witold Pilecki has long been crying out for a sensitive, circumspect retelling, which would do just to the man and the to the trying times in which he lived. The Volunteer fulfils those criteria admirably

Jack Fairweather's remarkable book shows why [Pilecki's] courageous efforts to alert the world to what was happening in Auschwitz deserve to be remembered everywhere

Picked as one of the best books of 2019 so far

An inspiring story beautifully told

Fairweather tells this tragic tale in gripping fashion, bringing a new angle to the literature of the Holocaust

Brilliantly researched, Jack Fairweather's book is both gripping and powerfully written - a riveting and deeply moving tale of courage in the face of unimaginable horror