Hugh Aldersey-Williams Audiobooks

Periodic Tales turns the chemical elements into a history of human curiosity

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Who is Hugh Aldersey-Williams?

Hugh Aldersey-Williams, born in 1959, is a British author and journalist with an unusually well-stocked mind. Educated at Highgate School, he read natural sciences at Cambridge, and his books roam the territory where nature and human design meet. He is also a curator, with exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wellcome Collection to his name, and has written on Sir Thomas Browne.

His best-known book is Periodic Tales, from 2011, a journey through world history tracing where, how and why humanity discovered the chemical elements. The Daily Telegraph called it ‘a paean to the building blocks of matter’, and Kirkus found it lucid and enjoyable. It even spawned an exhibition: in 2015 he co-curated Periodic Tales: The Art of the Elements at Compton Verney, exploring the relationship between artworks and the raw materials that go into them.

Hugh Aldersey-Williams in audiobooks

Periodic Tales is his book in our catalogue, and it is a natural audiobook: a history of the elements told through human stories rather than equations, which means it asks nothing of a listener but curiosity. Aldersey-Williams is that valuable thing, a science writer trained in the sciences who thinks like a curator – every element becomes an object with a biography, from discovery to cultural afterlife. For UK listeners who enjoy popular history with a gallery-tour flavour, this scratches exactly that itch: erudite without being effortful, and full of the sort of detail you will find yourself repeating at dinner.