| 2025 | Winner | Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade | Hannah Durkin | HarperCollins |
| 2025 | Shortlist | Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age | Eleanor Barraclough | Profile Books |
| 2025 | Shortlist | Multicultural Britain: A People's History | Kieran Connell | Hurst |
| 2025 | Shortlist | The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV | Helen Castor | Allen Lane |
| 2025 | Shortlist | The Gravity of Feathers: Fame, Fortune and the Story of St Kilda | Andrew Fleming | Birlinn |
| 2025 | Shortlist | The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective | Sara Lodge | Yale University Press |
| 2024 | Winner | Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century | Joya Chatterji | Yale University Press |
| 2024 | Shortlist | Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire | Nandini Das | Bloomsbury |
| 2024 | Shortlist | Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best-Loved Institution | Andrew Seaton | Yale University Press |
| 2024 | Shortlist | Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022 | Frank Trentmann | Allen Lane |
| 2024 | Shortlist | Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade | Nicholas Radburn | Yale University Press |
| 2024 | Shortlist | Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage | Jonny Steinberg | HarperCollins |
| 2023 | Winner | Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-45 | Halik Kochanski | Allen Lane |
| 2023 | Shortlist | African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History | Hakim Adi | Allen Lane |
| 2023 | Shortlist | Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers | Emma Smith | Allen Lane |
| 2023 | Shortlist | The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and the British Empire | Henrietta Harrison | Princeton University Press |
| 2023 | Shortlist | The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe | James Belich | Princeton University Press |
| 2023 | Shortlist | Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London | Oskar Jensen | Duckworth Books |
| 2022 | Winner | Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 | Clare Jackson | Allen Lane |
| 2022 | Shortlist | A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution | Toby Green | University of Chicago Press |
| 2022 | Shortlist | A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths | John Barton | Allen Lane |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Atlantic Wars: From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution | Geoffrey Plank | Oxford University Press |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture | Sudhir Hazareesingh | Allen Lane |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack | Richard Ovenden | John Murray |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Chaucer: A European Life | Marion Turner | Princeton University Press |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire | Prashant Kidambi | Oxford University Press |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood | Helen McCarthy | Bloomsbury |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues that Made History | Alex von Tunzelmann | Headline |
| 2022 | Shortlist | God: An Anatomy | Francesca Stavrakopoulou | Macmillan |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Going to Church in Medieval England | Nicholas Orme | Yale University Press |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe | Judith Herrin | Princeton University Press |
| 2022 | Shortlist | Survivors: Children's Lives After the Holocaust | Rebecca Clifford | Yale University Press |
| 2022 | Shortlist | The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans | David Abulafia | Allen Lane |
| 2022 | Shortlist | The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper | Hallie Rubenhold | Doubleday |
| 2022 | Shortlist | The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs | Marc David Baer | Basic Books |
| 2022 | Shortlist | The Ruin of all Witches: Life and Death in the New World | Malcolm Gaskill | Allen Lane |
| 2019 | Winner | Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice | Mary Fulbrook | Oxford University Press |
| 2019 | Shortlist | Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words | Jeremy Mynott | Oxford University Press |
| 2019 | Shortlist | Building Anglo-Saxon England | John Blair | Princeton University Press |
| 2019 | Shortlist | Empress: Queen Victoria and India | Miles Taylor | Yale University Press |
| 2019 | Shortlist | Oscar: A Life | Matthew Sturgis | Head of Zeus |
| 2019 | Shortlist | Trading in War: London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson | Margarette Lincoln | Yale University Press |
| 2018 | Winner | Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation | Peter Marshall | Yale University Press |
| 2018 | Shortlist | A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War | Tim Grady | Yale University Press |
| 2018 | Shortlist | Black Tudors: The Untold Story | Miranda Kaufmann | Oneworld |
| 2018 | Shortlist | Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea | Jan Rüger | Oxford University Press |
