Thinking of reading about it. No particular time period - more of an overview, I can zoom in later. All I know is we kicked their asses in 1783 and they live on a tiny island.
Simon Schama's three volume "A History of Britain". About as close your going to get to an intellectual overview, otherwise you're looking at simplistic children's books as most tomes don't give overviews but rather deal with a specific period, topic or person (Middle Ages, Empire, Industrial Revolution, WWII, politicians, monarchs and so on).
The answers are: The Danelaw, 1066, Thomas a Beckett, Runnymede, Agincourt, Anne Boleyn, The Spanish Armada, Gunpowder, The Act of Union, Lord Cornwallis, HMS Victory, The Duke of Wellington, steam, Zulus, Dunkirk, "An Iron Curtain," Profumo, The Irish Republican Army, and Coal Miners.
Winston Churchill wrote extensively on this. It's probably too detailed for what you're looking for but it's what I'd recommend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_English-Speaking_Peoples
Everything I know about British history I learned from Monty Python and Fry & Laurie (and derivative works such as Fawlty Towers and Jeeves and Wooster).
British history really only has one point from the perspective of modern Brits: "No, none of them made it off the island." They're still stuck there to this day.
It is a huge multi volume work and a bit out of date but Churchill's History of English Speaking Peoples is a classic. So is his 15 volume work on the history of the Roman Empire.
