The Westminster Gazette says:—"The book is profoundly interesting. Readers familiar with the author's letters in The Daily Telegraph do not need to be told that he is a master of vivid and picturesque narrative. Mr Burleigh has been an eye-witness during the course of all the campaigns in the Soudan in which British troops have been employed, and therefore writes out of full knowledge and experience."
The Morning Post says:—"Many chapters are devoted to the Atbara Campaign and the incidents connected with it, the storming of Mahmoud's entrenched Camp on the 7th of April last, and interviews with that Emir after he was taken prisoner. Mr Burleigh's book, it will be sufficient to say, should prove very useful to all who follow the progress of the Force now advancing on Omdurman. In a supplementary chapter will be found official despatches, and the work is provided with a map of the Soudan, and plans of the Battle of the Atbara and of the Island of Meroe, showing positions before the battle. The illustrations are numerous. Among them is a frontispiece portrait of the Sirdar."
The Daily Chronicle says:—"We are given a connected and very comprehensible account of all the operations up to the destruction of Mahmoud's host and the Sirdar's triumphant return to Berber.... The description of the main battle itself is very vivid and complete."
The Scotsman says:—"Mr Bennet Burleigh's new volume, 'Sirdar and Khalifa,' comes just in the nick of time. Its object is to recount the story of the reconquest of the Soudan up to the Battle of Atbara.... A very readable book."
The Daily Telegraph says:—"Readers of The Daily Telegraph will not be chary of accepting our estimate of the value of this book when we remind them that its author is Mr Bennet Burleigh, who has acted throughout the numerous campaigns which have been waged in the Soudan as the War Correspondent of this journal, and gained himself a well-merited reputation for his pluck in the face of the enemy, his endurance of hardship and fatigue, his excellence of judgment, and his graphic descriptions of the shock of battle.... It only remains to say that this book is well illustrated, handsomely printed, and is in every way a worthy record of a brief but memorable campaign."