• This list of the 100 best books of all time was prepared by Norwegian Book Clubs. They asked 100 authors from 54 countries around the world to nominate the ten books which have had the most decisive impact on the cultural history of the world, and left a mark on the authors' own thinking. Don Quixote was named as the top book in history but otherwise no ranking was provided

Simon Schama's top 10 history books

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/1999/dec/10/top10s.history.books)

Simon Schama studied history at Cambridge University. Among his books are The Embarassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Cultures in the Golden Age (1987); Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989); the historical novel Dead Certainties (1991) and Landscape and Memory (1995). He presented History of Britain and The Power of Art documentary series for BBC television.

1. The Police and the People: French Popular Protest 1789-1820 by Richard Cobb

Cobb has the ability to inhabit the world he describes, and in this book he brings together archival sources with amazing literary power.

2. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

Predictable, I'm afraid. Not for historical truth, but for the jokes and the fantastic footnotes - and the music of Gibbon is utterly wonderful.

3. The The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingly

An incredible piece of writing. From the very first line it takes you on an amazing literary adventure.

4. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn

A very unlikely book about a man in paradoxical torment. An incredible book about a loyalist, and the ultimate biography of a loser, which simultaneously puts you in hisposition and makes you incredibly glad you're not him. He's demanding andrepulsive at the same time: it's an incredible history of an impossible man in an impossible situation.

5. London: A Social History by Roy Porter

Roy is a Londoner, like me, and his book lives and breathes the story of the city.

6. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II by Fernand Braudel

In a way he's doing natural history, history and geography all married together, and the prose is wonderful. I love it for its Rabelaisian lists - of, say, an entire cargo dropped off at Aleppo. Cobb was like that too - he was a huge listperson.

7. The Face of Battle by John Keegan

A stunning, extraordinary, fantastic book. It has a wonderful opening. He attempts a different kind of military history and concentrates on three battles: Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. No book until this one had put you right in the middle of the action and asked questions like "Why didn't everybody run away?" It stopped old-style military history, with shaded triangles facing each other, in its tracks.

8. The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle

I love this for its craziness. There are parts of the politics which are repulsive - parts of Carlyle which are repulsive - but the sheer volcanic literary eruptions are stunning. Carlyle tried to face up to evil - an issue we grew up thinking was embarrassing - and you have to admire his honesty. I like the mad way he charges towards his subject.

9. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller by Carlo Ginzburg

How can you not love a book which takes the cosmology of a heretical 16th-century miller who believes that God created the world as a kind of indeterminate cheese from which came angelic worms, and makes you believe in its plausibility? This is a very great book, written entirely from Inquisition documents.

10. Annals and Histories by Tacitus

I love Tacitus: I think he has the most subtle, understated jokes. He's also very underrated as a prose painter: there are moments that are just jaw-droppingly powerful, whether in Latin or English.

110 best books: The perfect library

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3672376/110-best-books-The-perfect-library.html)

