Hours at an average pace
Showing 57 books
About 717 hours for 57 of 57 books with measured lengths. Estimates use 250 words a minute, adjusted for each book's difficulty. At 2 hours a day, about 359 days for those books.
Published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, it has stayed in print ever since and is a set text in courses on historiography, the Enlightenment and English prose. It appears on every major list of essential works of history in English.
The historical novel that changed the genre's literary status. Thomas Cromwell's rise, rendered in present tense and close third person, made Tudor politics feel immediate. Core text in contemporary fiction and historical fiction courses.
Standard required reading in political philosophy, economics, and liberal theory courses at universities worldwide. Consistently appears on lists of the most influential non-fiction of the 20th century, including TIME's 100 Best Nonfiction list and the Modern Library's reader list. The Wikipedia article exists in over 40 languages, and the book has never gone out of print since 1944.
Karl Popper wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies in New Zealand during World War II, watching fascism spread across Europe and wondering how philosophy had helped it along. His answer runs to two thick volumes: Plato built the first blueprint for totalitarianism; Hegel dressed it in mystical abstraction; Marx gave it pseudo-scientific prophecy. The 'enemies' of the title are not politicians but ideas — historicism (the belief that history follows iron laws), essentialism (the belief that social entities have fixed natures), and utopianism (the belief that a perfect state can be designed and implemented whole). Popper dismantles each in turn with patient, numbered argument. He finds Plato's philosopher-kings to be authoritarians by design, their wisdom indistinguishable from the claim that power justifies itself. He finds Hegel's prose to be deliberate obscurantism in service of Prussian power — 'supreme only in his outstanding lack of originality.' He finds Marx's economic prophecies unfalsifiable, and therefore not science but mythology with a scientific costume. What survives the demolition is a defense of the open society: one that tolerates criticism, reforms institutions incrementally, and resists the tribal pull toward certainty. The arguments about why intellectuals are drawn to closed societies — and what makes free societies structurally fragile — read as if written for any decade that has produced one.
No. 5 on this list. The Cambridge History of Italian Literature
Peter Brand · 1996
Challenging31 hours
The standard comprehensive reference for Italian literary history in English.
Homage to Catalonia is standard reading in courses on 20th-century political history, European literature, and war memoir at universities worldwide. Orwell is among the most assigned authors in English-language syllabi, and while this title is less ubiquitous than 1984 or Animal Farm, it appears consistently in political science and modern history curricula. It has been in continuous print since its 1952 reissue and features on numerous 'essential nonfiction' lists.
Postwar is widely assigned in university history, political science, and European studies courses across the English-speaking world. It is the standard single-volume reference for post-1945 European history, found on graduate and undergraduate reading lists alike. Multiple editions and translations have kept it in continuous academic circulation since its 2005 publication.
No. 8 on this list. An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature
Jean Franco · 1969
Moderate6.7 hours
Established as the foundational anglophone survey of Spanish American literature for over three decades.
A classic of saga scholarship; still cited by medievalists as the best brief critical orientation in English.
Published in 2011, The Stranger's Child has secured Hollinghurst's place as Britain's preeminent novelist of gay experience and class. While not yet canonical in the sense of Ulysses or The Great Gatsby, it's widely taught in contemporary British fiction courses and regarded as his most ambitious work, positioning it for long-term scholarly attention.
No. 11 on this list. The Diary of Samuel Pepys · Samuel Pepys
The Diary of Samuel Pepys is one of the most famous primary sources in the English language, taught in history, literature, and primary source methodology courses at universities worldwide. It appears on reading lists for Early Modern English history and is considered essential context for understanding the Restoration period, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London.
Moderate82 hours
Read nowNo. 12 on this list. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon · Rebecca West · 1941
Named to TIME Magazine's All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books and to numerous 'greatest travel books' and 'greatest books of the 20th century' lists. Continuously in print since 1941 in Penguin Modern Classics. Not widely assigned in university courses relative to its reputation, but cited as essential reading by serious readers of 20th-century European history and political thought.
Challenging45 hours
Start this bookNo. 13 on this list. The Second World War · John Keegan · 1989
Keegan's single-volume survey is widely considered one of the best introductions to the Second World War and appears on numerous military history reading lists. It has not, however, attained the canonical weight of Churchill's memoirs or the academic centrality of Gerhard Weinberg's scholarship, positioning it as a highly respected popular history rather than a foundational scholarly text.
