The Dig Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

John Preston (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator), Kate Reading (Narrator),

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In the long hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war. But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Petty, the widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear though that this is no ordinary find....

And pretty soon the discovery leads to all kinds of jealousies and tensions. John Preston's recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig - the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain - brilliantly and comically dramatises three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure.

Listening Length

6 hours and 48 minutes
Author

John Preston
Narrator

Simon Vance, see all
Audible release date

3 September 2020
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Audio
ASIN

B08DJ9MN86
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	6 hours and 48 minutes
Author	John Preston
Narrator	Simon Vance, Kate Reading, Fiona Hardingham, Derek Perkins
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	03 September 2020
Publisher	Penguin Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B08DJ9MN86
Best Sellers Rank	31,785 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 168 in World War II Historical Fiction 22,078 in Teen & Young Adult (Books)

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1 star		2%

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Meredith Jacobs-Smith

A great story of the past

Reviewed in Australia on 31 January 2021

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As stories go, Basil Brown was a remarkable man. Sutton Hoo was a great discovery. Watch the movie it’s wonderful.

2 people found this helpful

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Ann Dixon

Interesting account

Reviewed in Australia on 22 May 2021

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I had wanted to see the film of tha archaeological dig, but it is on Netflix. This written account gives the bare facts of the Sutton Whoo discovery, without going into a lot of detail

One person found this helpful

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Barry S.

Hugely interesting story

Reviewed in Australia on 8 July 2021

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The book is as good as the picture and is a fascinating account of a little know story. Clear and well written.

One person found this helpful

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Evan P Groombridge

How the Dig progressed and the problems encountered

Reviewed in Australia on 20 May 2021

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The book was very interesting. I read it after I viewed the film. Enjoyed the book as well.

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BrenDon

An irritating yawn.

Reviewed in Australia on 26 May 2021

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What an irritating yawn.

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mrs c m richards

Good read

Reviewed in Australia on 26 March 2021

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Very nice book x

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

The Book is Best

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 February 2021

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This book should not be missed. I first read ‘The Dig’ several years ago, enjoyed it thoroughly and passed it on. The memory of it stayed with me, but inevitably merged with all things archaeological in newspapers, books and on TV. Then along came the film adaptation which I watched and enjoyed - to an extent, but felt it a compromise, and in some instances indelicate. So, I decided to buy another copy of the book and have been so pleased and rewarded that I did. The novel is written with 4 narrators. This is what makes the books so much better for me. There is more to learn and to enjoy about the characters from their view point and it reminds that this is a book of fiction and why fiction is fundamentally important. The narrations of Edith Pretty and Peggy Piggot are at the heart of this novel (as they should be) as this is about people first and foremost; an exploration of loss, disappointment, the wheel of time, and what of us we leave behind. The male narrations have their place, but the women make the book special. I thought long and hard about what seems something of an abrupt end to the novel and it actually fits. It is no surprise and no regret that there are no narratives from the professional archaeologists who all appear earth-bound. What I hope will remain in me are the individual narratives of the four characters.

19 people found this helpful

Caroline Zilboorg

Beautifully written and evocative historical novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 August 2018

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This elegant historical novel is well-conceived and beautifully written. The author recreates the excavation of Sutton Hoo through the eyes of various participants, drawing on authentic detail and historical material. The result is both convincing and emotionally moving. There can be no explosive conclusion save what we already know: the excavation was successful, which is the reason there's a story at all. The novel's limitations, however, are finally one of its many strengths: it sticks to the facts while animating within the parameters of what is known-- or even knowable-- about this particular historical moment. I highly recommend this book not as intense drama (despite its dramatic moments) but as excellent historical fiction by a sensitive author who writes with informed understanding not only of his material but of both narrative and language.

29 people found this helpful

Ian Thumwood

A disservice to Sutton Hoo

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 March 2021

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Any novel about archaeology that is bathed in nostalgia and recommended by Iain McEwan should be ticking all the boxes. Given the glowing comments I had heard regarding the screen adaption of this book, my hopes were set very high for this book yet I found this novella disappointing on every level.

