Revealed: Britain’s top 25 best-selling historians
Who tells our stories? Here's what half a decade of sales reveals.
Good morning. Here’s something new. If this isn’t of interest, rest assured: normal service will resume on Sunday with the latest fortnightly edition of One Great Read. But perhaps you too will be fascinated to know which books the British public actually buy. Here – for the first time online, as far as I can see – is a comprehensive list of the UK’s bestselling writers of history.
Who gets to tell our stories? As I noted last week, this top 25 is dominated by white men. It is also, unsurprisingly, full of older authors, with only two writers under 45. But enough demographic chatter. What about the books, I hear you say. What stories do we read?
Two points to remember. First, this money isn’t going to the authors. It’s going to the publishers. It then filters down to the author. Authors typically earn 10-15 per cent on hardbacks, and 7.5-10 per cent on paperbacks – once they earn back their advance. (Some bigger authors forgo advances and split sales with the publisher.) Second, this list only captures sales in the last five years: a cut-off point which will reward some writers and disadvantage others. But it should give you a good general sense of whose histories sell in Britain. Let’s get to it.
1 — Ben Macintyre
Total sales since 2018: £5,976,655
Books sold since 2018: 593,277
Publisher: Penguin (Viking)
Macintyre, 59, has been producing remarkable true stories of lovers, betrayers, spies, thieves, heroes, and anti-heroes for three decades now. But it took time for him to rise. It wasn’t until his eighth book in 2010 – Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II – that he truly began to find his market. Now each of his books (he tends to publish one every other September) is a publishing phenomenon.
The Spy and the Traitor (2018) has brought in £3.1 million since 2018. Agent Sonya (2020) has accounted for £1m. And Colditz, his 2022 release, has already produced £695,000. Three of his other books – Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS; A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal; and Mincemeat – were adapted for the screen this year, driving another £1.1m in paperback sales between them.
2 — Max Hastings
Total sales since 2018: £5,562,577
Books sold since 2018: 397,137
Publisher: Harper Collins (William Collins)
Hastings, 77, has in recent years diversified away from the Second World War, his central subject, producing new histories of the Vietnam war (£2.2 million in sales) and now Cuba (Abyss; £420,000 since September). He has also mined the war for fresh stories, with Chastise (£1m) and Pedestal (£930,000) respectively telling the tale of the Dambusters raid in 1943 and the British fleet that sailed to save Malta in 1942.
Hastings has released five hardbacks in as many years (Soldiers, an anthology released in 2021, has made another £320,000), with his extensive back catalogue – books on bomber command, Churchill, and the Russian front – producing a further £670,000.
3 — James Holland
Total sales since 2018: £3,522,005
Books sold since 2018: 319,346
Publisher: Transworld (Bantam)
Holland, 52 – whose younger brother, Tom Holland, is 18th on this list – is a prolific historian of the Second World War. Four new books in four years – Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War Two (2018), Normandy ’44: D-Day and the Battle for France (2019), Siciliy ’43 (2020), and Brothers in Arms: One Legendary Tank Regiment's Bloody War (2021) – brought in £2.7m between them.
4 — Anthony Beevor
Total sales since 2018: £2,961,827
Books sold since 2018: 234,663
Publisher: Orion (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Beevor, 76, has released two new hardbacks in the past five years, with his latest – Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 (2022) – released last May. It has already led to £625,000 in sales on 29,000 copies sold. His previous book, Arnhem (2018), has brought in £1.5m. Like Hastings, Beevor has a deep back catalogue; books on D-Day, Stalingrad, and Hitler's last gamble have, among others, added another £810,000.
5 — Damien Lewis
Total sales since 2018: £2,909,177
Books sold since 2018: 364,926
Publisher: Quercus
Lewis, 56, has published six different books on the SAS in the past five years. It is his subject. A Lewis hardback on the SAS tends to do at least £160,000 (SAS Brothers in Arms: Churchill's Desperadoes, 2022), and as much as £400,000 (SAS Bravo Three Zero, 2021).
6 — John Nichol
Total sales since 2018: £2,822,764
Books sold since 2018: 286,654
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Spitfire. Lancaster. Tornado. Books about the planes that won wars sell, as Nichol, 59 – a former RAF navigator who was shot down, captured, and paraded on air by Iraqi forces during the first Gulf War – can attest. Spitfire: A Very British Love Story (2018) brought in £1.5m for Simon & Schuster, Nichol’s publisher, with Lancaster (2020) and Tornado (2021) bringing in another £1.2m between them.
7 — Yuval Harari
Total sales since 2018: £2,596,275
Books sold since 2018: 231,456
Publisher: Random House (Jonathan Cape)
Harari, 46, perhaps the non-fiction author of the 2010s, makes this list by virtue of a hastily assembled and ill-connected collection of essays alone. None of the sales above come from Sapiens (2014) or Homo Deus (2016). They all come from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018), which sold 86,000 copies in hardback and another 145,000 in paperback. Once you’re a name, you’re a name.
