Dan Jones

Recognizable from his television shows, on which he frequently partners with fellow historian Suzannah Lipscomb, Dan Jones also has a string of bestselling history books to his name....

Born in Reading in 1981, Jones achieved a first from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 2002 and published his first title just seven years later. Summer of Blood was an accessible account of the Peasants’ Revolt that recalled events from the perspective of ordinary people and was well-received among historians and critics.

The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England followed in 2012 and became a New York Times bestseller a year later. It was adapted into a four-part series for Channel 5, for which it was renamed Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty , and more recently has provided content for his podcast This is History .

Since the release of The Plantagenets Jones has become ever more prolific, and by 2021 had published ten histories – including two collaborations with the artist Marina Amaral, The Colour of Time in 2019 and The World Aflame in 2020. Jones has also made significant contributions to the BBC’s History Magazine and History Extra website, where his articles touch on popular topics such as the Knights Templar and Great Fire of London as well as exploring the medieval era more closely.

It was after having dinner with George RR Martin that Jones decided to make his first foray into fiction with Essex Dogs . The opening novel in a trilogy, it follows a platoon of archers fighting their way through Normandy and Crécy during the Hundred Years War and was named BBC History 2022 Book of the Year. The second instalment, Wolves of Winter , sets the men in a siege camp outside the walls of Calais. While no information about the third book in the series has been released, the dedication to writing that Jones has shown so far suggests his fans won’t have long to wait.