Stonehenge with Ken Follett
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if the secrets of Stonehenge lie not just in the stones, but in the people who hauled them there?
Tristan Hughes sits down with best-selling novelist Ken Follett to uncover and imagine the lives of the Stone Age builders, the rival communities around Salisbury Plain, and the extraordinary teamwork needed to raise one of the most famous monuments in the world.
They reveal fascinating details about flint mines, giant Sarsen stones, ancient trade, communal festivals, and the breathtaking ingenuity behind moving and lifting blocks that weighed 25 tons or more.
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The World of Stonehenge
Stonehenge
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Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor and producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Tudorburg forest? |
| 0:04.0 | What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? |
| 0:07.0 | Or what made Alexander truly great? |
| 0:10.0 | With a subscription to history hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. |
| 0:17.0 | You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week |
| 0:22.5 | covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. |
| 0:26.5 | Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's one of the most famous prehistoric monuments in the world, |
| 0:47.7 | a monument that was first built more than 5,000 years ago. |
| 0:52.9 | Its story and use continue to evolve over the following centuries and millennia, |
| 0:59.2 | and today it still holds so much meaning to so many people. Stonehenge. |
| 1:07.2 | Now, there are still so many theories surrounding Stonehenge, its purpose, its construction, |
| 1:13.6 | its Stone Age significance. And yet, new discoveries continue to reveal more fascinating |
| 1:20.6 | details. A few years back, for instance, it was revealed that the Great Sarsen stones that |
| 1:26.6 | defined Stonehenge, each weighing |
| 1:29.0 | about 25 to 30 tonnes, came from the Morbredowns roughly 15 miles away. But how exactly |
| 1:36.7 | these Stone Age people went about transporting those massive blocks remains debated. Living in a world long before written history, it is amazing to think about |
| 1:48.7 | who these people were, the builders of Stonehenge. How did they view the world around them? |
| 1:54.7 | What drove them to undertake such a project? To transport these massive stones over 20 kilometres |
| 2:00.4 | and set them up at Stonehenge. |
| 2:03.5 | How might they have done it? |
| 2:06.6 | It's this mysterious world that is the setting for the newest historical novel by one of Britain's |
| 2:12.6 | most cherished writers, Ken Follett. |
... |
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