From classics and sci-fi to poetry, biographies and books that changed the world… we present the ultimate reading list. Illustrations by David Juniper
CLASSICS
The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
Set during the Trojan War, The Iliad combines battle scenes with a debate about heroism; Odysseus' thwarted attempts to return to Ithaca when the war ends form The Odyssey. Its symbolic evocation of human life as an epic journey homewards has inspired everything from James Joyce's Ulysses to the Coen brothers' film, O Brother Where Art Thou?.
The Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope
A story set in a fictional cathedral town about the squabbles and power struggles of the clergy? It doesn’t sound promising, but Trollope's sparklingly satirical novels are among the best-loved books of all time.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Heroine meets hero and hates him. Is charmed by a cad. A family crisis – caused by the cad – is resolved by the hero. The heroine sees him for what he really is and realises (after visiting his enormous house) that she loves him. The plot has been endlessly borrowed, but few authors have written anything as witty or profound as Pride and Prejudice.
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Swift's scathing satire shows humans at their worst: whether diminished (in Lilliput) or grossly magnified (in Brobdingnag). Our capacity for self-delusion – personified by the absurdly pompous Gulliver – makes this darkest of novels very funny.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Cruelty, hypocrisy, dashed hopes: Jane Eyre faces them all, yet her individuality triumphs. Her relationship with Rochester has such emotional power that it's hard to believe these characters never lived.
War and Peace by Tolstoy
Tolstoy's masterpiece is so enormous even the author said it couldn't be described as a novel. But the characters of Andrei, Pierre and Natasha – and the tragic and unexpected way their lives intersect – grip you for all 1,400 pages.
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
David's journey to adulthood is filled with difficult choices – and a huge cast of characters, from the treacherous Steerforth to the comical Mr Micawber.
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
'"I'm no Angel," answered Miss Rebecca. And to tell the truth, she was not.' Whether we should judge the cunning, amoral Becky Sharp – or the hypocritical society she inhabits – is the question.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert's finely crafted novel tells the story of Emma, a bored provincial wife who comforts herself with shopping and affairs. It doesn't end well.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea wastes her youth on a creepy, elderly scholar. Lydgate marries the beautiful but self-absorbed Rosamund. George Eliot's characters make terrible mistakes, but we never lose empathy with them.
POETRY
Sonnets by Shakespeare
Shakespeare's sonnets contain some of poetry's most iconic lines – and a mysterious insight into his personal life.
Divine Comedy by Dante
Dante Alighieri's epic tale of one man's journey into the afterlife is considered Italy's finest literary export.
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
These humorous tales about fictional pilgrims made an important contribution to English literature at a time when court poetry was written in either Anglo-Norman or Latin.
The Prelude by William Wordsworth
This posthumously published work is both an autobiographical journey and a fragment of history from the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years.
Odes by John Keats
Littered with sensuous descriptions of nature's beauty, Keats's odes also pose profound philosophical questions.
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Eliot's vision of dystopia became a literary landmark, and introduced new techniques to the modern poet. He remains one of the defining figures of 20th-century poetry.
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Since its publication in 1667, Milton’s 12-book English epic – in which he sets out to 'justify the ways of God to men' – has been considered a classic.
Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake
Blake's short poems are simple in rhythm and rhyme, but sophisticated in meaning. Written during a time of political turmoil, they embody his radical sympathies and anti-dualist ideas.
Collected Poems by W. B. Yeats
Considered a driving force in the revival of Irish literature, Yeats fruitfully engages the topics of youth, love, nature, art and war.
Collected Poems by Ted Hughes
Although Hughes was a colossal presence among the English literary landscape – his work often draws upon the forbidding Yorkshire countryside of his youth – his personal life had a tendency to overshadow his talent.
LITERARY FICTION
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
James's mastery of psychology has never been more elegantly expressed nor more gripping than in his tale of Isabel Archer, a young American in search of her destiny, and Gilbert Osmond, the ultimate cold fish and one of literature's most repellent villains.
A la recherche du temps perdu by Proust
A novel whose every sentence can be a struggle to finish may sound forbidding, but this masterpiece of modernity, taking us into every nook and cranny of the narrator's fascinating mind, is worth all the effort.
Ulysses by James Joyce
Banned in Britain and America for its depiction of female masturbation, Joyce's Ulysses takes its scatological stand at the pinnacle of modernist literature. Lyrical and witty, its stream-of-consciousness narration deters many, but makes enraptured enthusiasts of others.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
A sparse, masculine, world-weary meditation on death, ideology and the savagery of war in general, and the Spanish civil war in particular.
Sword of Honour trilogy by Evelyn Waugh
A poignant, ironic study of the disintegration of aristocratic values in the face of blank bureaucracy and Second World War butchery, Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender are Waugh's crowning achievements.
The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark
Comic, satirical and ineffably odd, Spark's fifth novel introduces Dougal Douglas, ghost-writer, researcher, mysterious figure of Satanic magnetism and mayhem, to the upper working-class/ lower middle-class milieu of Peckham.
Rabbit series by John Updike
We first meet Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom in Rabbit, Run, as a boorish, unhappy former basketball jock who runs from (and to) his pregnant wife. The novels that follow cover 30 years and make up the great study of American manhood.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The greatest moment in magical realist fiction, García Márquez's passionate, humorous history of Macondo and its founding family, the Buendías, has the seductive power of myth.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Morrison brought to life a version of the slave narrative that has become a classic. Her tour de force of guilt, abandonment and revenge plays out against the background of pre-emancipation American life.
