Andrew Marr Audiobooks

Civilisation at a gallop: A History of the World, in one of Britain's most familiar voices

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Who is Andrew Marr?

Andrew Marr, born in 1959, is a Scottish journalist, author, broadcaster and presenter whose CV maps a vast stretch of British public life: political commentator at The Scotsman, editor of The Independent in the late 1990s, political editor of BBC News from 2000 to 2005, then the long fixture years – Start the Week on Radio 4 and the Sunday morning programme that became The Andrew Marr Show. A serious stroke in January 2013 put him in hospital for two months; he was back in the presenter’s chair by September. He left the BBC at the end of 2021 for his own programmes on LBC and Classic FM, and became Political Editor of the New Statesman.

Alongside the day jobs, Marr built a parallel reputation as a maker of sweeping television histories – of post-war Britain, of the making of the modern nation, and most ambitiously of human civilisation itself.

Andrew Marr in audiobooks

A History of the World, the Marr title in our catalogue, shares its territory with the television series he began presenting in 2012, which set out to examine the history of human civilisation – and it is precisely the kind of listening at which broadcasters excel. Marr has spent a career explaining complicated things to general audiences in real time, and the discipline shows: momentum, clarity and a journalist’s nose for the telling episode.

For UK listeners this is grand-sweep history in one of the country’s most familiar voices, ideal for long drives and longer walks. It is ambitious in scope and wears the ambition lightly.