The discovery of the Sutton Hoo hoard is one of the pivotal moments in British archaeology and helped plug the gap in our understanding over the period following the departure of the Roman and the early medieval period of Late Saxon England. The finds occupy pride of place in the British Museum and the story of Basil Brown is in itself very English given the fact that he was a brilliant amateur.

I have to say that I think John Preston has really done Brown a disservice in this novel and compounded the problem by putting himself into the shoes of two female protagonists - something that always makes me uncomfortable with male writers. The novel has two undercurrents running through it. The first of these is to do with class and how Brown was ostracized by the archaeological "establishment" and the looming threat of Nazi invasion in 1939 - the irony being that the Saxons had themselves been Germanic invaders. However, my dissatisfaction with this novel goes well beyond this. I think the this book tries to be an archaeological equivalent of "The remains of the day" and the overriding problem for me is how something that was so exciting in real life can be rendered so dull on the page. The excavation itself is almost a sideshow to the novel but the sub-plots never seem to have much relevance to the plot.

I picked this book up immediately after reading an exceptional novel by William Boyd where the strength of his writing makes you overlook the rather incredible basis of the fictional plot. By contrast, I felt that Preston had taken something that was both true and incredible and rendered it dull and cliched. In my opinion both Brown and the site itself merited something better and I am now eager to see what the film makers made of this story to see if they gave the story it's just desserts. For a novel that should have had the reader glued to the page, this book was strangely unengaging. It has a similar feel to the novel written about 15 years ago called "The Damned" which was about Brian Clough's tenure at Leeds Utd. That book shared the same feel of not being quite right.

5 people found this helpful

Richard Morris

Not nearly as good as the marketing suggests

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 June 2018

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Not nearly as good as the marketing suggests. I know the Sutton Hoo story well and looked forward to reading Preston's novel but I felt very short handed after reading the book. Apart from a few niggling details (the High Street in Woodbridge is actually called The Throughfare and have to question whether any one village in England had 61 men serving in WW1) the prose is purple, leaden and difficult to believe. The book didn't hold my attention and I'm astonished at some of the reviews I have read calling it a masterpiece. Was it this the book critics were reading?

23 people found this helpful

M. Dowden

A Novel of Sutton Hoo

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 April 2021

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Make no mistake about this, this book is definitely a novel, so please do not take everything that happens here as fact. What John Preston has done is use the real event of the discovery at Sutton Hoo and used quite a bit of license. The dig itself actually took place over two seasons, but here has been compacted into one, and 1939 was the last, not the first season.

The story is told through five different narrators, although the last one is set in 1965 and is the son of Mrs Pretty, Robert who is mentioned in the tale. Here then Mrs Pretty, now a widow with a young son has been advised to gain the services of a certain Basil Brown to look at whether to investigate the mounds on her estate. As we follow, we see what happens when others start to get involved, and thus can see the politics of the Ipswich and the British Museum coming to play, and what this means for Brown and others who originally started the excavations. As the year is 1939 so we also can see how the country is starting to gear up in certain ways for war, and there are thus also the remembrances of characters to the First World War.

So, although there is quite a bit of fact and detail to the dig and how archaeologists worked at the time, and we can see the pressure that they were under due to impending war and had to cover up the ship, leaving it alone whilst hostilities began, this is more of a tale about people. We see Peggy Piggott thus being side-lined, although she was the first person to find any gold on the site, which is shown here, but we also see her being told that she has only been picked for the dig because as a woman she is of a lighter frame than the men, and so should cause less disturbance in case there is a cave-in. There is also some humour here as Mrs Pretty holds a sherry party so that those interested in the county can come and see the discovery, although as shown this is a bit of a nuisance.

This does make for a good read then, and it is interesting how the author brings to life certain elements, and how the different characters get on, or not, working together. If you want to know all the facts though you will have to turn to a non-fiction book with accounts of all that did actually go on, and what was discovered in detail.

4 people found this helpful

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The Dig Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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