The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is a record of over 620,000 books, articles and essays relating to the British and Irish past, worldwide. The Bibliography is updated three times each year with curated records of the recent publications. The October 2020 update is now out, adding detailed records for 4425 new titles, the great majority of which are for works published in 2019-20.

The latest update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History adds records of 4425 new publications. The new content includes books, articles, book chapters and edited collections covering all walks of British and Irish history, and the British world, from the 1st to the 21st century. A further 1250 existing records now include links to online reviews of a particular book. Integral links for each record, where available, take you to the abstract or full version of an online publication (article or ebook) or to journal reviews of a featured book.

The October 2020 update brings the total number of BBIH records to 622,961. Of these, 1449 records provide detailed information and links to titles published in 2020 with a further 1232 records for 2019 publications. New records for over 13,000 titles have been added to the Bibliography in several updates this year, alongside links to over 4000 online book reviews.

From the October update: 446 new records relate to recent publications in Irish history, while 188 deal with the history of London, 283 with the history of Scotland and 103 with recent histories of Wales. There are 736 new records for ‘Imperial and Commonwealth’, of which 94 records refer to histories of the American colonies.

Latest listing of new records, relating to published histories of the former British empire

As part of the October 2020 update, the Bibliography’s editors have compiled a listing of publications relating to Black British History, drawn from the Bibliography. The list offers 412 recent publications in this field (2010 to 2020) and is available online via BBIH’s publisher Brepols or as a downloadable pdf.

Selected titles taken from the BBIH listing of publications in the field of Black British History

We’re also very aware of the challenges facing university students and teachers from September 2020. Therefore we’ve developed a page of online tutorials — all embeddable in a VLE — that helps you get the most from the Bibliography of British and Irish History, including the basics for searching and how to use your results as well as a behind-the-scenes guide to how the BBIH is compiled. Short video guides are designed for new undergraduates, for those planning and researching a final year dissertation, and MA and PhD students for whom BBIH is essential for writing a literature review and studying secondary fields of interest.

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About the Bibliography of British and Irish History

The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is the largest and most comprehensive guide available to what’s been written about British and Irish history, from the early 1900s to 2020.

It’s an essential resource for research and teaching, providing up-to-date information (and links) on nearly 620,000 History books, articles, chapters, edited collections and theses.

New records are added in three annual updates. These records are searchable by a wide range of facets including: title, author, chronology, date and form of publication, historical topic and geographical region.

The Bibliography is a research project of the UK’s Institute of Historical Research and the Royal Historical Society, and is published by Brepols. BBIH is a subscription service and is available remotely via university and research libraries worldwide.