2020 Winner The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and the Raj by Anita Anand
Shortlist Time Song: Searching for Doggerland by Julia Blackburn Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands by Hazel Carby A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution by Toby Green A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism by Caroline Moorehead The Brothers York: An English Tragedy by Thomas Penn Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Cook Ding by Roel Sterckx
2019 Winner The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library by Edward Wilson-Lee
2018 Winner Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 – 1928 by SA Smith
Shortlist London's Triumph: Merchant Adventure and the Tudor City by Stephen Alford Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea by Christopher J Lebron The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-War Britain by Lynda Nead
2017 Winner Black And British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga
Shortlist At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World by Jerry Brotton The Good Occupation: American Soldiers and the Hazards of Peace by Susan L Carruthers Spitalfields: The History of a Nation in a Handful of Streets by Dan Cruickshank The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976 by Frank Dikotter Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh
2016 Winner The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45 by Nicholas Stargardt
Shortlist SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan If This is A Woman – Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm The Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War by Raghu Karnad 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear by James Shapiro
2015 Winner God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England by Jessie Childs
Shortlist The Fateful Year: England 1914 by Mark Bostridge Pagan Britain by Ronald Hutton The English and Their History by Robert Tombs In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars by Jenny Uglow
2014 Winner The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century by David Reynolds
Shortlist Empires of the Dead: How One Man's Vision Led to the Creation of WW1's War Graves by David Crane Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan by William Dalrymple The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age by Vic Gatrell Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain by Charlotte Higgins The Undiscovered Country: Journeys Among the Dead by Carl Watkins
2013 Winner Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe
Shortlist A History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War In 1914 by Christopher Clark The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco da Gama by Nigel Cliff Destiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein by Jonathan Dimbleby Governing the World: The History of an Idea by Mark Mazower
2012 Winner The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick
Shortlist The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food by Lizzie Collingham Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War by David Edgerton To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 by Adam Hochschild An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science by Edward J Larson
2011 Winner The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: the History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra by Toby Wilkinson
Shortlist A World on Fire: an Epic History of Two Nations Divided by Amanda Foreman Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe in the Mediterranean by Philip Mansel Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler's Capital 1939–1945 by Roger Moorhouse
2010 Winner A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch
Shortlist Russia against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe 1807 to 1814 by Dominic Lieven Behind Closed Doors: at Home in Georgian London by Amanda Vickery
2009 Winner The White War: Life & Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson
2008 Winner This Neutral Island by Clair Wills
Shortlist The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West 1900–1914 by Philipp Blom The Phoenix: St Paul's Cathedral and the Men Who Made Modern London by Leo Hollis Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe by Mark Mazower The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation by Frederick Spotts
2007 Winner City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London by Vic Gatrell
Shortlist The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection by Jerry Brotton Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions by Deborah Cohen The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 by William Dalrymple Empires of the Atlantic World – Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 by JH Elliott The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze
2006 Winner The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward Perkins
Shortlist Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution by Simon Schama Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion by Charles Townshend
2005 Winners The Boys’ Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944–1945 by Paul Fussell The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia by Richard Overy
Shortlist Inside Hitler's Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich by Joachim C Fest Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 by Mark Mazower The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople by Jonathan Phillips
2004 Winner Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
Shortlist Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh Changed the World by James Buchan Rising ’44: The Battle For Warsaw by Norman Davies The Cross and the Crescent: The Dramatic Story of the Earliest Encounters Between Christians and Muslims by Richard Fletcher Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700 by Diarmaid MacCulloch
2003 Winner The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future 1730-1810 by Jenny Uglow
Shortlist White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India by William Dalrymple The Pilgrimage of Grace: The Rebellion that Shook Henry VIII's Throne by Geoffrey Moorhouse The Fall of the French Monarchy: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Baron de Breteuil by Munro Price The Victorians by AN Wilson
2002 Winner Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War by Margaret Macmillan