In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Brendan Dowd — West Point graduate, Iraq War veteran, government consultant, and host of History Nerds United, one of the most respected history book podcasts in the business with over 220 episodes — for a pure, unfiltered book nerd conversation. Both hosts came with a stack of their favorite British history books and took turns sharing their picks, debating the merits, going gloriously off-topic about Darkest Hour, the new Wuthering Heights film, Bridgerton, and Dan Jones's upcoming castles book, and building what amounts to a British history reading list that will keep you busy for years. Between them, Jonathan and Brendan recommend over 20 books spanning Alfred the Great, the Tudors, the Regency, Victorian London, World War II, Thatcher, the Iranian Embassy Siege, and the hidden history of English wolves — plus a peek at what's sitting on each of their TBR piles right now.

Links

History Nerds United

⠀Jonathan's Picks

⠀Brendan's Picks

⠀Also Mentioned

⠀Anglotopia

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Takeaways

  • Both Jonathan and Brendan started their podcasts for exactly the same reason — frustration at the quality of existing coverage in their field — and both were shocked to discover how generous, enthusiastic, and collegial the history author community turned out to be.
  • Brendan's gateway into British history was Alfred the Great by Justin Pollard — a compact, accessible biography of the only English monarch to earn the title "the Great," which he recommends as the perfect gateway drug for readers who think history books are intimidating.
  • Jonathan's most-reread British book is Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island — a definitive outsider's portrait of British culture from the early 1990s that remains beloved by British readers themselves, and the book that most shaped his vision for Anglotopia.
  • Andrew Roberts's one-volume Churchill biography is both Jonathan and Brendan's recommended starting point for anyone wanting a modern, comprehensive, and myth-busting account of Churchill — and Roberts's Napoleon biography is equally essential.
  • Helen Castor is independently named by Brendan as one of his very favorite history writers — her Eagle and the Hart on Richard II and Henry IV, and her Joan of Arc episode of his podcast, are both highlighted as exceptional examples of humanizing complex historical figures without sanitizing them.
  • Both hosts agree that the best history books share a quality: they humanize their subjects — showing the positive and the negative — rather than either condemning or canonizing them. The books they admire most leave the reader to make their own moral judgments.
  • Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera and The Crown's Silence by Brooke Newman both generated significant controversy — particularly in British publications — but both Jonathan and Brendan recommend them as essential, rigorously evidenced correctives to popular myths about the British Empire and the monarchy's role in the slave trade.
  • Ben Macintyre's The Siege — on the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege in London that made the SAS famous — is Brendan's pick for best recent true British history read, praised for building unbearable tension over hundreds of pages before releasing it all in a single extended final chapter.
  • The new Wuthering Heights film gets a thumbs-down from both hosts — "it looks beautiful but just didn't land" — while Darkest Hour generates a spirited debate about the Underground scene that ends with both agreeing it's historically wrong but emotionally right.
  • Both hosts are currently working through books about the interwar period, Cold War espionage, and upcoming releases from Dan Jones and Thomas Asbridge — and both agree that the single greatest problem with loving history books is that the TBR pile never gets shorter.

