27th February 2026
and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
Tessa Dunlop Lest We Forget: 100 Stories of Love, Loss and Heroism
HarperNorth, 7th, £10.99, 9780008713171
Veterans, military experts and families of the fallen provide the complex stories behind the monuments that become a focus for the pride and pain of our mourning up and down the country.
Otto English Notorious: History’s Villains and Why They Matter
Headline Welbeck Non-Fiction, 7th, £10.99, 9781035420339
From Bloody Mary to Judas, Dracula to the Illuminati, a re-examination of history’s most notorious villains, and the “truths” we have been led to believe.
Kristen Ghodsee Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons From Five Revolutionary Women
Verso, 26th, £14.99, 9781839766619
How five prominent socialist women from the late 19th and early 20th centuries found novel solutions to conflicting personal and public struggles.
Max Hastings Sword: D-Day – Trial by Battle
William Collins, 7th, £10.99, 9780008699796
The military strategy and human stories behind events on one beach in Normandy during the D-Day landings. “Brings these men to life with sensitivity and beautiful prose,” said the Times.
Ed Helms SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups
Wildfire, 28th, £12.99, 9781035431007
From attempts to plant nuclear weapons on the moon to training cats as CIA spies, actor, comedian and writer Helms traces history’s most terrifying and tragicomic mishaps.
Tony Hoare SAS: The Ambush Headline Welbeck Non-Fiction, 21st, £10.99, 9781035419630
How the SAS freed 11 British soldiers kidnapped on a peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone in 2000.
James Holland ( 10), Al Murray ( 9) Victory ’45: The End of the War in Eight Surrenders
22
Penguin (Transworld), 7th, £10.99, 9781804997390
The events that brought the Second World War to a close and the negotiations that determined the peace, from the popular hosts of podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk. An “eye- opening and satisfying new account”, said the Daily Express.
Madeline Y Hsu Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction
Very Short Introductions, 4th, £9.99, 9780197820711
Concise account of how centuries of Asians migrating to North America contributed to the transformation of the US despite restrictive racial ideologies and legal efforts at segregation.
Tiffany Jenkins Strangers & Intimates Picador, 14th, £10.99, 9781529034189
A sweeping history tracing the emergence of private life from ancient times to our digital present, arguing that it is now in mortal danger.
Geraint Jones Voices of Victory: Powerful Eye-Witness Accounts of the Battle to Take Germany, Feb 1945 to VE Day Pan, 7th, £12.99, 9781035070084 Based on personal interviews and audio interviews stored in the Imperial War Museum, a unique history of a crucial period of the Second World War told by those who fought their way to victory.
Andrew Jotischky The Monastic World: A 1,200-Year History
Yale, 12th, £14.99, 9780300287004
The history of monastic life from its origins in the fourth century to the 16th, examining their role as power-brokers, as communities, as refuges and as centres of artistic innovation.
Michael Lewis (ed) Who is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service
Penguin, 5th, £12.99, 9781837310319
Essays exploring the hidden work that civil servants across the federal government quietly conduct, but which remains critical to the fate of the US and the world.
Lally MacBeth The Lost Folk: From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk
Faber, 7th, £12.99, 9780571388318
A celebration of customs, places, objects and people that make up what we know as “folk” in Britain. Longlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize.
Eve MacDonald Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire
Ebury Press, 7th, £12.99, 9781529911695
How an ancient North African kingdom of enormous power and wealth dominated the western Mediterranean for almost six centuries before its fall to Rome. “A bravura re-telling,” said the Daily Mail.
Jonathan Mahler The Gods of New York: The Tumultuous Eighties, from Donald Trump to the Tompkins Square Riots
Penguin, 14th, £12.99, 9781804955147
How a cast of larger-than- life figures shaped late
1980s New York City to become a capital of global finance while increasing faultlines of race, class, poverty and illness.
John Man Conquering the North: China, Russia, Mongolia: 2,000 Years of Conflict
Oneworld, 7th, £12.99, 9781836431947
A deep history of China and Mongolia’s historic rivalry, with an eye to a fractious future.
Andrew Martin To the Sea by Train: The Golden Age of Railway Travel
Profile Books, 14th, £11.99, 9781805221579
How British life and leisure in the 20th century was defined by its railways, from seaside pleasure resorts and the consolidation of bank holidays to the eventual decline of British resorts with the advent of cheap flights. Well reviewed across the board, with the Spectator describing it as “infectiously enthusiastic”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, David Broder (trans) Now, the People! Revolution in the Twenty-First Century
Verso, 12th, £14.99, 9781804297957
Longstanding French left-wing leader Mélenchon’s survey of world history reflecting on the changing face of the left and its revolutionary inheritance, asserting how revolutionary movements can achieve power and transform our society.
Oswyn Murray The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present
Penguin, 14th, £16.99, 9780141989150
How different generations of the modern world have understood the ancient Greeks and why they matter today.
Juliet Nicolson The Book of Revelations: Women and Their Secrets from the 1950s to the Present Day
Vintage, 7th, £12.99, 9781529967159
Social historian Nicolson examines three generations of women, the evolving nature of the secrets they have kept and what it tells us about our changing world.
Johan Norberg Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages
Atlantic Books, 7th, £12.99, 9781838957315
How many great civilisations rose spectacularly and declined thoroughly, but left liberties and opportunities from their periods of great innovation and optimism.
Heather O’Donoghue Beowulf: Poem, Poet and Hero
Bloomsbury Academic, 14th, £12.99, 9781350607507
What makes epic poem Beowulf a remarkable work of art, and why it is of cultural significance, focusing on its artistry and breadth of reference, from biblical history to Old Norse myth.
Steven Parissien Building Britannia: A History of Britain in Twenty-Five Buildings
Apollo, 7th, £14.99, 9781801108768
From the Iron Age fortification of Maiden Castle in Dorset to the Gherkin, a study of remarkable structures and the stories they tell us about Britain.
John Parker (ed) Great Kingdoms of Africa Thames and Hudson, 7th, £14.99, 9780500298954
Nine historians present a deeply researched overview of the great kingdoms of African history and their contemporary legacies.
Peter Parker
Some Men in London: Queer Life, 1945-1959 Penguin Modern Classics, 28th, £14.99, 9780241370612
9 10
First of two volumes showing what life was like for queer men in London in the post-war period, through letters, diaries, textbooks, novels, police records and
Books
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