2020 Winner The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans by David Abulafia
Shortlist A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths by John Barton A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution by Toby Green Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire by Prashant Kidambi The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner
2019 Winner Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice by Mary Fulbrook
Shortlist Building Anglo-Saxon England by John Blair Trading in War: London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson by Margarette Lincoln Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words by Jeremy Mynott Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis Empress: Queen Victoria and India by Miles Taylor
2018 Winner Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation by Peter Marshall
Shortlist Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination by Robert Bickers The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War by Tim Grady Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufmann Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea by Jan Ruger
2017 Winner Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel
Shortlist The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile under the Tsars by Daniel Beer Henry IV by Chris Given-Wilson Sleep in Early Modern England by Sasha Handley Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper Henry the Young King, 1155 – 1183 by Matthew Strickland
Winners 2016 Augustine: Conversions and Confessions by Robin Lane Fox KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann
2015 National Service: Conscription in Britain, 1945-1963 by Richard Vinen Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918 by Alexander Watson
2014 The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World by Cyprian Broodbank Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History by Catherine Merridale
2013 Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest by Susan Brigden Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy by Christopher Duggan
2012 Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life by Susie Harries The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity & Memory in Early Modern Britain & Ireland by Alexandra Walsham
2011 The Man on Devil’s Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France by Ruth Harris Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire by Nicholas Thomas
2010 Russia against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe 1807 to 1814 by Dominic Lieven The Hundred Years War, vol. III: Divided Houses by Jonathan Sumption
2009 Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town by Mary Beard Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession by Margaret McGowan
2008 After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405 by John Darwin God's Architect: Pugin & the Building of Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill
2007 Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London by Vic Gatrell The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze
2006 Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400-1600 by Evelyn Welch Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800 by Christopher Wickham
2005 The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia by Richard Overy In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War by David Reynolds
2004 Transformations of Love: The Friendship of John Evelyn and Margaret Godolphin by Frances Harris The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 by Julian Jackson Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700 by Diarmaid MacCulloch
2003 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India by William Dalrymple Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation 1940-1945 by Robert Gildea
2002 Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its Peoples 8000BC-AD1500 by Barry Cunliffe London in the Twentieth Century: A City and its People by Jerry White
2001 Hitler: 1936-45 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw The Balkans: From the End of Byzantium to the Present Day by Mark Mazower Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World by Roy Porter
2000 An Intimate History of Killing: Face-To-Face Killing In Twentieth-Century Warfare by Joanna Bourke Salisbury: Victorian Titan by Andrew Roberts
1999 Stalingrad by Antony Beevor The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England by Amanda Vickery
1998 The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century by John Brewer Jennie Lee: A Life by Patricia Hollis
1997 A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution - 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes
1996 Gladstone, 1875-1898 by HCG Matthew
1995 William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona MacCarthy The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany by John Rohl
1994 The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350 by Robert Bartlett Living and Dying in England 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience by Barbara Harvey
1993 Britons: Forging the Nation 1707 – 1837 by Linda Colley John Maynard Keynes, vol. 2: the Economist as Saviour 1920-1937 by Robert Skidelsky
1992 Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair by John Bossy Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives by Alan Bullock
1991 The Architecture of Medieval Britain: A Social History by Colin Platt
1990 The Quest for El Cid by Richard Fletcher How War Came by Donald Cameron Watt
1989 Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910 by Richard Evans The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Control from 1500-2000 by Paul Kennedy
1987 Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063-1415 by Rees Davies The Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South by John Pemble
1986 The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline by John Elliott European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550-1750 by Jonathan Israel
1985 Dudley Docker: The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior by Richard Davenport-Hines Lloyd George: From Peace to War, 1912-1916 by John Grigg
1984 The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England by Antonia Fraser Chivalry by Maurice Keen
1983 Winston S. Churchill, vol. VI: Finest Hour by Martin Gilbert King George V by Kenneth Rose
1982 Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death Among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-century France by John McManners
1981 A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past by John Burrow
1980 The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550-1700: An Interpretation by Robert Evans Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890-1939 by FSL Lyons
1979 Death in Paris , 1795-1801 by Richard Cobb The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1: The Renaissance by Quentin Skinner Clementine Churchill by Mary Soames
1978 A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne
1977 Mussolini’s Roman Empire by Denis Mack Smith Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813 by Simon Schama
1976 A History of Building Types by Nikolaus Pevsner The Eastern Front 1914-17 by Norman Stone
1975 Edward VIII by Frances Donaldson The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-1789 by Olwen Hufton
1974 The Ancient Economy by Moses Finley France, 1848-1945: Ambition, Love & Politics by Theodore Zeldin
1973 Henry II by WL Warren The Rosicrucian Enlightenment by Frances Yates
1972 Grand Strategy, vol. IV: August 1942 – September 1943 by Michael Howard Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England by Keith Thomas