Dominic Sandbrook is a historian, broadcaster and columnist. He is known for his best-selling series of books on life in mid-century, post-war Britain: Never Had It So Good, White Heat, State of Emergency and Seasons in the Sun. He is also the author of The Great British Dream Factory and Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982, which also cover contemporary British history. He has written two books on recent American history, Eugene McCarthy and Mad as Hell, and an eight-book series called Adventures in Time for younger readers. Most recently, he has co-written The Rest is History (2023) and The Rest is History Returns (2024), with fellow historian – and podcast co-host – Tom Holland. Dominic co-presents (with Tom Holland) the...
Dominic Sandbrook is a historian, broadcaster and columnist.
He is known for his best-selling series of books on life in mid-century, post-war Britain: Never Had It So Good, White Heat, State of Emergency and Seasons in the Sun. He is also the author of The Great British Dream Factory and Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982, which also cover contemporary British history.
He has written two books on recent American history, Eugene McCarthy and Mad as Hell, and an eight-book series called Adventures in Time for younger readers. Most recently, he has co-written The Rest is History (2023) and The Rest is History Returns (2024), with fellow historian – and podcast co-host – Tom Holland.
Dominic co-presents (with Tom Holland) the world’s most popular history podcast, The Rest is History, which has tens of thousands of subscribers and more than 100 million downloads. He has presented live history shows to sell-out audiences in New York, Washington, Dublin, Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, as well as venues across Britain, including the West End.
In 2026, Dominic began presenting The Book Club, a podcast about the history of literature, alongside Tabitha Syrett.
Dominic has written and presented several series for television including the four-part series The 70s and The 80s with Dominic Sandbrook for BBC Two. He has presented a number of other series including Tomorrow’s Worlds: The Unearthly History of Science Fiction, Strange Days: Cold War Britain and a four-part series, Let Us Entertain You, in which he explored the extraordinary success of British popular culture over the last century all, on BBC Two.
He has been a book critic for The Sunday Times for almost twenty years and joined The Times as a columnist in 2023. He wrote for BBC History for more than a decade and was previously a columnist for the Evening Standard, the New Statesman and The Daily Mail. Marking their 25th anniversary in 2007, Waterstones named Dominic as one of their 25 Authors for the Future. He was nominated for Critic of the Year in the National Press Awards for 2018, and as Comment Journalist of the Year in the British Journalism Awards for 2021.
Dominic was born in Shropshire and educated at Malvern College before studying at Balliol College, Oxford, the University of St Andrews and Jesus College, Cambridge. He was formerly a history lecturer at Sheffield and senior fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is also a fervent Wolverhampton Wanderers fan.