| 2018 | Shortlist | Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination | Robert Bickers | Allen Lane |
| 2018 | Shortlist | The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine | Lindsey Fitzharris | Allen Lane |
| 2017 | Winner | Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts | Christopher de Hamel | Allen Lane |
| 2017 | Shortlist | Henry IV | Chris Given-Wilson | Yale University Press |
| 2017 | Shortlist | Henry the Young King, 1155 – 1183 | Matthew Strickland | Yale University Press |
| 2017 | Shortlist | Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet | Lyndal Roper | The Bodley Head |
| 2017 | Shortlist | Sleep in Early Modern England | Sasha Handley | Yale University Press |
| 2017 | Shortlist | The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile under the Tsars | Daniel Beer | Basic Books |
| 2016 | Winner | Augustine: Conversions and Confessions | Robin Lane Fox | Allen Lane |
| 2016 | Winner | KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps | Nikolaus Wachsmann | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2015 | Winner | National Service: Conscription in Britain, 1945-1963 | Richard Vinen | Allen Lane |
| 2015 | Winner | Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918 | Alexander Watson | Allen Lane |
| 2014 | Winner | Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History | Catherine Merridale | Allen Lane |
| 2014 | Winner | The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World | Cyprian Broodbank | Thames & Hudson |
| 2013 | Winner | Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy | Christopher Duggan | Random House |
| 2013 | Winner | Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest | Susan Brigden | Faber & Faber |
| 2012 | Winner | Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life | Susie Harries | Chatto & Windus |
| 2012 | Winner | The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity & Memory in Early Modern Britain & Ireland | Alexandra Walsham | Oxford University Press |
| 2011 | Winner | Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire | Nicholas Thomas | Yale University Press |
| 2011 | Winner | The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France | Ruth Harris | Allen Lane |
| 2010 | Winner | Russia against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe 1807 to 1814 | Dominic Lieven | Allen Lane |
| 2010 | Winner | The Hundred Years War, vol. III: Divided Houses | Jonathan Sumption | Faber & Faber |
| 2009 | Winner | Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession | Margaret McGowan | Yale University Press |
| 2009 | Winner | Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town | Mary Beard | Profile Books |
| 2008 | Winner | After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400–2000 | John Darwin | Allen Lane |
| 2008 | Winner | God's Architect: Pugin & the Building of Romantic Britain | Rosemary Hill | Allen Lane |
| 2007 | Winner | City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London | Vic Gatrell | Atlantic Books |
| 2007 | Winner | Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 | Christopher Clark | Allen Lane |
| 2007 | Winner | The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy | Adam Tooze | Allen Lane |
| 2006 | Winner | Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800 | Christopher Wickham | Oxford University Press |
| 2006 | Winner | Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400-1600 | Evelyn Welch | Yale University Press |
| 2005 | Winner | In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War | David Reynolds | Allen Lane |
| 2005 | Winner | The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia | Richard Overy | Allen Lane |
| 2004 | Winner | Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700 | Diarmaid MacCulloch | Allen Lane |
| 2004 | Winner | The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 | Julian Jackson | Oxford University Press |
| 2004 | Winner | Transformations of Love: The Friendship of John Evelyn and Margaret Godolphin | Frances Harris | Oxford University Press |
| 2003 | Winner | Marianne in Chains: In search of the German Occupation 1940-1945 | Robert Gildea | Macmillan |
| 2003 | Winner | White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India | William Dalrymple | HarperCollins |
| 2002 | Winner | Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its Peoples 8000BC-AD1500 | Barry Cunliffe | Oxford University Press |
| 2002 | Winner | London in the Twentieth Century: A City and its People | Jerry White | Viking |
| 2001 | Winner | Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World | Roy Porter | Allen Lane |
| 2001 | Winner | Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis | Ian Kershaw | Allen Lane |
| 2001 | Winner | The Balkans: From the End of Byzantium to the Present Day | Mark Mazower | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| 2000 | Winner | An Intimate History of Killing: Face-To-Face Killing In Twentieth-Century Warfare | Joanna Bourke | Granta Books |
| 2000 | Winner | Salisbury: Victorian Titan | Andrew Roberts | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| 1999 | Winner | Stalingrad | Antony Beevor | Viking |
