This sorry saga has been recounted many times, but never that I can recall as well as by Dalrymple. He is a master story-teller, whose special gift lies in the use of indigenous sources, so often neglected by imperial chroniclers

Max Hastings, Sunday Times

Enchantingly written . . . In Dalrymple's usual happy style of historical narrative, applied to a fascinating, neat and highly suggestive series of events, this long and involved book will be a great success, and bring the famous story to a large new audience

Philip Hensher, Spectator

Of the books swooped into being by his scholarship (to which he himself has applied the adjective “obsessive”), this one is the most magnificent . . . His account is so perceptive and so warmly humane that one is never tempted to break away . . . This book would be compulsive reading even if it were not a uniquely valuable history, which it is, because Dalrymple has uncovered sources never used before

Diana Athill, Guardian

Brilliant . . . Those who have read his White Mughals and The Last Mughal will know what to expect: a readable style, a deep humanity and, above all, an extraordinary skill in evoking the lost worlds of Mughals and Afghans . . . His pen-portraits are a masterpiece . . . Return of a King is much the fullest and most powerful description of the West's first encounter with Afghan society

John Darwin, New York Times

A major contribution to the historiography of south-west Asia and of the British empire . . . Return of a King will come to be seen as the definitive account of the first and most disastrous western attempt to invade Afghanistan. Dalrymple's afterword should be put on college syllabuses on both sides of the Atlantic

Sherard Cowper-Coles, New Statesman

Splendid and absorbing . . . William Dalrymple tells this tragic story with verve, skill, and - unexpectedly in the circumstances - some humor. Using unknown or underused sources from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, he recounts the tale from both sides, shifting the scenes, using eyewitness accounts, quoting at length heroic epic poems . . . A fine book

David Gilmour, New York Review of Books