'Here is art which conceals art, and intellect which conceals intellect, so that by the end of the book one feels that one understands something one had not understood before. Mr Hall is witty and amusing, but not snide; he has a lightness of touch which allows him to write of extremely serious matters without solemnity; he knows how to convey a great deal in a few words' Sunday Telegraph
'He is an observant and witty writer...you believe implicitly that he has met the people he writes about, and that they said what he quotes them as saying' Sunday Times
'The Impossible Country...is much more than travel literature. Hall may be reporting on the context of the war rather than the events, but he is reporting nonetheless. His rich grasp of history and sense of argument take his writing beyond its genre' Literary Review