The 100 Best English & British History Books
Winston Churchill on the HMS Prince of Wales, 1941, from The Library of Congress
The 100 Best English and British History Books provides a reading list for those serious about history. Made up of modern works, it covers English and British history from the medieval period to the early modern and modern period. The list offers suggestions of the best books to read, but - being limited to one hundred books - is not entirely comprehensive.
Related pages
The 100 Greatest British Politics Books
The 100 Best European History Books
The 100 Greatest Irish History Books
The 100 Best Scottish History Books
1. Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900-1300
By Susan Reynolds | Used Price: 80% Off
This work explores the values and activities of ordinary people in Medieval Western Europe. Rather than focus on hierarchical structures the author instead looks at horizontal bonds of collective association. More »
2. Robin Hood
By J. C. Holt | Used Price: 90% Off
"Highly recommended to all armchair swashbucklers."—Fresno Bee The legend of Robin Hood began more than 600 years ago. The man, if he existed at all, lived even earlier. In this definitive work, Professor Sir James Holt, one of Britain’s premier historians and author of the standard work on ... More »
3. The Feudal Kingdom of England, 1042-1216
By Frank Barlow | Used Price: 80% Off
Now in its fifth edition, this hugely successful text remains as vivid and readable as ever. Frank Barlow illuminates every aspect of the Anglo-Norman world, but the central appeal of the book continues to be its firm narrative structure. Here is a fascinating story compellingly told.At the beginning ... More »
4. The Later Middle Ages, 1272-1485
By George Holmes | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01
English life in the thirteenth century was characterized by: a single Christian Church owing allegiance to Rome and living on the revenues of its estates; kingship with difficulty kept intact in the face of scheming magnates jealous of their privileges; a countryside divided into thousands of small estates, ... More »
5. Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381
By Rodney Hilton | Used Price: 80% Off
Hilton puts the Peasant's Revolt on a broader European context and demonstrates that peasant movements throughout the Middle Ages all had their roots in similar political and economic conditions. More »
6. The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages
Did women really constitute a `fourth estate' in medieval society and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study Shulamith Shahar considers this and the whole question of the varying attitudes to women and their status in western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. More »
7. The First European Revolution: c. 970-1215
By R. I. Moore | Used Price: 60% Off
This book provides a radical reassessment of Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries. Professor Moore argues that the period witnessed the first true revolution in European society, characterized by a transformation in the economy, in family structures, and in the sources of power and ... More »
8. The Moral Economy of the Countryside: Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Norman England
How were manorial lords in the twelfth and thirteenth century able to appropriate peasant labour? And what does this reveal about the changing attitudes and values of medieval England? Considering these questions from the perspective of the 'moral economy', the web of shared values within a society, Rosamond ... More »
9. Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages
In many respects this book, first published in 1961, marked a somewhat radical departure from contemporary historical writings. It is neither a constitutional nor a political history, but a historical definition and explanation of the main features which characterised the three kinds of government which can be discerned ... More »
10. The Making of the Middle Ages
By R. W. Southern | Used Price: 90% Off
The subject of this book is the formation of Western Europe from the late 10th to the early 13th century. During these years the economic face of Europe and its position in the world were transformed. Civilization, as we understand it today, was born. Although the period witnessed ... More »
11. On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State
By Charles Tilly; Joseph R. Strayer
The modern state, however we conceive of it today, is based on a pattern that emerged in Europe in the period from 1100 to 1600. Written from the experience of a lifetime of teaching and research in the field, this short, clear book is ... More »
12. The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350-1750
The Political Economy of Merchant Empires 1350 - 1750 follows the growth of European trade and state power as Europe rose to a position of dominance. Without overemphasising the importance of long-distance trade to domestic economies, this history follows a trend in history from the Venetian merchant empires ... More »
13. The Making of the British Isles: The State of Britain and Ireland, 1450-1660
By Steven G. Ellis; Christopher Maginn
The history of the British Isles is the story of four peoples linked together by a process of state building that was as much about far-sighted planning and vision as coincidence, accident and failure. It is a history of revolts and reversal, familial bonds and enmity, the study ... More »
14. Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain, 1470-1750
This important new book, widely praised in hardcover (Yale UP) redefines the economic history of early modern Britain for a new generation of readers. Wrightson writes evocatively about the basic institutions and relationships of economic life, tracing the process of change, and examining how these changes affected men, ... More »
15. Reformation
By Diarmaid MacCulloch | Used Price: 70% Off
Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation: A History is the best text on one of the key events of European history. It won the Wolfson History Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. More »
16. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830
By John H. Elliott | Used Price: 70% Off
This great work examines the differences in colonisation as practiced by the British and Spanish in the Americas. More »
17. A People's History of England
By A. L. Morton
A complete social and political history of England. Originally published in 1938. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the ... More »
18. The Population History of England 1541-1871
By E. A. Wrigley | Used Price: 70% Off
This is the first paperback edition of a classic work of recent English historiography, first published by Edward Arnold in 1981. Numerous traditional assumptions are qualified, confirmed, or overturned, and the authors marshall a mass of statistical material into a series of clear, lucid arguments about ... More »
19. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume 1, The Renaissance
By Quentin Skinner | Used Price: 60% Off
A two-volume study of political thought from the late thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, the decisive period of transition from medieval to modern political theory. The work is intended to be both an introduction to the period for students, and a presentation and justification of ... More »
20. Religion and the Decline of Magic
By Keith Thomas | Used Price: 50% Off
Keith Thomas's text looks at the 16th and 17th centuries where magic was being challenged in religion with the Reformation and in general with the rise of scietific, rational thinking. More »
21. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution
By Christopher Hill | Used Price: 70% Off
Within the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century which resulted in the triumph of the protestant ethic - the ideology of the propertied class - there threatened another, quite different, revolution. Its success 'might have established communal property, a far wider democracy in political and legal institutions, might ... More »
22. The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-1642
A history of the dramatic events which led to the collapse of Charles I's authority in England, Scotland, and Ireland in the 1640s, this book links incidents in the king's three domains to construct a narrative account which makes sense of British history, as well as of the ... More »
23. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783
By John Brewer | Used Price: 60% Off
John Brewer's superb study shows how war and taxation moulded the English economy and state in ways that are still with us. More »
24. The World We Have Lost
The World We Have Lost is a seminal work in the study of family and class, kinship and community in England after the Middle Ages and before the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. The book explores the size and structure of families in pre-industrial England, the ... More »
25. British Imperialism: 1688-2015
A milestone in the understanding of British history and imperialism, this ground-breaking book radically reinterprets the course of modern economic development and the causes of overseas expansion during the past three centuries. Employing their concept of 'gentlemanly capitalism', the authors draw imperial and domestic British history together to ... More »
26. Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834
'A rich and thoughtful book.' History 'A magnificent empirical resource accompanied by a subtle and powerful framework of interpretation...It is not often that historical scholarship is so effectively harnessed to the sociological imagination.' American Journal of Sociology 'This is a masterpiece of social movement analysis by an author ... More »
27. A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy
Democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, sexual and racial equality--these values have firmly entered the mainstream in the decades since they were enshrined in the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. But if these ideals no longer ... More »
28. The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution 1700-1850
By Joel Mokyr
Why did Western countries become so much wealthier than the rest of the world? And what explains the huge rise in incomes during the Industrial Revolution - and why did Britain lead the way? In the years between the Glorious Revolution and the Great Exhibition, the British economy ... More »
29. Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution
By Eric Hobsbawm | Used Price: 70% Off
An updated edition of the classic study of the Industrial Revolution by "one of the few genuinely great historians of our century" (The New Republic). Premier historian Eric Hobsbawm's brilliant study of the Industrial Revolution, which sold more than a quarter of a million copies in its original ... More »
30. The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe
By T. H. Aston; Robert Brenner; C. H. E. Philpin
The Brenner Debate presents of a variety of points of views by a variety of scholars on the transition from feudalism to capitalism. More »
31. Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England
Did enclosure of the commons raise or lower living standards for the poor in England? This ground-breaking history enters that old debate, painting a rich picture of rural culture before enclosure and what was lost afterwards. Said to be the best book on the subject by EP Thompson. More »
32. Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America
By Kenneth Morgan | Used Price: 70% Off
Slavery and the British Empire provides a clear overview of the entire history of British involvement with slavery and the slave trade, from the Cape Colony to the Caribbean. The book combines economic, social, political, cultural, and demographic history, with a particular focus on the Atlantic world and ... More »
33. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery: 1776-1848
By Robin Blackburn | Used Price: 50% Off
In 1770 a handful of European nations ruled the Americas, drawing from them a stream of products, both everyday and exotic. Some two and a half million black slaves, imprisoned in plantation colonies, toiled to produce the sugar, coffee, cotton, ginger and indigo craved by Europeans. By 1848 ... More »
34. Two Nations and the Educational Structure 1780-1870
By Brian Simon | Used Price: 80% Off
The first of four studies in the "History of Education in England", this volume traces the emergence of modern education from the efforts of the scientific societies in the 1780s up to the securing of universal education with the Act of 1870. The ideas for model schools by ... More »
35. Clanship to Crofters War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands
By Tom Devine
Received to wide acclaim when first published in the 1990s, this absorbing book remains one of the most important, influential and widely-read histories of the Scottish Highlands from the end of the Jacobite Risings to the great crofters' rebellion of the 1880s. T. M. Devine argues that the ... More »
36. The Making of the English Working Class
By E. P. Thompson | Used Price: 60% Off
This book transformed our understanding of English social history. Thompson revealed how working class people were not merely victims of history, moved by powerful forces outside of themselves, but were also active in creating their own culture and future, during the degradation of the industrial revolution. More »
37. The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
By Jonathan Rose | Used Price: 60% Off
Now in its second edition, this landmark book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers’ memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what ... More »
38. Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800
By Peter Thorsheim | Used Price: 50% Off
Britain's supremacy in the nineteenth century depended in large part on its vast deposits of coal. This coal not only powered steam engines in factories, ships, and railway locomotives but also warmed homes and cooked food. As coal consumption skyrocketed, the air in Britain's cities and towns became ... More »
39. The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture
By Bruce Haley
The quest for health guided Victorian living habits, shaped educational goals, and sanctioned a mania for athletic sports. As both metaphor and ideal, it influenced psychology, religion, moral philosophy; it affected the writing of history as well as the criticism of literature. Here is a wide-ranging and ably ... More »
40. Plenty and Want: A Social History of Food in England from 1815 to the Present Day
By John Burnett
What did Queen Victoria have for dinner? And how did this compare with the meals of the poor in the nineteenth century? This classic account of English food habits since the industrial revolution answers these questions and more. More »
41. 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement
By John Saville | Used Price: 70% Off
This is a detailed study of the workings of the various parts of the British state in their confrontation with the radical movements of Chartism and Irish nationalism. The year 1848 was notable, first, for the immense influence of the French revolution of February upon the whole of ... More »
42. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867
How did the English get to be English? In Civilising Subjects, Catherine Hall argues that the idea of empire was at the heart of mid-nineteenth-century British self-imagining, with peoples such as the "Aborigines" in Australia and the "negroes" in Jamaica serving as markers of difference separating "civilised" English ... More »
43. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire
By David Cannadine | Used Price: 90% Off
With the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese government in 1997, the empire that had lasted three hundred years and "upon which the sun never set" finally lost its hold on the world and slipped into history. But the question of how we understand the British Empire--its ... More »
44. Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-Century England
By Patrick Joyce | Used Price: 80% Off
This pioneering and highly original study explores critically the nature of class identity by looking at the formation and influence of two men (Edwin Waugh and John Bright) who are taken as representative of what "working class" and "middle class" meant in England in the nineteenth century. ... More »
