Na de beste romans van de 21ste eeuw tot nu toe, selecteert The Sunday Times ook de beste non-fictie, ‘the top factual British and Irish works since 2000, from Martin Amis and Claire Tomalin to David Baddiel and Richard Dawkins’.
- Bekijk ook de beste boeken van de 21ste eeuw volgens NRC en De Standaard (2025) en de lezers van NRC (2025), The Observer (2025), Humo (2025), The Sunday Times (2025, fictie), Knack (2024), The New York Times (2024), De Groene Amsterdammer (2020), die van de 20ste eeuw volgens Le Monde (1999), van 1923-2010 volgens Time (2010), van 1966-2016 volgens Athenaeum (2016), van 1916-2016 volgens de Volkskrant (2016)
- Bekijk de beste boeken en populairste schrijvers van dit jaar (2026) en de afgelopen elf jaar: 2025 (Annet Schaap), 2024 (Safae el Khannoussi), 2023 (Adania Shibli en Zadie Smith), 2022 (Anjet Daanje), 2021 (Jonathan Franzen), 2020 (Annie Ernaux), 2019 (Manon Uphoff), 2018 (Radna Fabias), 2017 (Koen Peeters), 2016 (A.F.Th. van der Heijden), 2015 (Michel Houellebecq).
‘Non-fiction is in crisis. That’s the chatter in the publishing world. In 2019 72 million factual books were sold in the UK. Last year this figure tumbled to 55 million, the fourth consecutive year of decline. [...] Whatever the cause, the books desk declares the rot stops now! So we’ve asked some of the paper’s most bookish writers — a few of them with prizewinning and bestselling titles to their name — to suggest their favourite non-fiction books of the 21st century by authors in Britain and Ireland.’
Het is een lijst die aan deze zijde van het kanaal wel veel minder beklijft; maar een deel is vertaald. En we hebben weinig op voorraad - maar er is wel veel bestelbaar. Overlap met andere best-of-lijstjes is er niet.
- Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012)
- Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (2013)
- Robert Tombs, The English and Their History: The First Thirteen Centuries (2014)
- Anna Keay, The Restless Republic (2022)
- Martin Amis, Experience (2000)
- Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton (2012) [onze recensie]
- Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (2020)
- Helen Joyce, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (2021)
- David Kynaston, Tales of a New Jerusalem (2010-2024)
- Mark Cocker, Birds and People (2013)
- Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography (2001)
- N.A.M. Roger, A Naval History of Britain (1997-2024)
- Simon Bradley, The Railways: Nation, Network and People (2015)
- David Willetts, The Pinch (2010)
- Catherine Belton, Putin's People (2020)
- Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life (2011)
- Suzanne O’Sullivan, It’s All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness (2015)
- Rachel Cusk, A Life's Work (2001) [onze recensie]
- John Carey, What Good Are the Arts? (2005)
- Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women (2019) [fragment]
- Andrew Rawnsley, Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour (2000)
- David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count (2021)
- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006)
- Cal Flynn, Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape (2021)
- Henry Marsh, Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery (2014)