Audiobooks narrated by Dan Jones

Castles: A Fortified History of the World

"From the bestselling author of The Templars and Powers and Thrones, Dan Jones returns with Castles: a gripping history of the world told through over three thousand years of iconic strongholds. Castles have been built to defend humanity for millennia – from the walls of Troy and the desert bastion of Krak des Chevaliers in Syria; to Windsor Castle and the Tower of London; to Himeji in Japan and the Maginot Line in the Second World War. They have inspired terror and ambition, foiled conquering forces, and been deployed as the ultimate expression of wealth, status and supremacy. Jones leads readers on a journey through centuries and across continents as each castle tells a unique story of power, politics and survival, revealing the shifting tides of warfare, the rise and fall of empires, the resilience of people under siege and the flourishing of new ideas. Blending rich storytelling, cutting-edge research and beautiful original illustrations, Castles is an epic story of how humans first came to build fortifications and how they expanded into powerfully capturing our imagination. With Jones’s trademark scholarship and flair, he shows how defiance, endurance and imagination have been carved into the landscapes we’ve inherited."

Dan Jones (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

Monstrous Tales: Haunting encounters with Britain's mythical beasts

"Bloomsbury presents Monstrous Tales read by Kimberley Nixon, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Ian Hanmore, Oscar Kennedy, Janice Hallett, Catrin Walker-Booth, Dan Jones, Abir Mukherjee, Arthur Darvill and Ralph Ineson. This isle is full of noises... From the beaches of Orkney to the Welsh mountains, and the Derbyshire peaks to the Cornish moors, Britain is home to many strange creatures of folklore. Some are ancient, as enduring as the forests and mountains they inhabit. Others live among us, in our cities, creating new legends as they scuttle through the shadows. And none of them are to be trusted. In this deliciously chilling collection, award-winning and bestselling authors bring you tales inspired by the monsters that share our land. The perfect read for anyone who's ever spotted something slimy and unexplained in their peripheral vision, or seen eyes reflecting back in the forest where no eyes should be. INCLUDES NEW AND ORIGINAL STORIES FROM: Janice Hallett Abir Mukherjee Rosie Andrews Stuart Turton Dan Jones Jenn Ashworth Sunyi Dean Jane Johnson Rebecca Netley C 2025 Rosie Andrews C 2025 Dan Jones C 2025 Janice Hallett C 2025 Sunyi Dean P 2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC C 2025 Abir Mukherjee C 2025 Rebecca Netley C 2025 Stuart Turton C 2025 Jane Johnson C 2025 Jenn Ashworth"

Abir Mukherjee, Dan Jones, Helen-Rose Andrews, Jane Johnson, Janice Hallett, Jenn Ashworth, Rebecca Netley, Rosie Andrews, Stuart Turton, Sunyi Dean (Author), Abir Mukherjee, Arthur Darvill, Catrin Walker-Booth, Dan Jones, Ian Hanmore, Janice Hallett, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Kimberley Nixon, Oscar Kennedy, Ralph Ineson (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Life and Death of Richard III

"Bloomsbury presents The Life and Death of Richard III by Anthony Cheetham, read by Jonathan Oliver and Dan Jones. With a new introduction and concluding chapter from bestselling medieval author Dan Jones. Richard III is one of the most mysterious figures in English history, and as such is the source of perennial fascination. Comparatively little is known of his early life, his appearance, his interests, for up to 1483 he played second fiddle to his more glorious older brothers, Edward 'this sun of York', and the feckless Clarence. Anthony Cheetham cuts through the legend and the propaganda to try to retrace the life of Richard, the neglected years before he assumed the throne, and thus to place in context the twenty six stormy months of his reign before the last of the Plantagenets died on Bosworth Field. He considers three critical questions in particular. Did he really believe his brother and nephews were illegitimate? Why did he seize the throne? What happened to the princes in the tower? This new edition of a classic royal biography includes an account of the discovery of Richard’s remains in a Leicester car park in September 2012 and what his skeleton revealed about the physical condition of the last Plantagenet and the manner of his death. First published in 1972, and acknowledged as the inspiration behind Philippa Gregory's portrayal of Richard in her bestselling The White Queen, this new edition brings the story of England's most infamous monarch fully up to date. P 2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC C 1972 Anthony Cheetham"

Anthony Cheetham (Author), Dan Jones, Jonathan Oliver (Narrator)

