Boudica was an Iron Age queen who led her people into rebellion against Roman rule in the province of Britannia. She was defeated, but only after she had burned several towns, including London, to the ground. Here Richard Hingley, Professor of Archaeology at Durham University, explains how to sift the truth from the myth, and why Boudica has remained an enduring source of fascination down the centuries.

It’s a revolution that still resonates and yet it resists easy interpretation. Lynn Hunt, a leading historian of the French Revolution, tells us what the events of 1789 and later years really meant, and what relevance they have for us today.

Are you a teenager who is furious about the way the world seems to be going? Do you feel powerless and overwhelmed? Author Adrienne Kisner recommends five really good books that will inspire and inform teens and young adults, giving them the tools to get involved in activism, to understand politics—and to change the world.

Sometimes vilified, often misunderstood, rarely taught in universities, anarchism is a political philosophy and social movement that’s far removed from today’s mainstream politics. But it was and remains a powerful motivator. Political theorist Ruth Kinna talks us through the best books to read to get a better understanding of anarchism.

The failure of the Stuarts to win back the English or Scottish throne changed the course of history, enabling the buildup of a highly centralized British state and, possibly, America’s war for independence. Murray Pittock chooses the best books on Jacobitism, the 18th century phenomenon that nearly overthrew the British government.

In 2014 Hong Kong’s ‘Umbrella Protests’ made news around the world. But will continuing protests in Hong Kong lead to advances in democracy or crackdowns by Beijing? Jason Ng, lawyer and author of Umbrellas in Bloom, chooses five of the best books for understanding China’s ‘foster child’ city.

In contrast to Eastern Europe, the 1989 protests in China did not lead to the overthrow of the Communist Party. But if China’s leaders chose the right course on June 4th, 1989, why are they still frightened to come to terms with it? Sinologist and historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom picks the best books to understand events at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and around China on that hot summer night.

The ‘Great Fire Wall of China’. How has the Chinese Communist Party managed to survive the internet? Economist correspondent Gady Epstein chooses books on the world’s most successful case of authoritarian control of the internet.

Heather Brooke’s investigative journalism was the catalyst for the MPs expenses scandal of 2009. With an eye to how power corrupts, from Orwell’s Animal Farm to an apartheid memoir, she looks at importance of sticking to one’s principles and the dangers that arise when we don’t

Writers in China are afraid to criticise the state and society, says London-based author Ma Jian. From the 3rd century BC to 2008, these five exceptional works show how it’s done.

The Russian revolution was the beginning of the modern age, says award-winning author Roland Chambers. He tells us what Solzhenitsyn imagined Lenin was like, and about the children’s author who led a double life as a spy in Bolshevik Russia.

Nelson Mandela was a most unusual and unusually astute leader, says journalist and author of Playing the Enemy, John Carlin. He chooses the best books to understand Nelson Mandela, who used forgiveness as a political tool, and South Africa, the country he brought peacefully out of apartheid.

Discussions about Tibet are often reduced to arguments about China’s right to run it. The Tibetologist says this obscures a much more subtle debate about what it means to be Tibetan in modern Tibetan society.

The history professor tells us what today’s dissidents can learn from the experience of Eastern Europe and explains how Václav Havel leaves a lasting legacy of how to challenge the over-mighty

In October 1911, China’s last imperial dynasty fell. The legacy of that revolution remains deeply ambiguous in today’s People’s Republic. China scholar Rana Mitter tells us about the country’s tumultuous changes from 1911 to the present day.

From Tunisia to Tahrir, Moscow to Manhattan, civil resistance is back. The British Academy president, and eminent student of people power, tells us how modern non-violent action began, and where it’s most likely to succeed

We’re richer and freer as a society than we used to be but it’s now clear there are downsides too. The MP for Tottenham, where the riots began, says we’ve created a hyper-individualistic culture and explains how we must change it

History professor and co-editor of Dissent magazine, Michael Kazin, looks back at US leftist movements from abolitionism to Vietnam to see where OWS came from and what it can learn from the past.

Our political and economic systems are inadequate and failing. But what can we do? The author of a new book on the subject tells us what inspired his involvement in the Occupy movement and how a leaderless revolution could work

The historian reflects on the past 60 years of American involvement in Egypt and tells us, after the Arab Spring, what may make the coming years different

The Middle East scholar tells us what to read if we’re to understand where upheaval in the Arab world came from, and where it’s going.

The journalist and author tells us what happens when protest meets pop music, which book inspired Springsteen and where hip-hop is most potent today

Hazareesingh’s book choices include de Gaulle’s “very readable” war diaries. In books of condolences after the leader’s death, people wrote things like, “Goodbye Charles, you were greater than Napoleon”

The historian and author chooses five books on de Gaulle and the Resistance. He says the British tried to veto de Gaulle’s famous 1940 speech from London calling on the French to stand up to German occupation

In August 1979, Timothy Knatchbull and his family went out in a boat off the coast of Ireland. Neither his grandparents or his twin brother would return from the IRA bomb attack that shocked Britain and the world. Here he talks about books that helped him better understand ‘the Troubles,’ and his own book, From a Clear Blue Sky, about his own journey to come to terms with that happened that bank holiday weekend.

Countries do have to come to terms with their own history, and it’s unhealthy that China has not yet come to terms with the Cultural Revolution, argues the West’s leading scholar of the period, Roderick MacFarquhar. He chooses the best five books on the Cultural Revolution.

Professor David Waddington tells us why riots are neither irrational nor mere hooliganism, and says the approach police take is critical in determining how a protest develops

British novelist and poet Adam Foulds discusses fading empire in the context of Kenya, including the horrors of British gulags, the Mau Mau uprising, and the social deprivation endured by the Kikuyu.

Five recommendations from the BBC’s Central Europe correspondent, who witnessed the collapse of Yugoslavia, popular uprisings in Bulgaria and Serbia, and the transformation of non-violent to violent resistance in Kosovo

For anybody wanting to go into politics a mastery of the French Revolution is an enormous help and a knowledge of history essential, says Peregrine Worsthorne, the columnist and former editor of Britain’s Sunday Telegraph. He recommends the best books on the French Revolution, both for and against.

It’s hard to understand what’s going on in the Xinjiang region of China and the nationalism of the Uyghurs who live there without reading some history. Here Professor Michael Dillon, a historian at King’s College London, suggests books to read on the Uyghurs, focusing in particular on scholars and diplomats whose work gives insight into the period before the Chinese Communist takeover in 1949.

To fully understand unrest in China today you have to go back to the 1930s and the circumstances which led to the Chinese Communist Party taking power, says Harvard political scientist Elizabeth Perry. She recommends the best books on popular protest in China.