Paths to the Past cover art

Paths to the Past

Encounters with Britain's Hidden Landscapes

 Preview

Get 30 days of Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30-day free trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Penguin Presents the audiobook edition of Paths to the Past written and read by Francis Pryor.

Landscapes reflect and shape our behaviour. They make us who we are and bear witness to the shifting patterns of human life over the generations. Formed by a complex series of natural and human processes, they rarely yield their secrets readily.

Bringing to bear a lifetime's digging, Francis Pryor delves into England's hidden urban and rural landscapes, from Whitby Abbey to the navvy camp at Risehill in Cumbria, from Tintagel to Tottenham's Broadwater Farm. Scattered through fields, woods, moors, roads, tracks and towns, he reveals the stories of our physical surroundings and what they meant to the people who formed them, used them and lived in them. These landscapes, he stresses, are our common physical inheritance. If we can understand how to make them yield up their secrets, it will help us, their guardians, to maintain and shape them for future generations.

 Archaeology Architecture Earth Sciences Europe Great Britain Science England Thought-Provoking

Critic reviews

Praise for Home: 'Pryor is a master storyteller... polite, informative, madly curious and at times as wide-eyed and cheeky as a schoolboy... Home is a thought-provoking discourse on the changing nature of prehistory family life [and] can be read from cover to cover like a novel'
Under his gaze, the land starts to fill with tribes and clans wandering this way and that, leaving traces that can still be seen today . . . Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it
A deeply sympathetic and practical engagement with what might have been involved in living in a prehistoric family ... Home was where the quern was
A fascinating and important story about how our ancestors lived, worked, thought, worshipped and organised themselves.
As archaeologist and broadcaster Francis Pryor explores in his excellently written, semi-autobiographical new book, the family was just as important then as it is now. By exploring what we can learn from the evidence left behind, Pryor also reveals the ways in which archaeology can tell us about "ordinary" lives ... Pryor is a hugely entertaining writer.
All stars
Most relevant
Always enjoy listening to and learning from Pryor, excellent writer and excellent reader, lots of new perspectives to think about!

Paths to understanding our world

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A wonderfully entertaining and educational ramble across the ancient paths and roads of Britain.

I had the great fortune to read this right after the Stonemason's Tale which added another layer of understanding to the wonderfully rich history of our great land.

A ramble across ancient Britain

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I do love Francis Pryor! His narration is gentle but witty, and I love the autobiographical details he drops in to his books that stops them feeling like a history lecture. Wonderfully informative and visually described - I don't always agree with his choice of places but it does mean I've learned about things I would never have read about left to my own devices!

This is a 'must listen' for anyone interested in how Britain came to be, and why.

My only gripe is the thing about the North Yorkshire Moors in the Whitby segment, where Francis mentions Wuthering Heights on a couple of occasions. I would have thought an historian (especially one who knows North Yorkshire so well) would know that the Brontes wrote about the other side of the county, not here!

Gentle, educational meander around Britain

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
So-so. Bit nostalgic and sentimenta, and repetitive towards the end. It's quite short so I persevered

Stuffy, but some good bits

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.