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Roth's brilliant, angry dissection of race, disgrace and hypocrisy in Clinton-Lewinsky era America brings to a close his grand and meticulous American trilogy (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist).
ROMANTIC FICTION
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Cornish estate owner Maximilian de Winter's second wife – also the nameless narrator – is haunted by the housekeeper's oppressive worship of her predecessor, Rebecca. A masterful tale of suspense.
Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory
Malory's yarn explores the possibility that chivalry is best revealed by a knight's loyalty to his fellow knights, and not simply his devotion to a woman.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos
Paris in the 18th century: the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont concoct a scheme of seduction to entrap members of the aristocracy. Their roguish machinations lead to their climactic undoing.
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
An invented autobiographical account of Claudius, the fourth emperor of ancient Rome. Graves draws upon the historical texts of Tacitus and Suetonius to write Claudius's story after claiming a visitation from the ancient ruler in his dreams.
Alexander Trilogy by Mary Renault
Renault transports readers to Ancient Greece in a historical trilogy that presents the life and legacy of Alexander the Great in a humanising fictional portrait.
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
Set during the Napoleonic Wars, O'Brian's books journey the seas with Commander Aubrey and his crew aboard HMS Sophie. The novel follows Aubrey's convincing and complex friendship with Maturin, the ship's surgeon, as they fight enemies and storms.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Scarlett O'Hara manipulates her way through the American civil war. This selfish, but gutsy heroine idealises the unattainable Ashley before realising her love for her third husband, Rhett, who dismisses her with, 'My dear, I don't give a damn.'
Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Yuri Zhivago loves two women, his wife, Tonya, and the captivating Lara. Pasternak juxtaposes romance with the stark brutality of the Russian civil war in this extraordinary historical epic.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Disgraced by an illegitimate child, Tess is tainted with shame and guilt, which destroys her marriage to Angel Clare. She emerges as a tragic heroine, incapable of escaping the hypocrisy of Victorian society.
The Plantagenet Saga by Jean Plaidy
A collection of novels inspired by the Plantagenet dynasty. Jean Plaidy is one of the many noms de plume of Eleanor Alice Burford Hibbert, the celebrated historical fiction writer, who died in 1993.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
Four children sail to Wildcat Island, where they encounter a rival camping party then join forces to hunt treasure. Robinson Crusoe meets The Famous Five in a tale of sailing and ginger beer.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy discover the land of Narnia and the malevolent White Witch. The novel uses Christian iconography in Aslan's dramatic sacrifice and resurrection. Edmund's transition from self-interested schoolboy to heroic young man is also resonantly spiritual.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R. R. Tolkien
Frodo and friends journey to Mordor to destroy the ring, making the young Hobbit one of the greatest fictional heroes of all time. More than 100million copies have been sold of the trilogy that brought fantasy to a mainstream literary audience.
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Will is a boy from Oxford. Lyra is a girl from Oxford in a parallel world. Together they have an epic adventure spanning parallel universes. The trilogy has inspired criticism for being heretical – Pullman himself declared the books were about 'killing God'.
Babar by Jean de Brunhoff
Babar brings clothes and cars (and Madame) from Paris to his African kingdom. With his family and the wise Cornelius by his side, Babar protects his land from the Rhino King Rataxes. The big, beautiful books are enriched by Brunhoff's wonderful illustrations.
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
Nesbit’s classic, made famous by the 1970 film, tells of how Bobby, Phyllis and Pete, missing their beloved father, adapt to a poverty-stricken life in the country, helped by Mr Perks, the Old Gentleman, and by waving to the train.
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
The Silly Old Bear, with his friends in Hundred Acre Wood, is more than a British institution. A.A. Milne created a life philosophy with the trials, triumphs and tiddley-poms of the honey-loving, always kind-hearted Pooh.
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
The boy wizard's dealings with the forces of adolescence and evil have sold more than 350million books in 65 languages. The Harry Potter phenomenon has its detractors, but the success of special 'grown-up' covers, allowing commuters to read Rowling without shame, tells its own tale.
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Lonely and miserable trying to clean his hole, Mole ventures outside. He meets Ratty, Toad and Badger, and embarks on a new life defending Toad Hall from the weasels, protecting Toad from himself and messing about in boats.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The piratical coming of age of Jim Hawkins, who discovers a map of Treasure Island among an old sea captain's possessions – and then follows it. Parrots, 'pieces of eight' and the lovable, but morally ambiguous Long John Silver.
SCI-FI
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The great genius of Shelley's novel has often been overwhelmed by images of schlocky bolt-necked 'Frankensteins'. Brought to life by Dr Victor Frankenstein, Shelley’s creature is part gothic monster, part Romantic hero.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Among the deep-sea volcanoes, shoals of swirling fish, giant squid and sharks, Captain Nemo steers the Nautilus. Nemo is the renegade scientist par excellence, a man madly inventive in his quest for revenge.
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
A seminal work of dystopian fiction, Wells's tale of the voyages of the Time Traveller in the distant future (AD802,701) is also a cracking adventure story.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Ignorance is far from bliss in Huxley’s terrible vision of a future of rampant consumerism, worthless free love, routine drug use and cultural passivity.
