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Thomas B. Costain Audiobooks

The Three Edwards: Plantagenet history with a journalist's pace and a storyteller's ear

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The Plantagenets · 1 book

Who is Thomas B. Costain?

Thomas B. Costain, born in 1885, was a Canadian-American journalist with one of publishing’s better second acts: he became a best-selling author of historical novels at the age of fifty-seven. Decades of journalism first, best-sellerdom after – it is the kind of late-blooming career that should hearten anyone who suspects their real work is still ahead of them.

He died in 1965, and his name still signals a particular sort of book: the past delivered with a journalist’s clarity and a storyteller’s pace, written for readers rather than for the seminar room.

Thomas B. Costain in audiobooks

Our catalogue features The Three Edwards, and it shows exactly where Costain’s instincts pointed: history treated as story, with the momentum of fiction. That blend is well suited to audio – narrative history has become one of the medium’s most dependable pleasures, and a writer trained in journalism tends to keep the thread taut and the paragraphs earning their keep. For UK listeners the subject sits close to home, and the audiobook format turns what might feel like homework on the page into something closer to being told a very long, very good tale by someone who has done the reading for you.