"The Telegraph" expert historian and columnist Simon Heffer surveys the historical field and picks a shelf’s work of books that every intelligent reader ought to own.

Medieval to Early Modern

"The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (6 vols, 1776–89) by Edward Gibbon

Gibbon was a formidable scholar of the classical and post-classical periods; his work stands up despite the discoveries of a further two and half centuries of scholarship. "The Decline and Fall" is a stunning work of literature, with superb prose, giving as good an account of the period from the first century AD to the late 16th century as you will find; and if Gibbon’s reasoning about why Rome’s power declined – too much decadence, and the baleful effect of Christianity – is questionable, he at least supports his arguments with evidence. He also has wonderful turns of phrase – “the barbarian whom we condescend to style the Emperor of Morocco”. Gibbon writes about the foundation of our Western world: we must read him.

"History of the Crusades" (3 vols, 1951–54) by Steven Runciman

This work has been as widely criticised as it has been praised, not least for its debunking of the romantic image of crusaders that had grown up in the 19th century. As in Gibbon, with which it overlaps, Runciman’s history helps to describe some of the foundations of our own society, notably the continuing tension between Christianity and Islam. It is a well-researched and at times provocative book, and its great popularity owes much to the clarity with which it is written.

"The Hundred Years War" (5 vols, 1990–2023) by Jonathan Sumption

This contemporary epic has a claim to be the finest achievement by a living historian. One should read it because of the clear, reliable and deeply researched account it gives of English (and French) history in the 14th and 15th centuries, and particularly the lessons it teaches about the decline of English power. Sumption writes with a freshness and a clarity that highlight his percipience and make him easily comprehensible.

"History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth" (12 vols, 1858–70)
by James Anthony Froude

Such is the popularity of the Tudors that there has been a tidal wave of books about them recently: some good, most mediocre, some dismal. Froude’s magisterial epic, which covers 75 turbulent years from the late 1520s to the early 17th century, has an agenda: in the age of the Oxford Movement, it reasserts the righteousness of the Reformation. The section on Mary Tudor is in places so virulently rude as to be unwittingly entertaining. This is a forgotten gem.

17th and 18th Centuries

"Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity" (2001) by Blair Worden

Tracing as it does the fissures in English society and politics over the preceding 350 years back to the civil wars of the 1640s, this book more than most tells us why we are where we are. Neither the execution of Charles I, the Restoration nor the Glorious Revolution ended anything: Worden shows us how the conflicts of the mid-17th century are still being played out. It is a revelatory and highly original book.

"The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I" (2007) by John Adamson

The history books one most needs to read are those that prove that what one thought one knew for sure was, in fact, wrong. There were stalwart farmers from the Eastern Counties such as Cromwell who brought down Charles I: but the real motivation for the civil wars came from the aristocracy, as Adamson, with formidable research, proves. There simply is no better explanation of why the English fought themselves in the 1640s.

"The History of England from the Accession of James II" (5 vols, 1848–60) by Thomas Babington Macaulay

Macaulay deals in depth with a period of just 17 years, from 1685 to 1702, the pivot being the Glorious Revolution. He has had numerous critics, not least because his is the definitive Whig history, detailing what the author regards as progress. But this was a time of modernisation and the creation of institutions, and a key epoch in history: and as well as the detail, Macaulay presents a magnificent work of literature.

"The French Revolution: A History" (3 vols, 1837) by Thomas Carlyle

Carlyle set out to counter what he termed “dryasdust” historians, and although his work has been surpassed in scholarship in nearly 200 years, it remains a classic history. He did extensive research, but applied his imagination in a way no serious historian would dare today. At times, this book reads like a screenplay. It may no longer be definitive history, but is a landmark of our culture, and of our historiography.

19th Century

"Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire" (1977) by Fritz Stern

This remarkable work of scholarship, by an American historian of Jewish-German birth, shows how the Second Reich was built thanks to a partnership between Otto von Bismarck and his Jewish financier, Gerson Bleichröder. Thus, inadvertently, were the foundations laid of a great power that helped precipitate the Great War, and the decades of strife, division and genocide that tore Europe apart thereafter. Stern is highly original and has the power to surprise, as well as to disturb.

"The Expansion of England" (1883) by JR Seeley

Why did Britain have an empire? Read Seeley and he will tell you, complete with his legendary observation that “we seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.”

