Best history books 2024: BBC History Magazine’s Books of the Year

Kavita Puri: History has become political, especially discussions about our imperial past. So The Truth About Empire, a collection of essays edited by Alan Lester, is much needed. In it, academics who have studied colonial history forensically and methodically take on their critics. Discussing locations from Australia and China to India and South Africa, this book is as much about defending against an assault on historical truth as it is about empire. It’s also a testament to the importance of professional research over polemic.

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World (Bloomsbury)

William Dalrymple

Sathnam Sanghera: One of the most memorable skits in the BBC comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me involved an Indian dad claiming that everything and everyone, from Leonardo Da Vinci to the royal family, was in fact Indian. William Dalrymple’s mind-expanding book The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World could be said to be the intellectual equivalent – except it does not at any stage lapse into hyperbole. In exquisite prose, Dalrymple outlines the influence of the subcontinent upon global technology, astronomy, art, religion, music, mathematics, literature and mythology.

Kavita Puri: In The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, William Dalrymple has diverted from the Mughal period and the East India Company to write a hugely ambitious, dazzling book about the period from 250 BC to AD 1200. His premise is that ancient India, and the empire of ideas it exported, was as central to the seeding of civilisation as ancient Greece. Using cutting-edge scholarship and recent archaeological finds, his book argues that the ‘Indosphere’ influenced the world in terms of religion, art, language, architecture and numeracy. What’s remarkable is that this has been overlooked for so long.

A History of Britain in Ten Enemies (Bantam)

Terry Deary

Onyeka Nubia: Terry Deary’s almost anecdotal A History of Britain in Ten Enemies is reduced but not reductionist, witty but not irreverent. He is always clever and full of smarts. It is a history book written for people who don’t read history. And he reminds us that a country’s imperial past can taint the memory of its obscurity. We don’t remember the small collection of nations that existed before the Roman invasion, because ‘Britannia’ is now popularised as a patriotic meme. Deary reminds us of this obscurity through the eyes of Britain’s enemies.

Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World (Bodley Head)

David Van Reybrouck

Peter Frankopan: I’ve been a fan of David Van Reybrouck for a while, and was lucky to read the proof of Revolusi before it came out. This is a stunning book that looks at Indonesia in the 20th century, focusing on its journey to independence and beyond. Van Reybrouck explains how what was happening in south-east Asia was not just interesting but central to ideas about decolonisation after the Second World War. It’s a book that taught me a lot about a subject I had long wished I knew more about.

Rana Mitter: Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, yet its history is far less well-known in the west than that of India or China. In Revolusi, David Van Reybrouck combines deep research with illuminating oral history to tell the story of this huge island nation from the early modern era to the 20th century. The portrait of mercurial independence leader Sukarno is particularly compelling, as is the horrifying account of violence by the Dutch, who committed atrocities against the population in a desperate attempt to hold onto their colony.

The Eagle and the Hart (Allen Lane)

Helen Castor

Tracy Borman: Helen Castor’s The Eagle and the Hart is the utterly addictive, gripping tale of a deadly rivalry between two cousins: the “thin-skinned narcissist Richard II” and the charismatic, chivalric Henry IV. As 10-year-olds they presented a united front when Richard came to the throne in 1377, but their relationship soon darkened into a deadly rivalry, culminating in Henry’s usurpation 22 years later. The intrigue, turbulence and sheer drama of the Plantagenet age is brought vividly to life throughout. Told with characteristic verve and exceptional scholarship, this is one of the best history books I’ve read in years.

Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World (Pan Macmillan)

Dorian Lynskey

Sathnam Sanghera: Dorian Lynskey is one of the most original thinkers in modern Britain, as you’ll know if you have come across my current favourite podcast (Origin Story) or his books. An exploration of the human obsession with the end of the world, Everything Must Go is unlike anything else I’ve read this year. It takes in science, history, religion, culture and politics, and I bet you’ll learn something new on each page.

Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York (Bonnier Books)

Tyler Anbinder

Leah Redmond Chang: In Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York, Tyler Anbinder follows the fortunes of 19th-century immigrants who built their lives anew in New York after fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland. Anbinder is a meticulous researcher but never lets scholarship overshadow his storytelling. We meet colourful characters who tell us, in their own words, riveting stories of struggle and perseverance, and Anbinder shows how they not only survived but thrived. As a descendant of Irish immigrants myself, I closed the book feeling grateful – and proud.

The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War (Viking)

Nick Lloyd

Simon Sebag Montefiore: Nick Lloyd’s The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War is a rare and brilliant masterwork – a sweeping history of the entire eastern war, including Italy, but also, importantly, the Russo-German and Russo-Austrian fronts. The story is so complex that it is hard to condense, but Lloyd writes with scholarly authority and elegant narrative, sharp personal sketches and acute strategic sense.

Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England’s Greatest Warrior King (Head of Zeus)

Dan Jones

James Holland: I love Dan Jones’s books. They are popular narrative history at their best: impeccably researched and authoritative but written with immense pace, zeal and energy. Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England’s Greatest Warrior King is my favourite of his so far. I found it utterly compelling and fascinating, telling a story of Henry V that was both familiar but also less familiar than I thought. Terrific stuff.

Peter Frankopan: Dan Jones is the poster boy of swashbuckling medieval historians, and writes with passion and verve – he is one of those authors who you can tell really loves his subject. Henry V is the third and final instalment in Jones’s set of books covering the 13th to 15th centuries, though it can be read as a standalone volume. At its heart is the climax of the Hundred Years’ War and the battle of Agincourt. It reads like a thriller.

Helen Castor: Henry V is a fizzing narrative, full of blood and thunder that gets behind the carefully constructed mask of “England’s greatest warrior king” more completely, imaginatively and thought-provokingly than any other account I’ve read. If you want to see, and feel, how a little boy in a black straw hat became “God’s own soldier”, winning against the odds at Agincourt, this is the book for you.

Sword Beach: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Forgotten Victory (Bantam)

Stephen Fisher

James Holland: I read a lot of books on the Second World War and, though there are lots of brilliant historians presenting fascinating fresh research and perspectives, it’s actually quite rare to read one that has me totally gripped from start to finish. An exception is Sword Beach: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Forgotten Victory by Stephen Fisher, who has managed superbly to combine immense detail and forensic research with a very compelling read full of intense and often gut-wrenching human drama. The research is genuinely fresh and revelatory too. D-Day has clearly not revealed all its secrets yet.

Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance (Quercus)

Ramie Targoff

Leah Redmond Chang: Except for scholars of 16th-century England, few know the names of Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, Elizabeth Cary and Anne Clifford. Ramie Targoff brings these women brilliantly to life in Shakespeare’s Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance, showing us what it meant to be both a woman and a writer in Shakespeare’s England – which, Targoff reminds us, was also the England of a powerful queen, Elizabeth I. Is it a coincidence that these four flourished in that era? This is women’s history at its finest.

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence (WH Allen)

Zeinab Badawi

Hannah Skoda: An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi is such an important, beautiful and intellectually generous book. Readers are blown away by the magnificence of ancient civilisations in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. We hear of the powerful emperor Mansa Musa of Mali, and of the kingdoms of west Africa. Tragic histories of the transatlantic slave trade and imperialism are told emphatically from an African perspective. The source material is abundant and stunning, creating a real sense of awe.

Sathnam Sanghera: Amazing work has been done in recent years to challenge conventional western views of world history. Peter Frankopan’s Silk Roads placed central Asia and the Middle East at the centre of global history, while Born in Blackness by Howard French was convincing in its argument that the global past has been subject to ‘mistelling’. Zeinab Badawi continues this important work in her elegant book An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, which takes us from the origins of the human species in east Africa to the defeat of apartheid in 20th-century South Africa. It’s authoritative and compelling.

Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (Allen Lane)

Diarmaid MacCulloch

Hannah Skoda: Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity explores attitudes towards sex and sexuality throughout the whole history of Christianity – a history that is so much more expansive, contradictory, challenging and, sometimes, inspiring than we are often told. I loved the interplay of learned theology with the experiences and voices of ordinary people across the ages as they tried to make sense of questions connected to sex. MacCulloch writes with eloquence and wit even as he addresses the most moving subjects that lie at the heart of being human.

Zhou Enlai: A Life (Harvard University Press)

Chen Jian

Rana Mitter: From the Second World War to Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing, Zhou Enlai was a key face of China, known for his sophisticated diplomacy, not least in his dealings with Henry Kissinger. But he was also an unsentimental radical whom Mao respected but also made complicit in the violence of the Cultural Revolution. In Zhou Enlai: A Life, Chen Jian – a leading historian of communist China – uses rich sources and skilled judgement to finally give one of the 20th century’s most important statesmen the biography he merits.

The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Daisy Dunn

Helen Castor: In the classical world, Daisy Dunn’s The Missing Thread is, if you’ll forgive the pun, unmissable. She’s a wonderful writer, and shows in immersively beautiful prose how much thinner the fabric of ancient history is – less substantial, less real – if we fail to weave in the women whose lives linger beneath the surface of her source material. Doing so takes exceptional scholarship and exceptional insight, and she makes it look easy.

How the World Made the West (Bloomsbury)

Josephine Quinn

Mary Beard: Josephine Quinn’s How the World Made the West looks at the histories of Greece and Rome, but shows how they owe huge amounts to other ancient cultures. In a way, it takes Greece and Rome down a peg or two, but it also makes their history more interesting as we track all the interactions between the ‘classical’ world and Egypt, the near East and more. The lesson is that ancient history is less neat than we sometimes make it.