45. The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940
By Daniel Headrick | Used Price: 70% Off
Daniel Headrick examines why the massive transfer of Western technology to European colonies did not spark an industrial revolution in those countries. Rather than spurring economic progress, he argues, the transfer of stock technology between 1850 and 1940 caused the traditional self-sufficient economies of the colonial regions to ... More »
46. After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics, 1848-1874
This book charts the course of working- and middle-class radical politics in England from the continental revolutions of 1848 to the fall of Gladstone's Liberal government in 1874. The author traces the genealogy of English radicalism from its roots in Protestant Dissent and the seventeenth-century revolutions, but also ... More »
47. Victorian Feminists
By Barbara Caine | Used Price: 90% Off
A study of Victorian feminism, this book focuses on four leading feminists: Emily Davies, Frances Power Cobbe, Josephine Butler, and Millicent Garrett Fawcett. Caine uncovers the range, diversity, and complexity of Victorian feminism, and examines the relationship between personal experience and feminist commitment. Caine sets her carefully researched ... More »
48. Colonialism and Development: Britain and its Tropical Colonies, 1850-1960
By Michael A. Havinden; David Meredith
British colonial rule of the tropics is the critical background to contemporary development issues. This study of Britain's economic and political relationship with its tropical colonies provides detailed analyses of trade and policy. The considerations of past successes and failures elucidate current opportunities and developments. No other book ... More »
49. Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire
By Lance E. Davis; Robert A. Huttenback
Historians have so far made few attempts to assess directly the costs and benefits of Britain's investment in empire. This book presents answers to some of the key questions about the economics of imperialism: how large was the flow of finance to the empire? How great were the ... More »
50. Imperialism and Popular Culture
By John M. MacKenzie | Used Price: 90% Off
Popular culture is invariably a vehicle for the dominant ideas of its age. Never was this more true than in the late-19th and early 20th centuries, when it reflected the nationalist and imperialist ideologies current throughout Europe. This text examines the various media through which nationalist ideas were ... More »
51. Gender and Empire
Focusing the perspectives of gender scholarship on the study of empire produces an original volume full of fascinating new insights about the conduct of men as well as women. Bringing together disparate fields - politics, medicine, sexuality, childhood, religion, migration, and many more topics - this new collection ... More »
52. The Origins of Modern English Society
By Harold Perkin | Used Price: 50% Off
Bringing together subjects such as culture, religion, morals, politics, economics, and mentality, Perkin presents and applies a holistic concept of social history in the tradition of great historians of the past. In this classic text of social history, Harold Perkin explores the emergence of a new form ... More »
53. The Nineteenth Century: The British Isles 1815-1901
This new eleven-volume series will span the history of the British Isles from the Roman Era to the present. Each volume consists of essays by leading historians who focus on key issues for the period-including society, economy, religion, politics, and culture. The chapters are at once wide-ranging surveys ... More »
54. Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory
By Cormac O Grada | Used Price: 80% Off
Here Ireland's premier economic historian and one of the leading authorities on the Great Irish Famine examines the most lethal natural disaster to strike Europe in the nineteenth century. Between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the food source that we still call the Irish ... More »
55. Crime and Society in England: 1750 - 1900
By Clive Emsley
Acknowledged as one of the best introductions to the history of crime in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,Crime and Society in England 1750-1900 examines thedevelopments in policing, the courts, and the penal system as England became increasingly industrialised and urbanised. The book challenges the old but still influential ... More »
56. Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism
By Ronald Robinson; John Gallagher
Imperialism in the eyes of the world is still Europe’s original sin, even though the empires themselves have long since disappeared. Among the most egregious of imperial acts was Victorian Britain’s seemingly random partition of Africa. In this classic work of history, a standard text for generations of ... More »
57. Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain 1870-1914
By Jose Harris
The late nineteenth century and Edwardian era, suggests Jose Harris in this book, represent a sharp break with the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. Indeed, despite the intense upheavals of two world wars, it was the beliefs, social structures and oppositional forces established between 1870 and 1914 ... More »
58. That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History
By J. W. Burrow; Stefan Collini; Donald Winch
