Books by Graeme Lawson
“This is a joyful read. It’s by a leading musical archeologist, which might not be a discipline you even knew existed…The book starts in the present and works backwards. Like an archeological dig, you’re unearthing layer after layer. He goes back to the very origins of humanity and looks at our very ancient ancestors, their sense of rhythm and sound, and how we might detect that through archaeology. Graeme Lawson not only knows an awful lot about archeology. He also knows how to take a squashed bit of metal, recognize that this was a flute from the Middle Ages, reconstruct it, build a replica—and then figure out how to play it so you can hear the sound it actually made. It’s just extraordinary. You can hear the past.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2025 British Academy Book Prize
Rebecca Earle, Historian
Interviews where books by Graeme Lawson were recommended
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1
The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years
by Sunil Amrith -
2
The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin
by Lucy Ash -
3
The Golden Road
by William Dalrymple -
4
Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance
by Bronwen Everill -
5
Sick of It: The Global Fight for Women's Health
by Sophie Harman -
6
Sound Tracks: A Musical Detective Story
by Graeme Lawson
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2025 British Academy Book Prize, recommended by Rebecca Earle
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2025 British Academy Book Prize, recommended by Rebecca Earle
To be shortlisted for the annual British Academy Book Prize, books have to be both rigorously researched and highly readable. Historian Rebecca Earle, chair of the 2025 judging panel, talks us through the books that made this year’s shortlist, from an environmental history that opens with Genghis Khan and the Mongol expansion to a ‘musical detective story’ that investigates the sounds made by our ancestors down the millennia.
