The Sunday Times names Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time its top-ranked book of last 50 years

Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (Bantam) notched up over five years on the Sunday Times charts, making it the newspaper’s top-ranked title in the past 50 years.

The late physicist’s classic tome hit the Sunday Times’ list for a record 264 weeks since first appearing in 1988, to lead its top 100 titles since the charts’ launch in 1974, a list unveiled to celebrate its 50th anniversary. A Brief History of Time was also the top-ranked book when the Sunday Times did the same exercise on its 40th anniversary.     

Like The Bookseller’s definitive and comprehensive charts, the Sunday Times has, since 1998, used accurate full-market print data provided by Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. In the 25 years prior 1998, no volume figures were used in the Sunday Times’ charts, so it should be underscored its top 100 books list is based on number of appearances in its chart, and are not necessarily the UK’s bestselling titles.

The Sunday Times also has a number of historic blind spots, with charts for children’s, non-fiction and "manuals" (recipe books, and titles like G T Karber’s Murdle) not published weekly for many years. So J K Rowling, by far the bestselling author since accurate records began, only appears once on the Sunday Times Top 100 of the past 50 years with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury) in 23rd place.