In this unusual and important work, three well-known historians of ideas examine the diverse forms taken in nineteenth-century Britain by the aspiration to develop what was then known as a 'science of politics'. This aspiration encompassed a more extensive and ambitious range of concerns than is implied by ... More »
59. The Wilde Century
By Alan Sinfield | Used Price: 80% Off
For 15 years in Victorian England, Oscar Wilde was able to carry on like the famous camp queen of our imaginings - effete, leisured, aesthetic, amoral, decadent, dandified. This work explores how Wilde was seen before the trials that ended his career and made him the most famous ... More »
60. Hidden From History: 300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Against It
By Sheila Rowbotham | Under $1.00
Hidden From History is a study of women in Britain from the 1600s to the 1930s. It demonstrates how class, gender, work, family life, personal life and social pressures have interacted in women's endeavours for equality. More »
61. The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938
By Thomas C. Holt | Used Price: 60% Off
"Holt greatly extends and deepens our understanding of the emancipation experience when, for just over a century, the people of Jamaica struggled to achieve their own vision of freedom and autonomy against powerful conservative forces."-David Barry Gaspar. More »
62. Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-2000
By Peter Clarke | Used Price: 80% Off
Peter Clarke brilliantly challenges the commonly held view of Britain in the twentieth century as a nation in decline. Adopting a wide perspective, he examines the political, social and economic changes that transformed Britain. He looks at how jobs and prices, food and shelter, and education and welfare, ... More »
63. Divided Kingdom: A History of Britain, 1900 to the Present
By Pat Thane
How has the UK evolved into the country it is today? This clear, comprehensive survey of its history since 1900 explores the political, economic, social and cultural changes which have divided the nation and held it together, and how these changes were experienced by individuals and communities. Pat ... More »
64. An Environmental History of Twentieth-Century Britain
By John Sheail
Environmental history - the history of the relationship between people and the natural world - is a dynamic and increasingly important field. In An Environmental History of Twentieth-Century Britain, John Sheail breaks new ground in illustrating how some of the most pressing concerns came to be recognised, and ... More »
65. Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century
A critique of Anglo-American relations in the 20th century in the light of recent research. It challenges existing interpretations and argues that the basis of the Anglo-American special relationship was laid by Roosevelt and Chamberlain, preferred Stalin to Churchill, and that the origins of the Cold War should ... More »
66. Women in Twentieth-Century Britain
Women's lives have changed dramatically over the course of the twentieth century: reduced fertility and the removal of formal barriers to their participation in education, work and public life are just some examples. At the same time, women are under-represented in many areas, are paid significantly less than ... More »
67. Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900
By Anthony Seldon; Stuart Ball | 90% Off
The dominant force in twentieth-century British politics, the Conservative Party has nevertheless been seriously neglected and misunderstood. Conservative Century systematically surveys the history of the Party from the "Khaki" election of 1900 to John Major's victory of 1992 and beyond. Ignoring traditional boundaries between history and political science, ... More »
68. The Strange Death of Liberal England: 1910-1914
The Strange Death of Liberal England, written by George Dangerfield, examines the causes of the fall of the British Liberal Party, from 1910 to 1914. The book was listed in the Modern Library's top 100 best nonfiction books. More »
69. The Guns of August
By Barbara Tuchman | Used Price: 70% Off
The Pulitzer Prize winning, The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman, is focussed on the first month of World War I. Tuchman explains in detail the events that led to the war. The book was featured in the Modern Library's Top 100 nonfiction books of the 20th Century. More »
70. The First World War
By Hew Strachan
"This serious, compact survey of the war's history stands out as the most well-informed, accessible work available." (Los Angeles Times) Nearly a century has passed since the outbreak of World War I, yet as military historian Hew Strachan (winner of the 2016 Pritzker Literature Award) argues in ... More »
71. The Great War and Modern Memory
By Paul Fussell | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01
The Great War and Modern Memory is a book that describes the literary works by English participants in World War I to their experiences in trench warfare. Fussell describes how the futility and insanity of war defined the thinking of a generation and led England away from Romantacism. The book won the ... More »
72. English History 1914-1945
By A.J.P. Taylor | Used Price: 90% Off
During ten of the 31 years between 1914 and 1945 the English people were involved in world wars; for 19 of the years they lived in the shadow of mass unemployment. These themes and the politics which sprang from them shape the narrative of this book. More »
73. A Nation and not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913-23