8 — Dan Jones
Total sales since 2018: £2,450,538
Books sold since 2018: 202,772
Publisher: Head of Zeus (Apollo)
A range of recent releases – The Templars (2017), The Colour of Time: A New History of the World, 1850–1960 (2018), Crusaders (2019), and Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages (2021) – have brought in £1.97m for Head of Zeus, who publish
, 41. He is the youngest author in the top 10, and a fellow Substacker.9 — Peter Frankopan
Total sales since 2018: £1,984,776
Books sold since 2018: 190,025
Publisher: Random House (Vintage)
Frankopan’s books have increasingly become major events. After The First Crusade (2012), the Oxford professor struck gold with The Silk Roads (2015). A sequel, The New Silk Roads (2018), soon followed. The former has made Random House, who print Frankopan, 51, £940,000 over the past five years (almost all in paperback), while the latter has drawn in £1m. His next book, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, is out in March.
10 — Andrew Roberts
Total sales since 2018: £1,978,067
Books sold since 2018: 89,003
Publisher: Penguin (Allen Lane)
Roberts, 59, thrives as a highly-priced historical biographer. His book on Churchill (Walking with Destiny, 2018) has sold £1.3m since 2018. Much of that was in hardback. Roberts’ biographies make a big splash but sell relatively lightly in paperback. His most recent tome, George III (2021), has brought in £350,000. The book he published in between, Leadership in War (2019), had a more muted readership, adding £99,000.
11 — Neil Oliver
Total sales since 2018: £1,701,433
Books sold since 2018: 135,221
Publisher: Transworld (Bantam)
Oliver, 55, has recently found his format. The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places (2018) and The Story of the World in 100 Moments (2021) tapped into the power of lists, producing £860,000 and £340,000. Wisdom of the Ancients: Life lessons from our distant past (2020) added £200,000, while back copies of Oliver’s histories of Scotland, ancient Britain, and the Vikings brought in another £290,000.
12 — James Hawes
Total sales since 2018: £1,464,379
Books sold since 2018: 190,439
Publisher: Old Street Publishing
One extraordinary publishing success – The Shortest History of Germany (2017), £830,000 in sales since 2018 – led Hawes, 63, to produce a stylistic sequel in 2020: The Shortest History of England (£595,000). Both have triumphed as airport reads, easily picked up in a WH Smith’s. Hawes’ history of England only sold 7,500 copies in hardback, for instance, but has since sold 65,000 copies in paperback. Hawes and Andrew Roberts are a study in contrasts: Hawes’ publisher sells his books for less than £8, while Penguin sell Roberts’ for £22.
13 — Lucy Worsley
Total sales since 2018: £1,423,794
Books sold since 2018: 102,098
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Three books – on Jane Austen (2017), Queen Victoria (2018), and Agatha Christie (2022) – have driven the success of Worsley, 49, the best-selling female historian of the past five years. Her Agatha Christie biography, released in September, has already sold 27,000 copies, adding up to £575,000.
14 — Simon Sebag Montefiore
Total sales since 2018: £1,413,541
Books sold since 2018: 112,859
Publisher: Orion (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
It has been a productive five years for Montefiore, 57, with Written in History: Letters that Changed the World (2018) producing £630,000 in sales and The World (2022), his 1,232-page history told through the lives of leading families, contributing £235,000 since October. Montefiore’s paperback tomes on Jerusalem, Stalin, and the Romanovs accounted for another half a million.
15 — William Dalrymple
Total sales since 2018: £1,387,308
Books sold since 2018: 69,889
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Dalrymple’s 576-page The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (2019), a Barack Obama book of the year, was something of a publishing sensation, selling 48,000 copies in hardback and driving £1.1m in sales for Bloomsbury, who publish Dalrymple, 57.
16 — Serhii Plokhy
Total sales since 2018: £1,325,586
Books sold since 2018: 128,632
Publisher: Penguin (Allen Lane)
When Chernobyl became the TV hit of 2019, viewers sought out the definitive history. Plokhy, 65, had released a history of the conflict the previous year, selling 7,000 copies in hardback. After the series, he sold 69,000 copies in paperback, helping Penguin to £865,000 in sales from the book since 2018. Readers also turned to Plokhy’s history of Ukraine (Gates of Europe, 2015) in 2022, with 15,000 paperbacks sold this year.
17 — Kassia St Clair
Total sales since 2018: £1,182,012
Books sold since 2018: 95,888
Publisher: John Murray
St Clair – a former Economist journalist, and the only historian under 40 to make this list – has published two books in her career. Both have been hits. The Secret Lives of Colour (2016) has led to nearly £900,000 in sales since 2018, with over 50,000 copies sold in paperback, while St Clair’s sequel, The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History (2018), has sold £310,000 so far.
