Dependent on my grades (which are now out of my control as exams have been cancelled!) I'll be going to study (read) history at the University of Cambridge at some point towards the end of this year.

I'm absolutely determined not to lose my edge, and to continue stimulating and challenging my historical thinking, so that I'm not totally out of depth when I do go to study.

As such I'm asking for ANY recommendations you have whatsoever, be they books, articles (I have JSTOR!), podcasts, source exercises and so on.

I'm particularly interested by the history of political thought, and most recently really enjoyed Foucault's Discipline & Punish (if he counts as an historian!) and would definitely like to learn a bit more about power dynamics throughout history. I also read an extract from Montaillou, which I'm about to buy, and any recommendations for similar historical works would be greatly appreciated! One final, very specific request is for decent histories of social housing.

In general though I'm VERY open. The one criteria is that it challenges the way I think & exposes me to different methods of doing history; I'm not so interested in learning the timeline and a tonne of facts about a particular event!

Thanks very much and I look forward to reading your recommendations. Hopefully, this can be useful for other redditors wanting to engage historically and with a lot of time on their hands!