'Now at last a highly literate, deeply read cavalry officer of high rank shows one the nature of horse-borne warfare in those times: and Colonel Mallinson's A Close Run Thing is very much to be welcomed.'

'As astonishingly impressive debut...Convincingly drawn, perfectly paced and expertly written...A joy to read'

'The scope of A Close Run Thing is quite breathtaking...A sustained piece of bravura writing'

'The account of the Battle of Waterloo is an imaginative feat of high order, owing as much as to thorough scholarship as it does to compassion and sensibility. Brilliantly conveyed.'

'Allan Mallinson's grasp of the technical side of his subject is effortless and impressive...The portrayal of the men of all ranks is excellent.

'An epic adventure...a book with a texture as rich as cut velvet, and a storyline as detailed as a Bruges tapestry. Patrick O'Brian may no longer be with us. But Mallinson has obviously taken up the historical baton'

'Treads a middle course between the subtleties of O'Brian and the simplicities of Cornwell...An exciting, fast-moving story, full of bloody hacking with sabre and tulwar, which can at the same time be reflective and thoughtful about its setting and situation'

'Rarely does one read the same book twice in one week. Mallinson writes with style, verve and the lucidity one would expect from a talented officer of l'arme blanche...His breadth of knowledge is deeply impressive even if it is modestly entwined in the fabric of this epic narrative. Kick on, Captain Hervey, we cannot wait for more'

'Splendid news...Captain Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons and ADC to the Duke of Wellington is back in the saddle...A marvellous read, paced like a well-balanced symphony. This is more than a ripping yarn...I look forward enormously to hearing more of Hervey's exploits; he is as fascinating on horseback as Jack Aubrey is on the quarterdeck'

A book of great maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence... Everyone should read Saturday

The supreme novelist of his generation

Dazzling... Profound and urgent

A brilliant novel.It is McEwan writing on absolute top form

Refreshing and engrossing, dense with revelation. Superb

A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful... McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents

McEwan is word-perfect at handling the awkward comedy of this relationship and, as ever, turning it into something far more disturbing

Two characters so vibrant they step straight off the page

McEwan's brilliance as a novelist lies in his ability to isolate discrete moments in life and invest them with incredible significance

McEwan's style is lean and clear...every sentence feels carefully crafted, the words all perfectly in place

A tightly focused human drama... McEwan gives the reader access to both characters' thoughts with his usual skill, and the comedy of embarrassment, or of the kind of erotic misunderstanding that Milan Kundera used to specialise in, quickly disappears as the marital bed begins to seem more and more ominous... The bedroom scene itself is carried off brilliantly

A fine book, homing in with devastating precision on a kind of Englishness which McEwan understands better than any other living writer, the Englishness of deceit, evasion, repression and regret. In On Chesil Beach McEwan has combined the intensity of his narrowly focused early work with his more expansive later flowered to devastating effect

McEwan is the kind of author who can say more in a sentence than most can say in a chapter...This is a thoughtful book which provokes thought. But more immediately than that, this is a book which, while managing to be very funny, gives us a wonderful and moving portrait of a specific time, and two of its hostages, and of how to make a mess of love

McEwan conveys the near-numinous significance of a single moment with quiet, almost unbearable grace

A heavenly read