"The Secularisation of the European Mind in the 19th Century" (1975) by Owen Chadwick

Religion is central to the history of the world; and to understand Britain and Europe, we must understand how central Christianity is to their history. Since Darwinism, that also entails the secularisation of society, the subject of Chadwick’s comprehensive book, which becomes an intellectual history of the age not just of Darwin, but of Marx and John Stuart Mill, and the effect they all had on society and its institutions in removing religion from their forefront.

20th Century

"The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914" (2012) by Christopher Clark

Clark tore up the accepted view of the causes of the First World War, tracing a history of Central European tensions back to 1903, and arguing that all the main combatants stumbled into the war: it was not caused by the Germans. The important history to read is the well-researched type that defies what one is sure one knows: this is the model of such a book.

"The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms" (2001) by Hew Strachan

Twenty-four years later, we still await Sir Hew’s second volume, but the first, which goes up to 1916, is a monumental masterpiece of research and writing. The detail and scholarship surpass any other book covering the opening phase of the Great War. It was a conflict that shaped all our lives, and Strachan provides a superlative way of understanding it.

"The Strange Death of Liberal England" (1935) by George Dangerfield

Why, after it entered a coalition in 1915, did the Liberal party never govern Britain again? Dangerfield lists the badly conducted fights with the trades unions, Suffragettes, the House of Lords and the Ulster Unionists that undermined the Asquith administration; but with a wit and style that make his book outstandingly readable, and caused it to be hugely influential. It has been attacked for its analysis, but it’s hard to fault its thesis.

"English History 1914–1945" (1965) by AJP Taylor

This was the final volume in the massive Oxford History of England, and partly because of Taylor’s fame as a “telly don”, it sold more copies than all the rest put together. The book, however, has much more merit than the author’s celebrity. It is a sharp picture of our country during the day before yesterday. It’s both factual and provocative – and it is beautifully written. Taylor’s description of Armistice Night, with couples “copulating in shop doorways, celebrating, as it were, the triumph of life over death” is unforgettable.

"The Third Reich: A New History" (2000) by Michael Burleigh

Much writing about the Nazis is either biography, or focuses on specific aspects of the horror story. Michael Burleigh’s account of the whole Hitler project remains unsurpassed after a quarter of a century. He tells the story in the context of a Europe-wide move to extremism after the First World War, and how the Germans in desperation to regain their self-esteem chose a madman supported by a group of self-interested gangsters, and backed him with a form of religious mania. It is an indispensable work.

"The People’s War: Britain 1939–45" (1969) by Angus Calder

Calder’s book, published when he was just 27, remains the outstanding popular history of Britain in the Second World War, though it is scrupulously academic in tone. It was profoundly researched and details everyday life during six years of total war with clarity and verve. For the contemporary reader, it is the perfect primer for our world.

"France: The Dark Years: 1940–1944" (2001) by Julian Jackson

This was the first detailed history of the German occupation of France, written by our most formidable historian of that country in the 20th century. It deals uncompromisingly not just with the French people’s suffering, and their resistance, but also with their collaboration, a subject that 80 years after the war remains an open wound. Jackson took the testimonies of many who had lived through the nightmare, and his book is as authentic as it gets.

"The Pride and Fall Sequence" (4 vols, 1972–2001) by Correlli Barnett

The title of the first volume, The Collapse of British Power, sums up the thesis of the whole four: how the British ruling elite, which until mid-Victorian times had been hard-minded and possessed of hard will, became steadily more obsessed with ethical considerations and social guilt. A particular target is the Attlee administration and its undermining of the British spirit by creating a welfare state. Many will dispute the thesis, but the tetralogy is a candid picture of Britain in the 20th century, and its contentions demand consideration.

"The End of History and the Last Man" (1992) by Francis Fukuyama

This is probably the most debated book of the last 40 years: Fukuyama argues that capitalism and liberal democracy had become so prevalent – he was writing as the Soviet bloc dissolved – that a centuries-long political argument had ended, and a norm for the future had been set. In a world of Putin, Xi and even the autocratic Trump, the analysis, more than 30 years later, looks rocky. But this remains an essential book for those who think about the course of history, even if it is becoming counterfactual, to show what might have been – and, perhaps, what one day still could be.