David Abulafia Audiobooks

A Wolfson Prize winner, The Boundless Sea turns the oceans into a human history

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Who is David Abulafia?

David Abulafia (1949-2026) was an English historian and one of the great modern authorities on the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with a particular feeling for Italy and Spain. His career was Cambridge through and through: a professorship by the age of fifty, the chairmanship of the History Faculty, a long fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, and retirement in 2017 as Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History, alongside visiting posts from Gibraltar to the College of Europe.

The honours mark him out even in distinguished company. He was a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Academia Europaea; in 2013 he received one of the three inaugural British Academy Medals for his work on Mediterranean history, and in 2020 the Wolfson History Prize for The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans. His death was announced in January 2026, closing a career of rare range and authority.

David Abulafia in audiobooks

The Boundless Sea, his Wolfson Prize winner, is the Abulafia to hear: a human history of the oceans, conceived on a scale most historians would not dare attempt. In audio it feels less like study than like a long, exceptionally civilised voyage – a book to live inside for weeks rather than race through, which is precisely what the format is for. Listeners who want their history authoritative but humane, commanding in its scholarship yet always anchored in people, will find this among the most rewarding serious listens in our catalogue, and a fitting way to meet a historian the country has only recently lost.