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Soundbites

  • "I lost it. I said, there's gotta be a better way. I don't want to continually torture my family with all my rants about books. So I started the blog." — Brendan on the one-star Amazon review that launched History Nerds United.
  • "I sent 10 emails on the first day thinking if I get one back I'll be ecstatic. I got eight back within three days. And I've now sat on a boat with Dan Jones having drinks, overlooking Omaha Beach. Nobody tell me it didn't happen." — Brendan on the unexpected magic of the history community.
  • "I have yet to interview a jerk. Everyone has been unfailingly nice and so excited to be there and just so game to talk about whatever." — Brendan on 220+ episodes of History Nerds United.
  • "My long-term goal is to be like Bill Bryson. I've actually met him. He's a very nice chap. I can only hope to be 10% as good as him one day." — Jonathan on Notes from a Small Island and his writing ambitions.
  • *"If you want to understand why everything is happening in Downton Abbey, read *The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. I read it as research for a novel I was writing in college and it has never left me." — Jonathan on David Cannadine's masterwork.
  • "Churchill wouldn't have done that. He was not that type of person. But you put Churchill in a period tube carriage, surrounded by Londoners during the Blitz, and it captures the essence of what the story is trying to tell. Was it real? Heck no." — Jonathan and Brendan on the Underground scene in Darkest Hour.
  • "Helen Castor is constantly teaching you, but you feel like you're just having a conversation within the book. At the end of it, you hear Helen get emotional talking about this teenager burned at the stake — how scared she must have been, even with all her faith. She makes her human instead of an icon." — Brendan on his favorite episode of History Nerds United.
  • "The thesis is that because Britain hunted wolves to extinction, it unleashed the economic powerhouse of sheep farming and wool — and as a consequence of that led to so much of what we know as Britain. I read it and I wanted to read it all over again immediately." — Jonathan on The Last Wolf by Robert Winder.
  • "She stayed laser focused on the Elizabethan succession and somehow it's still interesting all the way through. She mentions the Spanish Armada for about three sentences. I said in my review: this book has been written. We don't need any more on this subject." — Brendan on Tracy Borman's The Stolen Crown.
  • "No author has ever made me feel more lazy than Catherine Grace Katz — she wrote *Daughters of Yalta* while she was in law school. If you told me that I would one day be sitting there with Marsha Clark from the OJ Simpson trial, I would have called you a liar. But that's what this world does." — Brendan on the surreal privilege of the history podcast community.