Easy14 hours
Start this bookNo. 14 on this list. A History of God · Karen Armstrong · 1993
One of the most widely read works of popular religious history since its publication.
Moderate12 hours
Start this bookNo. 15 on this list. The Paying Guests · Sarah Waters · 2015
Published in 2014, The Paying Guests represents contemporary literary fiction by an established author with significant cultural impact in LGBTQ+ literature. Waters is widely recognized for her contributions to historical lesbian fiction. While too recent for canonical entrenchment, the novel appears on literary prize shortlists and reading lists for courses on contemporary British fiction and queer literature. It demonstrates serious literary ambition while remaining accessible, occupying the space between middlebrow and highbrow that characterizes much contemporary literary fiction.
Moderate13 hours
Start this bookNo. 16 on this list. The Silence of the Girls · Pat Barker · 2019
Taught in schools: Leaving Certificate English – NCCA / State Examinations Commission (Ireland)
Briseis is a queen captured by Achilles when he sacks her city. She becomes his slave, his prize, the woman over whom he and Agamemnon quarrel. Barker retells the Iliad from her perspective, giving voice to the women Homer left silent. The prose is direct and modern, the ancient world rendered without nostalgia, the heroes seen from the tents where women wait. The novel asks whose stories survive, whose suffering counts, and what it means to speak for those who were never allowed to speak.
Challenging7 hours
Start this bookNo. 17 on this list. The Underground Man · Mick Jackson · 1997
William John Cavendish Bentinck-Scott was a singularly eccentric man. What sets him apart from other eccentrics is the fact that he had the wealth to indulge his mania to the fullest. Mick Jackson became fascinated by the stories that surrounded his memory--the Duke died in 1879--and began to embroider them with fictional ideas of Jacksons own, and with the tales that local people had passed on to him. Some of the characters names in this book are genuine, as is much of the geography, and indeed some of the most bizarre details. The actual narrative is, however, pure invention, filled not only with the tale of the Duke but also the excitement and discoveries of the age in which he lived, and the mysteries that we may still discover. This is a curiously moving and often hilarious portrait of the remarkable fifth Duke of Portland, who indulged his fantasies to the fullest and built a vast network of tunnels beneath his estate from which he could secretly escape to the world beyond.
Challenging5.4 hours
Start this bookNo. 18 on this list. The Marriage Portrait · Maggie O'Farrell · 2023
Published in 2022, The Marriage Portrait received immediate recognition through Reese's Book Club selection, Women's Prize shortlisting, and 'best book of the year' designations from TIME and The Washington Post. As O'Farrell's follow-up to the Women's Prize-winning Hamnet, it benefits from her established reputation. However, critics noted it 'lacks the emotional staying power of Wolf Hall or Hamnet,' suggesting strong contemporary acclaim without yet achieving definitive canonical standing in historical fiction.
Moderate8.8 hours
Start this bookNo. 19 on this list. The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius · George Orwell · 1941
'England Your England,' the essay's first section, is one of the most frequently anthologized pieces of 20th-century English political writing, regularly excerpted in essay collections and cited across the political spectrum in debates about English identity. It's a fixture of British political history and Orwell studies rather than a core literature-syllabus text like Animal Farm or 1984 — ReadingRate has no syllabus or Wikipedia-language data indexed for this specific title.
Easy2 hours
Start this bookNo. 20 on this list. Waterland · Graham Swift · 1983
Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)
Appears on 188 university syllabi (56th percentile in the Open Syllabus Project), placing it firmly in the taught-in-universities tier without reaching the curriculum-fixture status of Beloved or Gatsby. Wikipedia presence in 44 languages signals international recognition but falls short of the 70+ languages that mark truly canonical works. It is standard reading in British contemporary fiction and postmodern literature courses.
Difficult13 hours
Start this book
No. 21 on this list. The Dawn of Everything · David Wengrow · 2021
Already being assigned in anthropology and history teaching.
Challenging17 hours
Start this bookNo. 22 on this list. The Spanish Labyrinth · Gerald Brenan · 1943
Standard English-language reference on the causes of the Spanish Civil War since its publication.