18 — Tom Holland
Total sales since 2018: £1,167,001
Books sold since 2018: 89,563
Publisher: Little, Brown
Holland’s position on this list is impressive given that he has only published one hardback in the past five years. That book, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2019), sold well: 26,000 copies in hardback and another 22,000 in paperback, or £740,000 in all. Histories of Rome, Persia, Islam, and the first millennium after Christ, brought in another £365,000 for Little, Brown, who print Holland, 55.
19 — Marc Morris
Total sales since 2018: £1,157,722
Books sold since 2018: 85,173
Publisher: Random House (Hutchinson)
Morris’ The Anglo-Saxons (2021), a history of “the beginnings of England”, has sold 33,000 copies in hardback and 29,000 in paperback in less than two years, accounting for £950,000 of his sales. The book was the eighth in 18 years for Morris, 49.
20 — Julia Boyd
Total sales since 2018: £1,002,516
Books sold since 2018: 92,872
Publisher: Elliott & Thompson
Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People (2017) has led to £750,000 in sales since 2018 for Boyd’s publisher, selling 74,000 copies. The book was Boyd’s fifth, published at the age of 72, 43 years after her first. A follow-up, A Village in the Third Reich (2022), has brought in another quarter of a million.
21 — David Olusoga
Total sales since 2018: £987,601
Books sold since 2018: 89,696
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Black and British (2016), Olusoga’s new history of Britain, has sold £761,000 in paperback since 2018, with 71,000 copies sold. Two recent hardbacks – The Cult of Progress (2018) and A House Through Time (2020), a tie-in with a TV series that Olusoga, 53, presents – brought in another £190,000.
22 — Mary Beard
Total sales since 2018: £978,335
Books sold since 2018: 89,936
Publisher: Profile; Princeton
SPQR (2015), Beard’s history of ancient Rome, has sold 62,000 copies in paperback (£565,000 in sales) since 2018. Twelve Caesars (2021), her most recent hardback, drove another £245,000, selling almost 10,000 copies. Beard, 68, brought in a further £170,000 from her back catalogue of paperbacks on Pompeii, the Parthenon and the classics.
23 — Philippe Sands
Total sales since 2018: £975,341
Books sold since 2018: 95,599
Publisher: Orion (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Two hits – East West Street (2016) and The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (2021) – have both driven over £400,000 in sales since 2018 for Orion, who publish Sands, 62, a King’s Counsel and UCL professor. East West Street has sold 48,000 copies in paperback. The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy, his most recent book, has brought in £81,000 since August.
24 — Sathnam Sanghera
Total sales since 2018: £922,112
Books sold since 2018: 96,651
Publisher: Penguin (Viking)
Sanghera, a Times columnist, has only written one work of history – Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain (2021) – but that book’s sales alone have almost reached £1 million for Penguin. Sanghera, 46, sold 17,000 copies in hardback in 2021, and has since sold 79,000 paperbacks.
25 — Alice Roberts
Total sales since 2018: £920,125
Books sold since 2018: 74,331
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Two books – Ancestors: A prehistory of Britain in seven burials (2021) and Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain (2022) – have driven Roberts’ sales since 2018. Ancestors has made £615,000 on over 50,000 copies sold, with Buried selling 10,000 copies for Roberts, 49, otherwise known for her history of the Celts.
Honourable mentions
Five books stand out by authors who did not make the top 25: Robert Hardman’s Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II (£730,000 in sales), Jack Fairweather’s The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz (£550,000), Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers (£520,000), Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World (£470,000), and Dan Snow’s On This Day in History (£435,000).
Two much buzzed books of their time – David Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything (2021) and Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019) – made £340,000 and £320,000, although neither book sold quite as many copies (13,000 for Graeber, 16,500 for Zuboff) as they produced in column inches.
While few women (FIVE) made this list, a number of other female writers wrote books that sold strongly in the year they came out, from Natalie Haynes’ Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths (£315,000) to Cat Jarman’s River Kings (£265,000); In Extremis, Lindsey Hilsum’s biography of Marie Colvin (£260,000); Cathy Newman’s Bloody Brilliant Women (£250,000); Janina Ramirez’s Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It (£240,000); and
's Difficult Women (£184,000).You made it. Thank you for reading. If you think anyone you know would be interested in this, do forward it on. If you felt particularly captivated by anything here, perhaps you might even like to share this. This newsletter’s reach is almost entirely reliant on referrals from you, dear reader.
Do leave a comment with any thoughts or snippets from books mentioned here, or other works of history you have liked. Maybe someone else will be intrigued and buy the book.
Your normal One Great Read will be with you on Sunday. My piece on Substack and how it may be reshaping the market for the written word – featuring
, , , , , , , , and – should be in this week’s New Statesman, out on Thursday. Have a good week.