| 1999 | Winner | The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England | Amanda Vickery | Yale University Press |
| 1998 | Winner | Jennie Lee: A Life | Patricia Hollis | Oxford University Press |
| 1998 | Winner | The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century | John Brewer | HarperCollins |
| 1997 | Winner | A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution | Orlando Figes | Jonathan Cape |
| 1996 | Winner | Gladstone, 1875-1898 | HCG Matthew | Oxford University Press |
| 1995 | Winner | The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany | John Röhl | Cambridge University Press |
| 1995 | Winner | William Morris: A Life for Our Time | Fiona MacCarthy | Faber & Faber |
| 1994 | Winner | Living and Dying in England 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience | Barbara Harvey | Oxford University Press |
| 1994 | Winner | The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350 | Robert Bartlett | Allen Lane |
| 1993 | Winner | Britons: Forging the Nation 1707 - 1837 | Linda Colley | Yale University Press |
| 1993 | Winner | John Maynard Keynes, vol. 2: the Economist as Saviour 1920-1937 | Robert Skidelsky | Macmillan |
| 1992 | Winner | Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair | John Bossy | Yale University Press |
| 1992 | Winner | Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives | Alan Bullock | HarperCollins |
| 1991 | Winner | The Architecture of Medieval Britain: A Social History | Colin Platt | Yale University Press |
| 1990 | Winner | How War Came | Donald Cameron Watt | William Heinemann |
| 1990 | Winner | The Quest for El Cid | Richard Fletcher | Hutchinson |
| 1989 | Winner | Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910 | Richard Evans | Oxford University Press |
| 1989 | Winner | The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Control from 1500-2000 | Paul Kennedy | Unwin Hyman |
| 1987 | Winner | Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063-1415 | Rees Davies | Oxford University Press |
| 1987 | Winner | The Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South | John Pemble | Oxford University Press |
| 1986 | Winner | European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550-1750 | Jonathan Israel | Oxford University Press |
| 1986 | Winner | The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline | John Elliott | Yale University Press |
| 1985 | Winner | Dudley Docker: The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior | Richard Davenport-Hines | Cambridge University Press |
| 1985 | Winner | Lloyd George: From Peace to War, 1912-1916 | John Grigg | Methuen |
| 1984 | Winner | Chivalry | Maurice Keen | Yale University Press |
| 1984 | Winner | The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England | Antonia Fraser | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| 1983 | Winner | King George V | Kenneth Rose | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| 1983 | Winner | Winston S. Churchill, vol. VI: Finest Hour | Martin Gilbert | William Heinemann |
| 1982 | Winner | Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death Among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-century France | John McManners | Oxford University Press |
| 1981 | Winner | A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past | John Burrow | Cambridge University Press |
| 1980 | Winner | Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890-1939 | FSL Lyons | Oxford University Press |
| 1980 | Winner | The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550-1700: An Interpretation | Robert Evans | Oxford University Press |
| 1979 | Winner | Clementine Churchill | Mary Soames | Cassell |
| 1979 | Winner | Death in Paris, 1795-1801 | Richard Cobb | Oxford University Press |
| 1979 | Winner | The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1: The Renaissance | Quentin Skinner | Cambridge University Press |
| 1978 | Winner | A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 | Alistair Horne | Macmillan |
| 1977 | Winner | Mussolini's Roman Empire | Denis Mack Smith | Longman |
| 1977 | Winner | Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813 | Simon Schama | HarperCollins |
| 1976 | Winner | A History of Building Types | Nikolaus Pevsner | Thames & Hudson |
| 1976 | Winner | The Eastern Front 1914-17 | Norman Stone | Hodder & Stoughton |
| 1975 | Winner | Edward VIII | Frances Donaldson | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| 1975 | Winner | The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-1789 | Olwen Hufton | Oxford University Press |
| 1974 | Winner | France, 1848-1945: Ambition, Love & Politics | Theodore Zeldin | Oxford University Press |
| 1974 | Winner | The Ancient Economy | Moses Finley | Chatto & Windus |
| 1973 | Winner | Henry II | WL Warren | Eyre & Spottiswoode |
| 1973 | Winner | The Rosicrucian Enlightenment | Frances Yates | Routledge & Kegan Paul |
| 1972 | Winner | Grand Strategy, vol. IV: August 1942 - September 1943 | Michael Howard | HMSO |
| 1972 | Winner | Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England | Keith Thomas | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |