History Books

Stonehenge does not stand alone: it is surrounded by earlier monuments, it was built alongside a settlement and other sites, and it presides over graves and shrines from people who lived centuries and even millennia later. In modern history, it has inspired a Druidry movement, hosted a military airbase, drawn festival crowds and seen police brutality. Susan Greaney pulls out five books that tell the many stories of Stonehenge, the astonishing monument that continues to surprise us with each new excavation.

The Allied army that ultimately won against the Japanese in Burma was one of the largest in the world, with a million men under command. Military historian Lucy Betteridge-Dyson, whose grandfather fought in the Burma campaign, talks us through the best books to understand more about it, from big-picture strategic overviews to heart-wrenching memoirs and firsthand accounts of soldiers who were there.

Heroic explorer or harbinger of doom? The impact of Christopher Columbus has become the focus of intense debate—in both academia and the arena of popular opinion—in recent years. We asked noted scholar of colonial Latin American history Matthew Restall to recommend five of the best books that explore Columbus's life and legacy.

A good historical biography should help us redefine and rethink what makes a person historically significant, says Roy Foster, chair of the judging panel of the Elizabeth Longford Prize. He talks us through the brilliant books that made the 2025 shortlist, including the lives of various monarchs who left their mark on European history, a portrait of an early modern spymaster, and a biography of Frantz Fanon, the anti-colonial writer.  

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," wrote L.P. Hartley. The question is: in what ways? Historian Ian Mortimer talks us through five influential books that shed light on daily life in medieval England—from monastic communities and great households to the gruelling lives of the peasantry.

Remote and romanticised, Easter Island – or Rapa Nui – has often been misportrayed as a mysterious site of ecocidal ruin. Terry Hunt chooses five books that paint a truer picture of the island’s history, from the accounts of early voyages to the pressures of joining the modern world. The tale that emerges is one of ingenuity, resilience, and mighty 'statues that walked' – as well as a lot of rats.

The Holy Roman Empire was a loose confederation of heterogeneous states that lasted a thousand years, from 800 to 1806. In the early modern period, it developed some common institutions, but these failed to contain the forces of disunity. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, a professor of history at the University of Münster, recommends books to learn more about an empire that played a key role in European history but is often absent from national narratives.

Among the many horrors of World War II was the construction of the Burma–Thailand Railway, where tens of thousands of prisoners dropped dead of illness, exhaustion, and malnutrition, and once strong young men were reduced to skeletal frames of flesh. Jacqueline Passman, daughter of a British prisoner of war, talks to us about the experiences of her father, Harry Silman, a doctor with the British Army who was there and kept a diary, now published for the first time.

It's a golden age for historical writing, as well-researched and sometimes quite specialist books by historians are written in an engaging style for a broad audience. History books out in recent months range from ancient Assyria to the CIA in the 21st century.

Frederick the Great (1712-1786) embodied two ideas of kingship: on the one hand, the traditional one of the warrior monarch, and on the other, an enlightened monarch, patron of the arts, a social reformer, and the friend of philosophes like Voltaire. It is on this dual character of his rule that his perennially high reputation rests, says historian Adam Storring. He introduces us to both sides of Frederick's kingly character and recommends books to learn more about the brilliant military campaigner who led Prussia from 1740 until his death nearly half a century later.