The full list of our Books of the Year 2018 was published in the Christmas 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine, on sale now. If you’re a subscriber to BBC History Magazine, click here to read full reviews from our panel of historians and experts, including picks by Tracy Borman, Rana Mitter, Alison Weir and Simon Sebag Montefiore…


Medieval

1 The Restless Kings: Henry II, His Sons and the Wars for the Plantagenet Crown

by Nick Barratt (Faber and Faber) Chosen by Laura Ashe

2 The Western Wind

by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape) Chosen by Nick Rennison

Spy stories

3 Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth-Century Britain

by Nadine Akkerman (Oxford University Press) Chosen by Leanda de Lisle





4 Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations

by Ronen Bergman (Random House) Chosen by Simon Sebag Montefiore

5 The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

by Ben Macintyre (Viking) Chosen by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Asian history

6 The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience

by David Gilmour (Allen Lane) Chosen by Dominic Sandbrook

7 A Business History of India: Enterprise and the Emergence of Capitalism from 1700

by Tirthankar Roy (Cambridge University Press) Chosen by Andrew Roberts

8 The Great Flowing River: A Memoir of China from Manchuria to Taiwan

by Ch’i Pang-yuan (Columbia University Press) Chosen by Rana Mitter

9 The Indian Empire at War: From Jihad to Victory, The Untold Story of the Indian Army in the First World War

by George Morton-Jack (Little, Brown) Chosen by Andrew Roberts

Tudors and Stuarts

10 Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him

by Tracy Borman (Hodder and Stoughton) Chosen by Alison Weir

11 Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation

by Peter Marshall (Yale University Press) Winner of the 2018 Wolfson History Prize

12 Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh

by Anna Beer (Oneworld) Chosen by Tracy Borman

13 The Poison Bed

by Elizabeth Fremantle (Pegasus) Chosen by Leanda de Lisle

14 Thomas Cromwell: A Life

by Diarmaid MacCulloch (Allen Lane) Chosen by Leanda de Lisle and Laura Ashe

15 A Tudor Christmas

by Alison Weir and Siobhan Clarke (Jonathan Cape) Chosen by Tracy Borman

Empires

16 American Empire: A New Global History

by AG Hopkins (Princeton University Press) Chosen by Dominic Sandbrook

17 Lords of the Desert: Britain’s Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East

by James Barr (Simon and Schuster) Chosen by Peter Frankopan and Dominic Sandbrook

18 Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire

by Alev Scott (Riverrun) Chosen by Rana Mitter

Modern history

19 The Colour of Time: A New History of the World, 1850-1960

by Marina Amaral and Dan Jones (Head of Zeus) Chosen by Laura Ashe

20 Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze (Allen Lane) Chosen by Anne Applebaum

21 Crucible: Thirteen Months that Forged Our World

by Jonathan Fenby (Simon and Schuster) Chosen by Rana Mitter

22 The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

by Timothy Snyder (Bodley Head) Chosen by Anne Applebaum

Crime and punishment

23 The Gallows Pole

by Benjamin Myers (Bluenose) Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

24 Only Killers and Thieves

by Paul Howarth (One) Chosen by Nick Rennison

Georgian and Victorian

25 Mrs Whistler

by Matthew Plampin (The Borough Press) Chosen by Nick Rennison

26 Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth

by Adam Zamoyski (William Collins) Chosen by Anne Applebaum

27 Nelson in Naples: Revolution and Retribution in 1799

by Jonathan North (Amberley Publishing) Chosen by Andrew Roberts

28 Now We Shall Be Entirely Free

by Andrew Miller (Sceptre) Chosen by Nick Rennison

The ancient world

29 Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity

edited by Nicola di Cosmo and Michael Maas (Cambridge University Press) Chosen by Peter Frankopan

30 Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian

by Peter Heather (Oxford University Press) Chosen by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Royal life

31 Behind the Throne: A Domestic History of the Royal House

by Adrian Tinniswood (Jonathan Cape) Chosen by Alison Weir

32 Kensington Palace: Art, Architecture and Society

by Olivia Fryman, Sebastian Edwards et al (Yale University Press) Chosen by Tracy Borman

33 Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

by Craig Brown (Fourth Estate) Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Historical Biography

34 Windsor Castle: A Thousand Years of a Royal Palace

by Steven Brindle (Royal Collection Trust) Chosen by Alison Weir

Social history

35 All Among the Barley

by Melissa Harrison (Bloomsbury) Chosen by Nick Rennison

36 A Field Guide to the English Clergy

by Fergus Butler-Gallie (Oneworld) Chosen by Peter Frankopan


Click here to find out more about the books featured in this year’s list.