Audiobook

Magna Carta: The Making and Legacy of the Great Charter

"Bloomsbury present Magna Carta: The Making and Legacy of the Great Charter, written and read by Dan Jones. A beautifully produced account of the signing, impact and legacy of Magna Carta, a document that became one of the most influential statements in the history of democracy, as part of the stunning landmark library series. On a summer's day in 1215 a beleaguered English monarch met a group of disgruntled barons in a meadow by the river Thames named Runnymede. Beset by foreign crisis and domestic rebellion, King John was fast running out of options. On 15 June he reluctantly agreed to fix his regal seal to a document that would change the world. A milestone in the development of constitutional politics and the rule of law, the 'Great Charter' established an Englishman's right to Habeas Corpus and set limits to the exercise of royal power. For the first time a group of subjects had forced an English king to agree to a document that limited his powers by law and protected their rights. Dan Jones's elegant and authoritative narrative of the making and legacy of Magna Carta is amplified by profiles of the barons who secured it and a full text of the charter in both Latin and English. C 2024 Ken Bruen P 2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"

Dan Jones (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

Native Moments: A Costa Rican Surf Adventure

"After the death of his brother, Sanch Murray leaves for a surf trip to Costa Rica as a way to cope, but also as a way to prolong making decisions about his adult life, setting out on a quixotic search for an alternative to the American Dream. Set in 1999 Costa Rica, Sanch and his friend Jake Higdon wander the dirt roads of Tamarindo and surrounding areas chasing waves as a way to live out the romantic fantasy lifestyle of traveling surfers. Jake Higdon, six years Sanch's senior, takes on the role of the wise leader and Sanch as his young apprentice. Sanch's adventure leads to encounters with people who share world views he had never considered and could potentially shape his own changing perceptions about life. His existential adjustment gradually manifests through sometimes humorous episodes such as trying his hand as a matador at a roadside rodeo or in his not-so-humorous battle with dysentery. Along his journey, Sanch befriends a shamanistic traveler named Rob, young revolutionaries from Venezuela, numerous expatriates from around the world trying to escape whatever it is that keeps chasing them and a beautiful local girl named Andrea, who Sanch suspects is a prostitute but can't help falling for."

Nic Schuck (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest Warrior King

"Bloomsbury presents Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest Warrior King, written and read by Dan Jones. Nominated for Best Audiobook: Non-Fiction at The Speakies (The British Audio Awards) A brand-new life of England’s greatest king from our bestselling medieval historian 'A historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist.' Observer Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months, and died at the age of just 35, but he looms over the landscape of the late Middle Ages and beyond. The victor of Agincourt was a model king for his successors. Shakespeare’s version of Henry V saw his youthful folly redirected to sober statesmanship, and in the dark days of World War II, Henry’s victories in France were recounted in British propaganda. Churchill called Henry ‘a gleam of splendour in the dark, troubled story of medieval England’, while for one modern medievalist, Henry was, quite simply, ‘the greatest man who ever ruled England’. For Dan Jones, Henry is one of the most intriguing characters in all medieval history, but one of the hardest to pin down. He was a hardened, sometimes brutal, warrior, yet he was also creative and artistic, with a bookish temperament. He was a leader who made many mistakes, who misjudged his friends and family members, yet always seemed to triumph when it mattered. As king, he saved a shattered country from economic ruin, put down rebellions and secured England’s borders; in foreign diplomacy, he made England a serious player once more. Yet through his conquests in northern France, he sowed the seeds for three generations of calamity at home, in the form of the Wars of the Roses. Dan Jones’s life of Henry V provides unprecedented insight into the critical first 26 years of his life before he became king. Both a standalone biography and a completion of Dan’s sequence of English medieval histories that began with The Plantagenets and The Hollow Crown, Henry V is a thrilling and unmissable life of England’s greatest king from our best-selling medieval historian. C 2024 Dan Jones P 2024 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC"

Dan Jones (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Templars

"Bloomsbury presents The Templars written and read by Dan Jones. Dan Jones narrates in his inimitably vivid and authoritative fashion the remarkable story of the Knights Templar. 'Exhilarating, epic, sword-swinging history' TLS 'Jones is certainly an entertainer, but also a fine historian who knows how to render serious scholarship into accessible prose' The Times 'Another triumphant tale from a historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist' Observer ‘When it comes to rip-roaring medieval narratives, Jones has few peers, and in the Templars he finds the perfect subject' Sunday Times The Knights Templar were the wealthiest, most powerful – and most secretive – of the military orders that flourished in the crusading era. Their story – encompassing as it does the greatest international conflict of the Middle Ages, a network of international finance, a swift rise in wealth and influence followed by a bloody and humiliating fall – has left a comet's tail of mystery that continues to fascinate and inspire historians, novelists and conspiracy theorists."

