Rich in illuminating detail ... from the trivial to the arcane. The sea battle of Navarino is as thrilling as any fought on land by Hervey and the manoeuvres into which Hervey is accidentally drawn are as exciting as any battle.

[A] splendid literary cavalry charge. This book finds Brigadier Mallinson at the top of his game. Pitch-perfect dialogue, deeply researched historical references ... well-drawn and moving.

The climactic battle is as tense, exciting, vivid and gory as we've come to expect for this master of military fiction

Those who consider that the 20 novels making up Patrick O'Brian's magisterial Aubrey-Maturin series could never be too many will take heart from the fact that Man of War is only the ninth volume in Mallinson's wonderfully realised account of the Napoleonic era and its aftermath, with at least another dozen to follow, it is hoped. Combining an eye for vivid detail with a scholarly accuracy as to military and naval history expected from a former cavalry officer, Mallinson brings his chosen period to life with effortless flair.

Mallinson's crisp, authoritative storytelling is as excellent as ever

Exuberant... for those who like their wines full-bodied and their meals rich and zesty... earthly secrets of strength, suffering, passion and cooking in a humorous and well-drawn portrait of a woman who loves as well as she cooks

Subverts macho morality with refreshingly unexpected narrative twists magical realism... pacing that rivals Romancing the Stone

An enchanting book, an open-eyed fairy story

Wonderful... hard to put down... it is rare to come across a book so unusual

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