• April 1 2026
  The best books of the week

  When Britain stopped — the almost-revolution of the 1926 general strike

  Three compelling histories chart the battle between government and workers that shut down the nation — and shaped politics in the years that followed

  
• March 26 2026
  The best books of the week

  In search of Albion — the folklore, myths and magic that built British culture

  Three books take a tour through history to unpick the facts and fictions that still inform the national sense of identity

  
• March 18 2026
  Life & Arts

  After Nations — imperial impulses and the making of our shifting world order

  Rana Dasgupta’s globe-spanning history asks if we are living in a new age of empires

  
• March 17 2026
  Biography and memoir

  A Rebel and a Traitor — had Roger Casement succeeded, how might Ireland look today?

  The British diplomat who turned against empire and led the 1916 Easter Rising was a mercurial man. Rory Carroll’s new biography finds a fresh way to tell his story

  
• March 14 2026
  Non-Fiction

  The Black Cross — a fascinating history of the Baltic crusades

  Aleksander Pluskowski on how the Catholic knights in Europe brought law and order to the pagan world and became a model for Nazi German expansionism

  
• February 26 2026
  Non-Fiction

  Fashioning the Crown by Justine Picardie — couture and the royals

  How the Windsors deployed the soft power of clothing in an era of violent upheaval — and the designers who made it happen

  
• February 19 2026
  Non-Fiction

  Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War — rooms with a view of history

  A rich collection of personal stories paints a vivid picture of the bohemian meeting place that became a German military headquarters

  
• February 12 2026
  Life & Arts

  Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity — brutality behind the propaganda

  Frank Dikötter dismantles CCP myths about Mao’s leadership to tell a story of Chinese repression that is still relevant today

  
• February 10 2026
  Biography and memoir

  Wartime Letters: London and Moscow 1941-1945 by Kathleen Harriman — the human side of history

  As the daughter of a top US diplomat, the author of this engrossing collection had a close-up view of the foibles of major political leaders

  
• January 28 2026
  Biography and memoir

  The First Fascist — the wild adventures and sinister legacy of the Marquis de Morès

  Sergio Luzzatto on the perniciously charismatic French aristocrat whose violent antisemitism and populist swagger were the foundations for 20th-century fascism

  
• January 27 2026
  Non-Fiction

  A History of Modern Syria — the people at the heart of their own story

  Daniel Neep’s excellent account corrects the traditional narrative to show a nation surviving and resisting the powers that have vied to dominate it

  
• January 26 2026
  Life & Arts

  Hard Streets — Charlie Chaplin and the Lambeth boys made good

  Jacqueline Riding’s meticulously researched history paints a vivid picture of working-class London in the Victorian and Edwardian eras

  
• January 20 2026
  Life & Arts

  A Shellshocked Nation — how Britain remade itself between the wars

  Alwyn Turner charts the new values, entertainments and anxieties that transformed the country in the 1920s and ’30s

  
• January 14 2026
  Books

  Exit Stalin — reforms and repression in the postwar, pre-collapse USSR

  Mark Smith’s impressive history surveys life in the Soviet Union, and its advances and failures from Khrushchev to Gorbachev

  
• January 10 2026
  Life & Arts

  Surviving Rome — the surprising truths about everyday life in the empire

  Kim Bowes’s history examines in thrilling detail the finances, food and working practices of ordinary Romans

  
• December 23 2025
  Non-Fiction

  Jürgen Habermas: Germany’s political and cultural phenomenon

  Two new books bring fresh insights into the philosopher who has towered over seven decades of German public life

  
• December 1 2025
  Life & Arts

  Daring to Be Free — a revelatory history of enslaved rebellion

  Sudhir Hazareesingh’s powerful account of enslaved resistance in the Americas places the rebels and fighters front and centre

  
• November 27 2025
  Books

  General Franco: the dictator without charisma

  A new history and a memoir by the former King of Spain offer clues as to how a dictator with few qualities was able to remain in power so long

  
• November 20 2025
  The best books of the year 2025

  The best history books to read this year

  Frederick Studemann selects his must-read titles

  
• November 13 2025
  Life & Arts

  Ruthless by Edmond Smith — the brutal rise of Britain’s industrial power

  The historian’s splendid account sets out the ideas, inventions and relentless exploitation that drove the nation’s growth from 1660-1800

  
• November 6 2025
  Non-Fiction

  Out of Hitler’s Shadow by Tobias Straumann — from write-off to take-off

  The historian’s account of German debt and postwar settlement is a vivid story of risk, courage — and political contingency

  
• October 28 2025
  Vladimir Putin

  What’s on Vladimir Putin’s reading list?

  The Russian leader is obsessed with history, but there’s a reason he doesn’t like to cite his sources

  Peter Frankopan

  
• October 10 2025
  Non-Fiction

  Mapping the shifting mental boundaries of Europe

  Two books look at how so much central and eastern Europe identity has long been defined by an animosity to Moscow

  
• October 4 2025
  Kuehne + Nagel International AG

  German logistics billionaire faces questions over Nazi-era legacy

  Klaus-Michael Kuehne has repeatedly declined to address growing evidence of his company’s wartime conduct

  
• September 30 2025
  Baillie Gifford Prize 2025: the shortlist

  The Boundless Deep — blowing away the cobwebs around Tennyson

  A biography of the Victorian poet portrays a dashing figure far removed from the stately bearded behemoth of his later years