Gripping. Reads like the best kind of mystery story. It is a tale of mistresses and heirlooms, cowardice and connivance

'Astonishing, jaw-dropping, superb. Horrifying, extraordinary

Extraordinary, edge-of-the-seat, enthralling. All the ingredients of a lurid horror. The plot is thick with destroyed documents, decadent aristocracy, betrayed honour and curses

Compelling. A remarkable piece of research which throws a bright shaft of light on powerful people, hypocrisy and the first world war

Wonderful . . . has everything: family intrigue and hatred, love and war, witches' curses, eccentricity, snobbery and a series of shocking secrets. No reader can finish it unmoved

Teems with hypocrisy, deceit, parental manipulation and bullying. Bailey artfully shows how guilt, grief, pride and shame levied a heavy toll

An extraordinary detective operation

Excellent, beautifully crafted, fascinating

Excellent. A fine, suspenseful, atmospheric tale, a less melodramatic and more nuanced Downton Abbey

Bailey's fascinating book takes us to the heart of a family tragedy ... this is a horrifying story of love, despair, intrigue, snobbery and upper class eccentricity which reads like fiction but is amazingly - and shockingly - real

The mysterious death of a Duke and a castle full of treacherous goings-on make The Secret Rooms a gripping read for fans of Downton Abbey. As thrilling as any fiction, Catherine Bailey uncovers the darkest depths of a family with plenty of skeletons in its closet

The product of a decade's research, Into the Silence has two supreme strengths, the first of which is the emotional, spiritual and historical context it provides, against which to understand the central events. The other is the author's effortless knack for sketching character

The ambivalent emotional charge of their passing, coming as it did at such a turning point in the history of the British empire, fully justifies the efforts the author has made to encapsulate it. And encapsulate it he has, precisely, grippingly and with comprehensive wisdom

Powerful and profound, a moving, epic masterpiece of literature, history and hope

The meticulously researched and definitive account of a legend... Fascinating and immensely enjoyable

So did they reach the summit? It's anybody's guess. But all Wade Davis' experts in this fascinating book, shake their heads

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