Packed with violence, political drama and social and cultural upheaval, the years 1913-23 saw the emergence in Ireland of the Ulster Volunteer Force to resist Irish home rule and in response, the Irish Volunteers, who would later evolve into the IRA. World War One, the rise of Sinn ... More »
74. Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914-1964
By Partha Sarathi Gupta | 70% Off
This book examines the attitudes and politics of the British labour movement towards the British Empire and the Commonwealth in the twentieth century. Its focus is not the British working class as such but rather the decision-making and policy-framing institutions of the labour movement, such as the Labour ... More »
75. British Unemployment 1919-1939
By W. R. Garside | Used Price: 50% Off
Despite the dominance of unemployment in the historiography of interwar Britain, there is as yet no comprehensive single volume study of government reactions to the problem over the entire period down to 1939. British Unemployment 1919-1939 aims to fill that gap. W.R. Garside draws upon ... More »
76. Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970
This impressively researched and controversial book presents an alternative account of the development of one of the greatest states of the twentieth-century. It represents the culmination of David Edgerton's long-standing research on the relationship between science, technology, the military and the British state. Edgerton seeks to put the ... More »
77. From Versailles to Pearl Harbor: The Origins of the Second World War in Europe and Asia
By Margaret Lamb; Nicholas Tarling | Under $1.00
This book sheds new light on the Asian factor in the making of World War II in Europe. Margaret Lamb and Nicholas Tarling examine how the threat that Japan presented to the status quo in East Asia made it difficult for Britain to face Hitler's Germany and More »
78. The People's War: Britain 1939-1945
By Angus Calder
The People's War The 1939-45 conflict was, for Britain, a "total war"; no section of society remained untouched by military conscription, air raids, the shipping crisis and the war economy. This book not only states the great events and the leading figures, but also the oddities and the ... More »
79. Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II
By Madhusree Mukerjee | Used Price: 70% Off
A dogged enemy of Hitler, resolute ally of the Americans, and inspiring leader through World War II, Winston Churchill is venerated as one of the truly great statesmen of the last century. But while he has been widely extolled for his achievements, parts of Churchill’s record have gone ... More »
80. The Economic History of Britain since 1700: Volume 3: 1939 - 1992
By Roderick Floud; Deirdre McCloskey | 80% Off
An economic history of Britain since 1700, in three volumes by thirty-nine eminent historians and economists, this book will succeed the first edition of "Floud and McCloskey" (published in 1981) as the leading textbook on its subject. The text has a firm economic basis, but emphasizes the historical ... More »
81. British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland
British Counterinsurgency challenges the British Army's claim to counterinsurgency expertise. It provides well-written, accessible and up-to-date accounts of the post-1945 campaigns in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, South Yemen, Dhofar, Northern Ireland and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. More »
82. The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy Since 1945
By Mark Curtis
Using formerly secret government documents and independent sources, this historical study argues for a radically revised understanding of Post-war British foreign policy. Dr Curtis shows that, contrary to the impression usually conveyed by both academic writing and press coverage, British policy, in both intention and effect, had been ... More »
83. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence
By Richard J. Aldrich | Used Price: 60% Off
Paranoia with respect to Russia raged in the wake of World War II, just as Churchill had foreseen: fear of a "nuclear Pearl Harbor" and the growing challenge of political stability in Europe gripped the Western world. The advent of new and terrifying weapons of war and annihilation-atomic ... More »
84. Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention
The European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 established the most effective international system of human rights protection ever created. This is the first book that gives a comprehensive account of how it came into existence, of the part played in its genesis by the British government, and ... More »
85. Britain since 1945: The People's Peace
By Kenneth O. Morgan | Used Price: 90% Off
This penetrating analysis is the first comprehensive study by a professional historian of British history from 1945 to the present day. It examines the transformation of post-war Britain from the planning enthusiasm of 1945 to the rise of New Labour. Using a wide variety of sources, including the ... More »
86. No Turning Back: The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain
By Paul Addison | Used Price: 60% Off
In No Turning Back, Paul Addison charts the vastly changing character of British society since the end of the Second World War, tracing a series of peaceful revolutions that have completely transformed the country. He shows, for instance, that much of the sexual morality preached if not practiced ... More »
