Dan Jones Audiobooks

Plantagenet kings, crusaders and Templars, medieval history written at a gallop

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.4/5 average

5 listener ratings

Who is Dan Jones?

Dan Jones (born 27 July 1981) is a British popular historian, novelist, television presenter and journalist, educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. The label popular historian is sometimes deployed as faint praise; in Jones’s case it simply describes the job – serious history written with enough pace and colour that people actually finish the books.

His territory, on the evidence of the titles on our shelves, is the medieval world: kings, crusades and military orders, the centuries in which England’s story was written in dynastic ambition and holy war. That he moves between history, fiction, journalism and television suggests a writer more interested in reaching audiences than in guarding academic turf.

Dan Jones in audiobooks

Our catalogue carries three of his books – The Plantagenets, Crusaders and The Templars – which together amount to a box set of the Middle Ages: a royal dynasty, the wars for the Holy Land and the warrior order whose name still carries a whiff of legend. A generous run for UK listeners, and the subjects rather sell themselves.

In audio, popular history of this kind arguably improves on the page: narrative momentum does the heavy lifting, and Jones writes history with momentum to spare. Start with The Plantagenets if English soil is the draw, or The Templars if you like your history shading into myth.