1984 by George Orwell
So persuasive and chilling was the world summoned up here that 'Orwellian' has entered the language as shorthand for government control. Chilling, wry and romantic, it is above all a passionate cry for freedom.
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
Shifty Soviets and the clipped vernacular make this a Fifties horror story. But as humans cope with disasters (mass blinding by meteor shower; ruthless walking, flesh-eating plants) the tale becomes taut, terrifying, and far from ridiculous.
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
'Great Galaxy!' It is not for literary brilliance that one approaches the first in the Foundation series, but rather for the sweeping grandeur of Asimov’s epic universe-wide tale of the decline and fall of empires. Once you've finished this, 14 novels and countless more short stories await.
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
The first in Clarke's quartet was written as a novel and, in collaboration with Stanley Kubrick, as a film script. As the Discovery One mission drifts towards Saturn, Clarke creates the embodiment of the perils of computer technology, HAL9000.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Dick's masterpiece questions what it is that distinguishes us as human, as we follow Rick Deckard on his mission to 'retire' recalcitrant androids. Spawned Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
A violent slab of cyberpunk sci-fi, in which techie activities (artificial intelligence, hacking, virtual reality) are married with a grimy, anarchic, slangy sensibility, and a cast of hustlers, hackers and junkies trying to make sense of a world ruled by corporations.
CRIME
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Tom Ripley is one of 20th-century literature's most disturbingly fascinating characters: a suave, charming serial killer, who's utterly amoral in his pursuit of la dolce vita.
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
A tale of greed and deceit that's also the archetypal work of 20th-century detective fiction: complete with flawed hero (Sam Spade), femme fatale and a convoluted plot that unravels grippingly.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
It's one of literature's most wonderful ironies that Conan Doyle himself became a spiritualist so soon after creating the most famously rational character in all literature.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
His oeuvre may be small, but with the help of long-time protagonist PI Philip Marlowe – who appears here for the first time – Chandler helped define the genres of detective fiction and, later, film noir.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
Le Carré, master of the Cold War novel, follows British spymaster George Smiley as he tries to uncover a Moscow mole, and faces his KGB nemesis, Karla.
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Hannibal Lecter's second literary appearance sees him called upon by old FBI chum (and near-victim) Will Graham, to help solve the case of the serially morbid 'Tooth Fairy'.
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
From Istanbul to London, Hercule Poirot's little grey cells rattle away to improbable effect as he untangles the mystery of the life and violent death of a sinister passenger.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
Poe's blackly ingenious tale of brutal murder in 19th-century Paris establishes C. Auguste Dupin, a man of 'peculiar analytic ability', as the model for pretty much every intellectual detective to come.
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
A sensational 19th-century epistolary tale of women in peril adds one of the most charismatic, refined and straightforwardly fat villains to the pantheon.
Killshot by Elmore Leonard
Leonard is known for his pithy dialogue and freaky characters. Here he manages to create a sweatily suspenseful thriller, with a married couple as the unexpected heroes.
BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
His thinking may not be as popular as it was in the Sixties and Seventies, but it's as relevant. The cardinal critique of the capitalist system.
The Rights of Man by Tom Paine
Written during the heady days of the French Revolution, Paine's pamphlet - by introducing the concept of human rights - remains one of modern democracy's fundamental texts.
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
'Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.' How are we to reconcile our individual rights and freedoms with living in a society?
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
This treatise looked to the new country's flourishing democracy in the early 19th century and the progressive model it offered ‘old’ Europe.
On War by Carl von Clausewitz
The first, and probably still foremost, treatise on the art of modern warfare. The Prussian general looked beyond the battlefield to war's place in the broader political context.
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Written during his exile from the Florentine Republic, Machiavelli's bible of realpolitik offers the ultimate mandate for those (still-too-many) politicians who value keeping power above dispensing justice.
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes's call for rule by an absolute sovereign may not sound too progressive, but it was based on the then-groundbreaking belief that all men are naturally equal.
On the Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
Drawing on his own dreams, plus those of his patients, Freud asserted that dreams – by tapping into our unconscious – held the key to understanding what makes us tick.
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
No other book has so transformed how we look at the natural world and mankind's origins.
L'Encyclopédie by Diderot, et al
Subtitled 'A Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts', with contributions by Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot and others, the 35-volume encyclopedia was the ultimate document of Enlightenment thought.
BOOKS THAT CHANGED YOUR WORLD
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
Pirsig's feel-good memoir about a father-son motorcycle trip across America became the biggest-selling philosophy book of all time.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Bach's fable about a dreamy seagull called Jonathan, who seeks to soar above the ideology of his flock, became a New Age classic, and is dedicated to the 'real seagull in all of us'.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Originally broadcast on Radio 4, this quotable comedy about a hapless Englishman and his alien friend proved that sci-fi could be clever and funny.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell uses everything from teenage smoking to

