Freedom's Own Island: A History of Britain and the British People

Sir Arthur Bryant's three-volume History of Britain and the British People starts with the islands' geographical formation and concludes with victory in the Second World War.

This volume opens with one of the last great battles of the Middle Ages - the victory of Henry V's tiny army over the French at Agincourt.  It ends almost exactly four hundred years later, on a field not very far away, when another outnumbered British force won an equally famous victory at Waterloo.  The period inbetween the two saw Britain grow from a minor power on the fringes of European civilisation into the most influential nation in the world.