Onyeka Nubia: In How the World Made the West, Josephine Quinn bucks a trend popularised by prominent historians who offered an endorsement of a common perspective: that the ‘west’ exists, and it won. Confounding that notion were writers such as Chinweizu, author of The West and the Rest of Us (1975), following in the footsteps of the likes of Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire who had deconstructed the nature of western hegemony. Quinn brilliantly continues this process, but from a perspective of essentialism: the ‘west’ is a creation made by us to hide something more sinister.

Arise, England: Six Kings and the Making of the English State (Faber & Faber)

Caroline Burt and Richard Partington

Helen Castor: Caroline Burt and Richard Partington’s Arise, England: Six Kings and the Making of the English State is an essential foundation for understanding the medieval English state. It’s the story of six reigns spanning two centuries – from King John to Richard II – as well as an acute, lucid and utterly compelling analysis of political and constitutional development under the Plantagenet kings.

Legion: Life in the Roman Army (British Museum Press)

Richard Abdy

Mary Beard: For this choice, I must declare an interest. But though I am a trustee of the British Museum, I had nothing to do with this year’s exhibition on the Roman army. The catalogue, Legion: Life in the Roman Army, is a wonderful, lasting version of that show, giving us a very different view of the Roman army. This isn’t just about well-trained columns of legionaries, but reveals men with wives (even if unofficially), children, life beyond the army and, occasionally, extravagant shopping habits.

Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief (Yale)

Ronald Hutton

Simon Sebag Montefiore: Ronald Hutton’s Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief is his follow-up to the first volume of a biography that radically changed and improved our understanding of Oliver Cromwell as a cunning manipulator and wily political player, as well as the godly, incorruptible and outstanding general of his own mythology. This second book is just as excellent: beautifully written, deeply authoritative and as sharp as a sword – as powerful as a cavalry charge and as exciting for the reader. The generalissimo Cromwell emerges as ruthless, disingenuous, slippery and self-righteous, but also steely in his efficiency and dazzling in his military brilliance and political sangfroid.

Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor (Amberley)

Nathen Amin

Tracy Borman: Dismissed as a paranoid miser, Henry VII has long been overshadowed by his larger-than-life son and heir, Henry VIII. But as Nathen Amin’s impeccably researched Son of Prophecy shows, Henry Tudor’s path to the throne, and his turbulent reign, were every bit as dramatic as his son’s. How did an “unknown Welshman” with a frankly dodgy claim to the crown become king of England and founder of one of the most celebrated dynasties in British history? Read on.

Church Going: A Stonemason's Guide to the Churches of the British Isles (Profile)

Andrew Ziminski

Alice Loxton: Andrew Ziminski’s Church Going focuses on the churches of the British Isles. He is the perfect guide, having worked for several decades as a stonemason and church conservator. Through his expert eye, we learn of flying buttresses, rood screens, lychgates and chancels. Not only is Church Going a glorious read, but it has a lasting legacy: it equips the reader with the ability, on visiting any British church, to decode its secrets and uncover its delights – and find joy in these mysterious buildings, for years to come. This is a secret history like no other.

The History Lessons (Icon)

Shalina Patel

Kavita Puri: The History Lessons by Shalina Patel, a history teacher, is for anyone – from Year 7 students up – who wishes they knew more about British history, or who wants to fill gaps in their school education. Taking us from the Roman period to today, this is far from a dusty lesson. Some stories are well known, others less so, but all are well told and researched – importantly, writing back into the narrative people who have been often overlooked.

Arnhem: Black Tuesday (Bantam)

Al Murray

James Holland: This choice might be open to accusations of bias but, having lived with this book on the podcast I co-host with Al Murray, I was actually a little apprehensive about reading it. I needn’t have been: Arnhem: Black Tuesday is brilliant. Like Sword Beach, it is not only compellingly written but also offers a genuinely new perspective on the critical day of the battle of Arnhem. By focusing on just 24 hours, Murray has been able to include much more than previous historians did – and, as a result, has drawn fresh conclusions that should change forever how we view this battle. Superb.

Young Elizabeth: Princess. Prisoner. Queen. (Michael O’Mara)

Nicola Tallis

Tracy Borman: Nicola Tallis has created a vivid portrayal with compelling new insights into the real woman behind the iconic ‘Gloriana’. The author’s meticulous research unearths some previously unknown details from Elizabeth’s early life, such as her close acquaintance with the daughter of one of the men executed for adultery with her mother, Anne Boleyn. Superbly narrated, the story of the Virgin Queen’s turbulent path to the throne is surprising, revealing and utterly irresistible. This is Elizabeth I as you have never seen her before.

