Books by Helen McCarthy
Helen McCarthy is a historian of everyday worlds of work, family and politics in modern Britain from the late nineteenth century to the present. She is the author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood (2020), which was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2021, and is currently writing a social history of retirement for Allen Lane.
“It’s a hugely impressive look at how women have managed to manage families, and manage work over this whole period. You get a sense of the unsung heroism and the fact that to begin with, work and motherhood is not a combination that at least men approve of. Often, women don’t approve of it either.” Read more...
The Best History Books: The 2021 Wolfson Prize Shortlist
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Theologians & Historians of Religion
Interviews with Helen McCarthy
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1
The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief
by Richard Holmes -
2
Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction
by Sadiah Qureshi -
3
Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War
by Lyndal Roper -
4
Liverpool: A Story of Britain
by Sam Wetherell -
5
The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World
by Selena Wisnom -
6
Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe’s Last Pagan Peoples
by Francis Young
The Best History Books of 2026: The Wolfson History Prize, recommended by Helen McCarthy
The Best History Books of 2026: The Wolfson History Prize, recommended by Helen McCarthy
The Wolfson History Prize is awarded every year to history books that wed scholarly originality to popular accessibility. Here, historian Helen McCarthy talks us through the 2026 shortlist, with books covering everything from 7th-century BC Mesopotamia to the 16th-century German Peasants’ War and the postwar history of Liverpool.
Interviews where books by Helen McCarthy were recommended
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1
Survivors: Children’s Lives after the Holocaust
by Rebecca Clifford -
2
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
by Sudhir Hazareesingh -
3
Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
by Judith Herrin -
4
Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood
by Helen McCarthy -
5
Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge
by Richard Ovenden -
6
Atlantic Wars: From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution
by Geoffrey Plank
The Best History Books: The 2021 Wolfson Prize Shortlist, recommended by Diarmaid MacCulloch
The Best History Books: The 2021 Wolfson Prize Shortlist, recommended by Diarmaid MacCulloch
Every year the Wolfson History Prize seeks out books that combine careful research with good writing, aimed at the general reader. Here, Diarmaid MacCulloch, historian and chair of the judges, talks us through the outstanding history books that made the 2021 shortlist, and why, in his view, they’re all must-reads.