Challenging8.7 hours
Start this bookNo. 23 on this list. When I Lived in Modern Times · Linda Grant · 2000
"For a weary and exhausted Europe, it is a time to begin picking up the pieces of the past, and for the armies of displaced persons on the move to slowly return home - if they still have one. But for Evelyn Sert, a young twenty-year-old woman from London standing on the deck of a ship bound for Palestine, it is a time of adventure and a time of change when anything seems possible.". "Evelyn is quickly caught up in the spirited, chaotic churning of her new, strange country. Unsure of herself and where she belongs in this exotic world whose only constant is change, she will first join a kibbutz, then move on to the teeming metropolis of Tel Aviv to find her own home and a collection of friends as eccentric and disparate as the city itself. Ultimately, she will find love with a man who is not what he seems to be, as she is swept up as an unwitting spy in an underground army for a nation fighting to be born."--BOOK JACKET.
Challenging4.8 hours
Start this bookNo. 24 on this list. The Orphan Master's Son · Adam Johnson · 2013
The Orphan Master's Son won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which guarantees it a place in American literary discussions for decades. Wikipedia articles exist in 6 languages, indicating moderate global reach. The novel has not yet achieved deep syllabus penetration -- it is too recent and too specifically focused on North Korea to appear in standard survey courses -- but it turns up in contemporary fiction and Asian-American literature courses. Its canonical trajectory is upward but still early.
Challenging14 hours
Start this bookNo. 25 on this list. The Fortune Men · Nadifa Mohamed · 2021
Mahmood Mattan is a Somali sailor living in Cardiff's Tiger Bay in 1952 when a shopkeeper is murdered. He is arrested, tried, and hanged—the last man executed in Wales. Mohamed's novel tells his story through multiple voices: Mahmood himself, his Welsh wife Laura, the witnesses who lie, the lawyers who fail him. The prose shifts between registers, Mahmood's voice musical and defiant, the courtroom scenes clinical in their injustice. The novel won the Booker Prize for its excavation of a forgotten case, racism made visible through one man's destruction.
Moderate6.1 hours
Start this bookNo. 26 on this list. Cultural Amnesia · Clive James · 2007
Cultural Amnesia is a landmark of popular intellectual criticism, but it sits outside the university syllabus and the academic 'great books' canon; the fetched data shows no syllabus appearances. It endures on 'best nonfiction of the decade' lists and in the libraries of the serious general reader rather than on course reading lists.
Challenging17 hours
Start this bookNo. 27 on this list. The Glass Room · Simon Mawer · 2009
A modernist villa in 1930s Czechoslovakia witnesses the entangled lives of its inhabitants through Nazi occupation and Communism. Mawer's Booker-shortlisted novel uses architecture as a lens for 20th-century European history.
Challenging3.9 hours
Start this bookNo. 28 on this list. The Night Watch · Sarah Waters · 2006
Waters moves backward through time, from 1947 to 1944 to 1941, following four characters through wartime London: an ambulance driver, her damaged brother, a prisoner, and the woman who visits her. The structure creates dramatic irony—we know the endings before we understand the beginnings. The prose is atmospheric and precise, the Blitz rendered through both danger and opportunity. The novel asks what the war made possible, what loves and identities flourished in the chaos before peacetime closed them down.
Challenging9.4 hours
Start this bookNo. 29 on this list. Jane Austen: A Life · Claire Tomalin · 1997
Our database captured no syllabus signals, but the book is one of the two standard modern Austen biographies (with Deirdre Le Faye's family record), routinely assigned as secondary reading in Austen courses and cited across Austen scholarship since 1997. It is a reference point rather than a canonical text in its own right.
Easy7.1 hours
Start this bookNo. 30 on this list. The Wake · Paul Kingsnorth · 2014
In the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings, a devastating defeat for the English, Buccmaster's world is shattered. His sons are slain, his family torn apart, and his farm laid to waste by the marauding Norman invaders. Consumed by grief and a thirst for vengeance, Buccmaster embarks on a perilous journey, rallying a band of fighters to join him in a quest for retribution. As they navigate the treacherous landscape of 11th-century England, Kingsnorth's lyrical prose weaves a rich tapestry of history, folklore, and myth. The Wake is a haunting exploration of the human cost of war, the erosion of traditional ways of life, and the unyielding power of the natural world. Through Buccmaster's story, Kingsnorth probes the complexities of resistance, loyalty, and survival in a world torn asunder by conquest and violence. Readers who appreciate literary fiction and historical narratives will find The Wake a compelling, if intense, read. Be prepared for a challenging yet rewarding experience, as Kingsnorth's unique blend of Old English and modern language creates a dreamlike atmosphere that immerses the reader in the world of the story. Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2014, The Wake has garnered critical acclaim for its innovative storytelling and haunting prose. With its unflinching portrayal of war's aftermath and its exploration of the human condition, this novel is sure to resonate with readers seeking a thought-provoking and deeply moving historical narrative.