87. Britain and the Cold War
During the Cold War, the process of East West tension, though dominated by the Superpowers, was often conditioned, and in its early stages accelerated, by Britain's continuing world wide interests and influence. Since the 1980s, British scholars have been using newly released material to demonstrate the central role ... More »
88. The Five Giants; A Biography of the Welfare State
Giant Want. Giant Disease. Giant Ignorance. Giant Squalor. Giant Idleness. These were the Five Giants that loomed over the post-war reconstruction of Britain. The battle against them was fought by five gargantuan programmes that made up the core of the Welfare State: social security, health, education, housing ... More »
89. Black and British: A Forgotten History
In this vital re-examination of a shared history, historian and broadcaster David Olusoga tells the rich and revealing story of the long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa and the Caribbean. Drawing on new genealogical research, original records, and expert testimony, Black and ... More »
90. Muslims in Britain
Archaeological evidence shows there was contact between Muslims and the British Isles from the 8th century. Beginning with these historical roots, Sophie Gilliat-Ray traces the major points of encounter between Muslims and the British in subsequent centuries, and explores Muslim migration to Britain in recent times. Drawing upon ... More »
91. Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the Twentieth Century
By David Reynolds | Used Price: 90% Off
This book brings together the often separated histories of diplomacy, defence, economics and empire in a provocative reinterpretation of British 'decline'. It also offers a broader reflection on the nature of international power and the mechanisms of policymaking. For this Second Edition, David Reynolds has added a new chapters and ... More »
92. Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya
By Caroline Elkins | Used Price: 90% Off
Britain's Gulag examines the British response to the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya post-World War Two. Elkins examines the brutal tactics adopted by the British to maintain their empire – including putting 1.5 million people into concentration camps. More »
93. From Beveridge to Blair: The First Fifty Years of Britain's Welfare State
By Margaret Jones; Rodney Lowe | 70% Off
The creation of Britain's welfare state in 1948 was an event of major international importance. Designed to provide a concise introduction to the evolution of both the structure of the welfare state and attitudes towards it. Concentrates on five core services: health care, education, social security, the personal ... More »
94. Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland
By David McKittrick; David McVea | 60% Off
Compellingly written and even-handed in its judgments, this is by far the clearest account of what has happened through the years in the Northern Ireland conflict, and why. After a chapter of background on the period from 1921 to 1963, it covers the ensuing period?the descent into violence, ... More »
95. A Short History of the Labour Party
By Henry Pelling; Alastair J. Reid
This is the classic account of the rise of the Labour Party from its foundation through to Tony Blair's second term as Prime Minister. Thoroughly revised and updated, it describes the events that led to the inception of the party, the role of the trade unions within the ... More »
96. A History of British Trade Unionism, 1700-1998
This new history of British trade unionism offers the most concise and up-to-date account of 300 years of trade union development, from the earliest documented attempts at collective action by working people in the eighteenth century through to the very different world of `New Unionism' and `New Labour'. More »
97. An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community
Britain joined the EU in 1973, over twenty years after the first of the European Communities was formed. Within a year, Britain had established a reputation for being at odds with major Community initiatives and for taking an independent point of view. An Awkward Partner surveys the policies ... More »
98. The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class
By Selina Todd
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'There was nothing extraordinary about my childhood or background. And yet I looked in vain for any aspect of my family's story when I went to university to read history, and continued to search fruitlessly for it throughout the next decade. Eventually I realised ... More »
99. London: A Social History
By Roy Porter | Under $1.00
This dazzling and yet intimate book is the first modern one-volume history of London from Roman times to the present. An extraordinary city, London grew from a backwater in the Classical age into an important medieval city, a significant Renaissance urban center, and a modern colossus. Roy ... More »
100. Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths, and Modern Sexualities
By Jeffrey Weeks | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01
Few topics evoke so much anxiety and pleasure, pain and hope, discussion and silence as sexuality. Throughout the Christian era it has been a major moral preoccupation. Since the eighteenth century it has also been the focus of 'scientific' exploration and political activity. But, despite this obsessive concern, ... More »
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