Sesame Street

to show how one person's small idea, or way of thinking, can spark a social epidemic.
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Wolf, the controversial American feminist (and teenage victim of anorexia), argues that women's insecurities stem from society's demands on them either to be beautiful or face judgment.
How to Cook by Delia Smith
The cookery queen's series is credited with teaching culinary delinquents how to prepare good wholesome food from scratch. Her latest book, How to Cheat at Cooking, does the opposite.
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
For those who've dreamt of leaving it all to live in the South of France, expat Peter Mayle's diary offers a dose of reality, from unexpected snowfalls to an algae-coated swimming pool.
A Child Called 'It' by Dave Pelzer
Pelzer's graphic account of his abusive childhood topped the bestseller lists worldwide. Since then, he's had to fight off accusations of embellishment and fantasy from family members.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
In an attempt to stamp out poor punctuation, Truss compiled a lively and useful account for all those in doubt about how to use an apostrophe.
Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott
Dip into Schott's compendium of trivia and impress your friends with such questions as, 'Do you know who makes the Queen's pork sausages?' The answer: Musks of Newmarket.
HISTORY
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Compressing 13 turbulent centuries into one epic narrative, this is often labelled the first 'modern' history book. Gibbon fell back on sociology, rather than superstition, to explain Rome's demise.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill
Taking us from Caesar's 55BC invasion to the Boer War's end in 1902, Churchill’s four-volume saga makes the proud, but now-unfashionable, connection between speaking English and bearing 'the torch of Freedom'.
A History of the Crusades by Steven Runciman
Still the landmark account of the Crusades, Byzantine scholar Runciman's work broke with centuries of Western tradition, claiming the crusading invaders were guilty of a 'long act of intolerance in the name of God'.
The Histories by Herodotus
Ostensibly about Greece's defeat of the invading Persians in the 5th century BC, it blends fact, hearsay, legend and myth to tell tales of life in and around Ancient Greece.
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
Famously fastidious over the reliability of his data and sources, Thucydides – with this detailed study of the 25-year struggle between Athens and Sparta – set the template for every historian after him.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence
Lawrence of Arabia's fascinating, self-mythologising account of how he united a string of Arab tribes and successfully led them to rebellion against their Ottoman overlords.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Compiled at King Alfred's behest in the AD890s, this is the earliest-known history of England written in old English. It's also the oldest history of any European country in a vernacular language.
A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Figes charts the Russian Revolution in stark detail, telling the tale of 'ordinary people' and boldly concluding that they 'weren't the victims of the Revolution but protagonists in its tragedy'.
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama
Before he was on television, Prof Schama offered 948 pages of proof that there was more to the French Revolution than fraternity, equality and eating cake.
The Origins of the Second World War by A.J.P. Taylor
Was Hitler all that bad? Wasn't he just an opportunist who took advantage of Anglo-French dithering and appeasement? The label 'iconoclastic' applies to few historians so well as it does to Taylor.
LIVES
Confessions by St Augustine
In probably the first autobiography in Western literature, the Church Father recounts his life-journey from sinner to saint, from the boy who stole pears from a neighbour's tree to the articulator of key Christian doctrines.
Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius
Charting the lives of Julius Caesar, Augustus and the 10 subsequent Roman emperors, with scandalous tales of imperial decadence, vice and lunacy.
Lives of the Artists by Vasari
The history of Italian Renaissance art, as told through the biographies of its heavyweight practitioners.
If This is a Man by Primo Levi
His background as an industrial chemist from Turin may not sound remarkable, but Levi's poised account of his hell-on-earth experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz undoubtedly is.
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon
He's best known for his anti-war poems, but Sassoon was also once popular for his semi-autobiographical trilogy of novels, of which this was the first.
Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey
Strachey didn't do hagiography. His unflattering biographical essays on major Victorian figures debunked the myth of Victorian pre-eminence.
A Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell
A biography of the intriguing Jane Eyre author, by her friend and fellow-novelist, Gaskell. One of the definitive 'tortured genius' biographies.
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
A friend of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Graves was another Englishman to write unsparingly about the horrors of trench warfare.
The Life of Dr Johnson by Boswell
He's one of English literature's all-time heavyweights, but most of what we know about Samuel Johnson, the man, comes from his friend Boswell’s hearty anecdotal biog.
Diaries by Alan Clark
The late Tory MP was not one to get bogged down in matters of policy. His indiscreet memoirs detailed countless extra-marital affairs and character assassinations of colleagues

The Kaps Corner...

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Some Good Books