Challenging8.4 hours
Start this book
No. 31 on this list. The North Water
Ian McGuire · 2016
No. 32 on this list. The Siege
Helen Dunmore · 2002
No. 33 on this list. The Quickening Maze
Adam Foulds · 2009
No. 34 on this list. The Tenderness of Wolves
Stef Penney · 2006
No. 35 on this list. Arabian Sands
Wilfred Thesiger · 1959
No. 36 on this list. The Teleportation Accident
Ned Beauman · 2012
No. 37 on this list. The Mulberry Empire
Philip Hensher · 2002
No. 38 on this list. The Memory of Love
Aminatta Forna · 2011
No. 39 on this list. SPQR
Mary Beard · 2015
No. 40 on this list. The Prophets
Robert Jones · 2021
No. 41 on this list. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality
Nicholas Mirzoeff · 2011
No. 42 on this list. Fermat's Enigma
Simon Singh · 1997
No. 43 on this list. Napoleon
Frank McLynn · 1997
No. 44 on this list. Midnight in Chernobyl
Adam Higginbotham · 2019
No. 45 on this list. The Silk Roads
Peter Frankopan · 2015
No. 46 on this list. The Code Book
Simon Singh · 1999
No. 47 on this list. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
David Mitchell · 2010
No. 48 on this list. Rubicon
Tom Holland · 2003
No. 49 on this list. October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
China Miéville · 2017
No. 50 on this list. The Last Hundred Days
Patrick McGuinness · 2011
No. 51 on this list. Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender
Kit Heyam · 2024
No. 52 on this list. Prisoners of Geography
Tim Marshall · 2015
No. 53 on this list. A History of the World in 6 Glasses
Tom Standage · 2005
No. 54 on this list. Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion
Agnes Arnold-Forster · 2025
No. 55 on this list. The Rest is History: The Official Book from the Makers of the Hit Podcast
Tom Holland · 2023
No. 56 on this list. Over There War Scenes on the Western Front
No. 57 on this list. Cursor Mundi
About this list
These 57 books are the highest-scoring eligible history books from Britain currently in the catalogue. By literary regard, it opens with The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Wolf Hall and The Road to Serfdom. About 717 hours of reading in all. Difficulty runs from 39 to 57 out of 100 for the middle half of the list; the summit is The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality at 75.
This list is ranked by literary regard, with a consistent order for equal scores. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. Catalogue coverage and the historical canon both limit what this list can represent, and genre labels are the catalogue’s own, gathered into broader kinds.
When we matched the Canons dataset to our catalogue in October 2026, our canonical-status scores rose with the number of school curricula, publisher series and lists in it that cite a work: the median score was 72 for books one such source cites, 84 at two, 88 at three, 92 at four and 93 at five or more. Prizes are left out of that count. Outside the state curricula, the dataset’s sources choose mostly from what has been translated into English or French, so it is a weaker check on other literatures. Source: Canons (Andrew Piper), CC BY 4.0
Questions people actually ask
- What are the best history books from Britain?
- By literary regard, which weighs canonical status, critical standing and influence, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Wolf Hall, The Road to Serfdom, The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Cambridge History of Italian Literature lead. ReadingRate ranks 57 such books, each with a difficulty score and a reading-time estimate.
- Where should I start with history books from Britain?
- Start from difficulty, not from rank. The most approachable books on this list that still carry top literary regard are The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (about 75 hours), An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature by Jean Franco and The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek.
- How hard are history books from Britain to read?
- Most of this list sits between 39 and 57 on ReadingRate's 100-point difficulty scale, where 40 to 55 is moderate. The summit is The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality at 75. Every entry carries its own score, so a reader can pick a great book at a difficulty they will finish.
- How is this list ranked?
- On literary-regard data: how canonically established a work is, its critical standing, and its influence on later writing. It is not a readers’ poll, which is why recent bestsellers rarely appear. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. A list that is not a genre list keeps to literature (fiction, poetry, drama and philosophy), with philosophy taking no more than one slot in five while there is literature left to rank; every list holds at most three works by one author.