The Greatest Nonfiction Books Since 1980 Written by British Authors
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1 . Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than t...
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2 . Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
Birthday Letters, published in 1998 (ISBN 0-374-52581-1), is a collection of poetry by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won ...
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3 . Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctua...
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4 . The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal
The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who “burned like a comet” in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost...
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7 . Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain-which is to say, all of it." After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson-bestsellingauthor of ...
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8 . Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud
Hideous Kinky is an autobiographical novel by Esther Freud, daughter of British painter Lucian Freud and Bernardine Coverley and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. It depicts the author's unconv...
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9 . Love's Work by Gillian Rose
Love’s Work is at once a memoir and a book of philosophy. Written by the English philosopher Gillian Rose as she was dying of cancer, it is a book about both the fallibility and endurance of love, ...
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10 . Second World War by John Keegan
Praised as "the best military historian of our generation" by Tom Clancy, John Keegan here reconsiders his masterful study of World War II, The Second World War, with a new foreword. Keegan examine...
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11 . Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness by Thomas More
This New York Times bestseller (more than 200,000 hardcover copies sold) provides a path-breaking lifestyle handbook that shows how to add spirituality, depth, and meaning to modern-day life by nur...
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12 . Looking Back by Norman Douglas
Looking Back is an autobiography written by the American author Lois Lowry, in which she uses photographs and accompanying text to construct a picture of her life.
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13 . Citizens by Simon Schama
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is a book by the historian Simon Schama. It was published in 1989, the bicentenary of the French Revolution, and like many other works in that year, w...
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14 . The Proper Study of Mankind by Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin's ...
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16 . Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain by Peter Fryer
Staying Power is recognised as the definitive history of black people in Britain, an epic story that begins with the Roman conquest and continues to this day. In a comprehensive account, Peter Frye...
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17 . The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford, and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the P...
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18 . Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott
Schott's Miscellanies are a trio of best-selling books by Ben Schott. They consist of a collection of trivia generally centred on the culture of the United Kingdom (and to a lesser extent the rest ...
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19 . A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
A Year in Provence is autobiographical novel by Peter Mayle about his first year in Provence, and the local events and customs. It was adapted into a television miniseries starring John Thaw and Li...
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20 . A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes
This multi-award book is history on an epic yet human scale. Vast in scope, exhaustive in original research, written with passion, narrative skill, and human sympathy, "A People's Tragedy" offers a...
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21 . Diaries by Alan Clark
Alan Clark started keeping a regular diary in 1955 which lasted until August 1999, during his second spell as a Member of Parliament, when he was incapacitated due to the onset of the brain tumour ...
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22 . The Gate of Heavenly Peace by Jonathan Spence
Chronicles the history of the Chinese Revolution, focusing on the people and events of modern Chinese history, the writings of modern Chinese authors, the issues facing the People's Republic, and m...
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23 . Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham-Smith
Draws on research by army historians to describe the cover-up of disastrous events in the Crimea, and to seperate Nightingale's real achievments from her mythical ones.
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25 . Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban
Raban (Old Glory), an Englishman now settled in Seattle, has written a vivid and utterly idiosyncratic social history of the homesteading movement in eastern Montana that went boom and bust during ...
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26 . The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch
The Reformation: A History (2003) is a history book by English historian Diarmaid MacCulloch. It is a survey of the European Reformation between 1490 and 1700. It won the 2004 National Book Critics...
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27 . Rough Crossings by Simon Schama
Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution is a history book and television series by Simon Schama. This gives an account of the history of thousands of enslaved African Amer...
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29 . Bad Blood by Lorna Sage
Bad Blood is a 2000 work blending collective biography and memoir by the Welsh literary critic and novelist Lorna Sage.
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30 . Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
A New York Times bestseller: The “magnificent” memoir by one of the bravest and most original writers of our time—“A tour de force of literature and love” (Vogue). Jeanette Winterson’s bold and rev...
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31 . The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines Aboriginals passed the songs which rev...
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32 . A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
A Short History of Nearly Everything (ISBN 0-7679-0817-1) is a general science book by Bill Bryson, which explains some areas of science, using a style of language more accessible to the general pu...
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35 . Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith is the author of Moondust : In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth. HarperCollins. 2005. ISBN 0-00-715541-7. , which tells the story of the twelve U.S. astronauts who journeyed to the ...
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39 . An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan
Brian Keenan went to Beirut in 1985 for a change of scene from his native Belfast. He became headline news when he was kidnapped by fundamentalist Shi'ite militiamen and held in the suburbs of Beir...
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40 . The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
The Ascent of Money: The Financial History of the World is Harvard professor Niall Ferguson's tenth book, published in 2008, and an adapted television documentary for Channel 4 (UK) and PBS (US). I...
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45 . Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes
Tales from Ovid is a poetical work written by the English poet Ted Hughes. Published in 1997 by Faber and Faber, it is a retelling of twenty-four tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It won the Whitbre...
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47 . The Paris Review Interviews by Paris Review
The Paris Review is an English-language literary magazine based in New York City. As its name suggests it was founded in Paris in 1953, for "the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and...
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49 . The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell
The Blair Years is a book by Alastair Campbell, featuring extracts from his diaries detailing the period during which he worked for Tony Blair. Published by Random House, the book was released on 9...
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50 . Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
"[These essays] reflect a lively, unselfconscious, rigorous, erudite, and earnestly open mind that's busy refining its view of life, literature, and a great deal in between." -Los Angeles Times Spl...
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51 . Little Wilson and Big God by Anthony Burgess
These are Anthony Burgess's candid confessions: he was seduced at the age of nine by an older woman; whilst serving in Gibraltar in World War II he was thrown into jail on VE Day for calling Franco...
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52 . Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
"I don’t believe in God, but I miss him." So begins Julian Barnes’s brilliant new book that is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mor...
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