An Oxford professor and noted historian has won the $75,000 Cundill Prize for his acclaimed book A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.

The prize jury announced British historian Diarmaid MacCulloch as the 2010 winner of McGill University's non-fiction historical literature honour at a ceremony in Montreal Sunday night.

"At a time when quarrels between believers and non-believers, new atheists and old faithfuls, dominate so much of our public discourse, Diarmaid MacCulloch has given us the one thing that we most need — not polemic but history, high, wide, and lucid, and, given the enormity of his task, often winningly light of touch," juror Adam Gopnik said in a statement.

"If any book could truly fulfill the charge of the Cundill Prize — to make first class history more potent to a wide reading public, and above all to remind us that history, even three thousand years worth, matters — this one does," said Gopnik, a New Yorker writer and McGill alumnus.

The author triumphed over the more than 180 entries submitted from around the globe this year.

MacCulloch, 59, also hosted a six-part BBC television series based on his book. His previous titles include Thomas Cranmer: A Life, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the British Academy Book Prize.

Cundill 2010 finalists also included Giancarlo Casale (The Ottoman Age of Exploration) and Marla Biller (Betsy Ross and the Making of America), who each received $10,000 as a "recognition of excellence."

Established by investment manager and McGill alumnus Peter Cundill in 2008, the Cundill Prize in History celebrates a historical book published in English or French that has "a profound literary, social and academic impact."

Past winners include British historian and professor Lisa Jardine (Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory) and U.S. historian and professor Stuart B. Schwartz (All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World )