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Chapters

  • 00:00 Introduction — Jonathan sets up the book conversation episode and introduces Brendan Dowd
  • 01:41 How a Tank Platoon Leader Got a 220-Episode History Podcast — Long commutes, bad Amazon reviews, and one unexpected email
  • 05:58 The History Author Community — Why everybody wants you to win, and the generosity of historians
  • 08:10 Dan Jones on a River Cruise — Brendan's honeymoon, Omaha Beach, and a surreal life moment
  • 09:01 What History Nerds United Is — The format, the philosophy, and why Brendan calls himself the laziest podcaster
  • 10:26 BOOK PICKS BEGIN
  • 10:39 Brendan Pick #1: Alfred the Great by Justin Pollard — The George Washington of England and the perfect gateway drug
  • 12:18 Jonathan Pick #1: Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson — The definitive outsider's portrait of British culture and Jonathan's most-reread book
  • 14:28 Brendan Pick #2: The Six Loves of James I by Gareth Russell — A party animal king, Scottish trauma, and the most uncomfortable compliment Gareth ever received
  • 16:58 Jonathan Pick #2: Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts — The one-volume biography that settles the argument
  • 18:15 Andrew Roberts's Napoleon — A brief but enthusiastic detour to France
  • 18:56 Brendan Pick #3: Battle for the Island Kingdom by Don Hollway — 1000 to 1066, the most disgusting assassination in history, and setting up everything
  • 20:05 Jonathan Pick #3: My Early Life by Winston Churchill — The only autobiography, the Boer War escape, and the Gary Stiles connection
  • 21:50 Darkest Hour Debate — The Underground scene: historically wrong, emotionally right, and why it works anyway
  • 23:18 The Perfect WWII Double Bill — Darkest Hour followed by Dunkirk as a single evening
  • 23:50 Brendan Pick #4: Henry V by Dan Jones — Present tense biography, the greatest medieval king, and writing something when you feel ready for it
  • 25:29 Jonathan Pick #4: A Very English Scandal by John Preston — Jeremy Thorpe, a murder plot, a dead dog, and the British establishment
  • 26:57 John Preston's Robert Maxwell Book — And a certain imprisoned daughter
  • 27:26 Brendan Pick #5: Thomas More: A Life by Joanne Paul — Saints, hair shirts, comedy gold, and debunking 500-year-old myths
  • 29:24 Jonathan Pick #5: London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd — The definitive history of London and the gateway to a great corpus
  • 30:25 Brendan Pick #6: Once a King: The Lost Memoir of Edward VIII by Jane Marguerite Tippett — He wasn't a Nazi, and the documentation proves it
  • 32:03 Jonathan Pick #6: Citizens of London by Lynne Olson — Americans in London during the Blitz and how they helped save Britain
  • 33:24 Brendan Pick #7: The Stolen Crown by Tracy Borman — The Elizabethan succession, new evidence, and calling Henry VIII a few four-letter words
  • 34:56 Tracy Borman on Inside the Tower of London — And Dan Jones's upcoming Castles book
  • 36:03 Jonathan Pick #7: Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera — Deconstructing myths of the British Empire and why the author quit social media
  • 37:32 Brendan Pick #8: The Crown's Silence by Brooke Newman — The monarchy's direct financial involvement in the slave trade and British publications' predictable response
  • 39:34 Jonathan Pick #8: The Iron Lady by John Campbell — The definitive Thatcher biography and why she's Churchill's true successor
  • 41:45 Brendan Pick #9: The Greatest Knight by Thomas Asbridge — William Marshal, four kings, King John, and a life that reads like a Hollywood script
  • 43:22 Jonathan Pick #9: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine — The book that explains Downton Abbey and everything behind it
  • 44:29 Brendan Pick #10: The Eagle and the Hart by Helen Castor — Richard II, Henry IV, and why taking the crown makes you a marked man
  • 46:48 Jonathan Pick #10: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh — Fiction that illuminates aristocratic decline and the companion read to Cannadine
  • 48:18 Brendan Pick #11: The Invention of Charlotte Brontë by Graham Watson — Jane Eyre as a gateway, the weird genius of the Brontë family, and more autobiography than you realized
  • 50:18 Wuthering Heights Film Discussion — Brendan defers, Jonathan gives a verdict: beautiful but it didn't land
  • 51:43 Jonathan Pick #11: The Last Wolf by Robert Winder — No wolves, lots of sheep, and the surprising hidden springs of Englishness
  • 53:10 Brendan Pick #12: London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe — A body off a balcony opposite MI5, true crime that leaves you profoundly uneasy
  • 54:54 Jonathan buys London Falling at Barnes & Noble — And finds it in the fiction section
  • 55:24 Jonathan Pick #12: The Regency Years by Robert Morrison — What Bridgerton gets wrong, what Jane Austen's world actually was, and the Anglotopia Bridgerton guide
  • 56:23 Bridgerton vs. The Patriot — Two hosts agree: know your genre, leave accuracy at the door
  • 58:15 Brendan Pick #13: The Siege by Ben Macintyre — The Iranian Embassy siege, the SAS, and a final chapter that takes an hour to read
  • 1:00:06 Jonathan Pick #13: Churchill's Citadel by Katherine Carter — Chartwell as weapon, the wilderness years, and the best first book Jonathan has read in years
  • 1:01:31 What's on the TBR Right Now — Ike and Winston, Three Weeks in July, A Shellshocked Nation, the Nord Stream conspiracy, Dan Jones's Castles, and more
  • 1:07:37 The Book Neither Host Can Find Anyone to Write — Brendan's gap in the market involving Joan of Arc's most disturbing companion
  • 1:10:24 The Book Jonathan Should Write — Brendan makes his pitch; Jonathan firmly declines
  • 1:11:06 Jonathan's Gap in the Market — Churchill's second term as Prime Minister: underexplored, fascinating, partially covered by The Crown
  • 1:12:29 John Lithgow as Churchill — Too tall, earned it on The Crown, also very scary in Dexter
  • 1:12:36 Brendan's Proudest Episode — Helen Castor on Joan of Arc, two hours that felt like twenty minutes
  • 1:16:52 Wrap-Up — Where to find History Nerds United, the full book list in the show notes, and promises of a return visit

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