Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd

A History of the English-Speaking People Since 1900 by Andrew Roberts

Sleuth: The Amazing Quest For Lost Art Treasures by Philip Mould

Europe East & West by Norman Davies

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton

Ideas That Changed the World by Felipe Fernandez Armesto

James Lees-Milne: The Life by Michael Bloch

Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time by Clive James

Arabesques: A Tale of Double Lives by Robert Dessaix

The First Crusade: A New History by Thomas Asbridge

Napoleon and Wellington by Andrew Roberts

The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815

and

The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain 660-1649

by N.A.M. Rodger