Dan Jones (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings

"A chilling medieval ghost story, retold by bestselling historian Dan Jones. One winter, in the dark days of King Richard II, a tailor was riding home on the road from Gilling to Ampleforth. It was dank, wet and gloomy; he couldn't wait to get home and sit in front of a blazing fire. Then, out of nowhere, the tailor is knocked off his horse by a raven, who then transforms into a hideous dog, his mouth writhing with its own innards. The dog issues the tailor with a warning: he must go to a priest and ask for absolution and return to the road, or else there will be consequences... First recorded in the early fifteenth century by an unknown monk, The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings was transcribed from the Latin by the great medievalist M.R. James in 1922. Building on that tradition, now bestselling historian Dan Jones retells this medieval ghost story in crisp and creepy prose."

Dan Jones (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

"From the bestselling author of The Templars, Dan Jones's epic new history tells nothing less than the story of how the world we know today came to be built. Across 16 chapters, blending Dan Jones' trademark gripping narrative style with authoritative analysis, Powers and Thrones shows how, at each stage in this story, successive western powers thrived by attracting – or stealing – the most valuable resources, ideas and people from the rest of the world. It casts new light on iconic locations – Rome, Paris, Venice, Constantinople – and it features some of history's most famous and notorious men and women. This is a book written about – and for – an age of profound change, and it asks the biggest questions about the West both then and now. Where did we come from? What made us? Where do we go from here? 'A terrifically colourful and compelling narrative history... A hugely impressive achievement, bustling and sizzling with life... This is now simply the best popular history of the Middle Ages' Sunday Times A great achievement, pulling together many strands with aplomb' Peter Frankopan, Spectator, Books of the Year 'It's so delightful to encounter a skilled historian of such enormous energy who's never afraid of being entertaining' The Times, Books of the Year 'An amazing masterly gripping panorama' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'A badass history writer... to put it mildly' Duff McKagan"

Dan Jones (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

Ctrl, Alt, Dead

"Peter Lewis has his future firmly in hand: a steady bartending job, a girlfriend who believes in him, and college in the fall. During the quiet hours after work, he slips into an online gaming world, a harmless escape from the weight of everyday life. But the escape begins to take control and what starts as simple entertainment becomes an obsession Peter can't explain or control. As the boundary between the virtual world and the physical world dissolves, his health declines, his job teeters on the edge, and the relationships that once kept him grounded begin to fracture. With his future unraveling and everything he loves hanging in the balance, Peter must confront an addiction that threatens to consume him, using skills he didn’t know he had, inside a reality he didn’t know existed. Can he conquer his addiction, or have the demons conquered him?"

Kevin Lamport (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

Crusaders

"Dan Jones, best-selling chronicler of the Middle Ages, turns his attention to the history of the Crusades – the sequence of religious wars fought between the late eleventh century and late medieval periods, in which armies from European Christian states attempted to wrest the Holy Land from Islamic rule, and which have left an enduring imprint on relations between the Muslim world and the West. From the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 to the loss of the last crusader outpost in the Levant in 1302-03, and from the taking of Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1099 to the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291, Crusaders tells a tale soaked in Islamic, Christian and Jewish blood, peopled by extraordinary characters, and characterised by both low ambition and high principle. Dan Jones is a master of popular narrative history, with the priceless ability to write page-turning narrative history underpinned by authoritative scholarship. Never before has the era of the Crusades been depicted in such bright and striking colours, or their story told with such gusto."

Dan Jones (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England

"This brilliant new audiobook explores the lives of eight generations of the greatest kings and queens that this country has ever seen, and the worst. The Plantagenets – their story is the story of Britain. England’s greatest royal dynasty, the Plantagenets, ruled over England through eight generations of kings. Their remarkable reign saw England emerge from the Dark Ages to become a highly organised kingdom that spanned a vast expanse of Europe. Plantagenet rule saw the establishment of laws and creation of artworks, monuments and tombs which survive to this day, and continue to speak of their sophistication, brutality and secrets. Dan Jones brings you a new vision of this battle-scarred history. From the Crusades, to King John’s humbling over Magna Carta and the tragic reign of the last Plantagenet, Richard II – this is a blow-by-blow account of England’s most thrilling age."

Dan Jones (Author), Dan Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Dan Jones

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