Hello all,
this thread is birthed out of a message I sent to /u/agentdcf asking about some recommendations of general works covering the period of British history from the start of the reign of the Hanovers to the present day (1714-present). Feel free to post recommendations for any work covering any aspect of history during that period. The reason for my inquiry is that I took both Medieval and Early Modern Britain classes as an undergrad, but never got the opportunity to be able to take a Modern Britain course. However, I would still love to study it on my own, as I have a genuine interest in the field. I am particularly interested in Britain during the late Victorian, Edwardian, and WWI periods, with a special look at British overseas territories. I am also interested in studying the decline in influence of the British aristocracy after WWI. Any recommendations you all have for me to study would be highly appreciated. Thanks!
Just for the sake of making my answer public so that other don't repeat the same recommendations...
For a general work of all of British history, Kenneth Morgan's Oxford History of Britain is a good choice. It's pretty straightforward. Walter Arnstein's Britain Yesterday and Today is a very decent textbook style set; you'd want volumes 3 and 4, which cover from the Glorious Revolution to 1830 and then 1830 to the present.
Those are both fine choices, though not the most exciting. I find books that are a big more fine-grained much more interesting, so I'll give a few of the most popular and influential books on that period. These are not exactly cutting edge anymore, but they're still worth reading and accessible to the non-specialist.
Linda Colley, Britons--standard work on the formation of the British nation (as distinct from English and Scottish) following the Act of Union in 1707; she emphasizes the role of wars against Catholic France in forming a particularly Protestant Britishness, with obviously problematic implications for Ireland's place in the United Kingdom. There have been plenty of critiques of it, but it's a good entry point for modern Britain.
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class--social and cultural history of industrialization in the late 18th and early 19th century, a classic for both British history and historical theory more broadly. Very well written and accessible.
Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society--classic social history of 19th-century Britain and the development and institutionalization of class. Follow it up with his The Rise of Professional Society, which picks up in 1880 and goes through the twentieth century.
Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory is a good survey of the twentieth century.
You might enjoy David Cannadine's Ornamentalism if you're interested in the aristocracy and its relationships to the empire.
I second all of /u/agentdcf's recommendations, but would like to add David Cannadine's Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy in addition to Ornamentalism. The title is self-explanatory.
To add to agentdcf and MI13's suggestions, a good textbook for 20th century British history is Carnevali and Strange (eds.) - Twentieth Century Britain.
For interesting primary sources on British colonies, http://colonialfilm.org.uk/ could be worth a look.
If you want to find specific reading, then here are the undergraduate reading lists for Cambridge Uni's modules, which cover most aspects of British history in pretty good detail and also recommend more general works, websites etc.
Both John O'Farrel: An Utterly Impartial History of Britain — Or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots In Charge and An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain: or Sixty Years of Making the Same Stupid Mistakes as Always, give you a detailed account of the history of Britain, The first being from the Dawn of Man to the end of WWII, and the second being from the end of WWII onwards. They are both funny and are both very good reads, even if you aren't as interested in the times before 1714