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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