Alice Loxton: In Young Elizabeth, Nicola Tallis explores the younger years of Elizabeth I. We see her not as the Virgin Queen nor Gloriana, but as a teenager, resilient in the face of immense upheaval, and unaware of the remarkable future to come. Through Tallis’s brilliant writing, we see how Elizabeth was shaped by her mother’s execution, her four stepmothers, the predatory attentions of Sir Thomas Seymour, and the Wyatt Rebellion of 1554. It’s not surprising Elizabeth became such a skilful propagandist and, having seen the potentially disastrous fallout, never married.

Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century (Hurst)

Laura Beers

Leah Redmond Chang: We seem to be living in Orwellian times – but what does ‘Orwellian’ even mean anymore? In her slim but powerful book Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century, Laura Beers shows us how George Orwell’s social and political writing about his own times can help us to understand the turbulence of our own. Beers explores his failures as much as his foresight yet, even so, makes the convincing case that we should read Orwell now, more than ever.

Broken Threads: My Family from Empire to Independence (Fourth Estate)

Mishal Husain

Peter Frankopan: Broken Threads: My Family from Empire to Independence is a beautiful and deeply personal book written by the BBC broadcaster and journalist Mishal Husain. In it she tells the story of her grandparents – their lives and loves – set against the partition of India. The book weaves together all kinds of different sources – from official documents to private correspondence – and is wonderfully effective at representing day-to-day hopes and fears against the vast canvas of one of the great global events of the 20th century. Husain writes incredibly well – so well, in fact, that I read this in one sitting.

The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability (Profile)

Annette Kehnel

Hannah Skoda: As we face ecological and environmental crises in the present day, Annette Kehnel’s The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability provides wonderful insights into such issues in the Middle Ages. That was another time of climate change, but also a period when people were much more closely connected to the environment. The medieval use of common land, careful quotas for resource extraction, and an acute consciousness that nature’s bounty is finite, give us much pause for thought today.

All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil (Allen Lane)

Stephen Alford

Onyeka Nubia: Stephen Alford’s All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil unfolds like a John le Carré spy spoof, but this is not fiction. Elizabeth I, a ‘heretic’ hated across Europe, was not expected to survive. It was the task of Robert Cecil, Robert Walsingham and William Cecil to ensure that she did, employing translators, playwrights, ambassadors and assassins. Alford explores the spymasters’ motives: some were driven by Machiavellian self-interest, others by pragmatic statehood, but Robert Cecil appears to have ice instead of blood in his veins.

Simon Sebag Montefiore: All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil is a sensitive, humane, very political biography of Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury – himself wily, sharp, patient and thoughtful, the perfect politician and courtier for complex masters in Elizabeth I and James VI & I. This is also a brilliant exposition of court politics, the ruling style of Elizabeth, the rise and fall of the Earl of Essex and the negotiation by Cecil of the Jacobite succession. Alford is a maestro of the secret world of codes, masks and mountebanks.

Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Britain (Profile)

Madeleine Pelling

Alice Loxton: In Writing on the Wall, the historian and celebrated podcast host Madeleine Pelling shines a light on an enigmatic subject: graffiti of the 18th century. The result is a fascinating dive into our ancestors’ lives, full of surprises. Through marks scratched into latrine walls, shapes chalked up on doors, and messages etched into windows, we explore the intimate thoughts of homesick sailors, sex workers, Romantic poets and others. It’s a brilliant debut from Pelling, and I look forward to reading what she writes next.

Women in Power: Classical Myths and Stories, from the Amazons to Cleopatra (Penguin)

Edited by Stephanie McCarter

Mary Beard: Women in Power: Classical Myths and Stories, from the Amazons to Cleopatra is an anthology of ancient writing about women in power, collected by Stephanie McCarter. Not all Greek and Roman women were downtrodden – though the truth is that most were. It is a refreshing change to read a collection of vivid ancient texts that tell of powerful women, some legendary, some real. These stories can be two-edged, though: a lot of these women in power make a mess of things, so prove exactly why (for ancient men) women should not be running the world.

The Struggle for Taiwan: A History (Allen Lane)

Sulmaan Wasif Khan

Rana Mitter: A clash over Taiwan between China and the US could turn into World War III. With The Struggle for Taiwan, Sulmaan Wasif Khan has written an account of the island’s history from the earliest days, but concentrates on its turbulent 20th century, when it was in turn a Japanese colony, briefly part of a unified China, then the redoubt of nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Compelling and alarming, the book ends with a warning that the Taiwan crisis may bring “chaos” to the world.

Jerusalem: The Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Helen Castor: Finally – if I can make a case for one more choice, since it’s a reissue – the new and fully updated edition of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s epic Jerusalem: The Biography could not be more timely, reaching as it now does into our own present day. Rarely has such an elegant and enthralling read been so urgently necessary.

These selections first appeared in the Christmas 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine