Lapidarium

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What to expect

A fascinating history of stones and the surprising ways they have - and continue to - shape, influence and inspire us, in a beautiful volume.

Lapidarium weaves the surprising stories of the 60 most fascinating stones into a rich cultural history: from the red ground hematite pigment our cave-painting ancestors used and the mystery behind the tuff Easter Island heads, to the columbite that caused the Playstation War and the intriguing history of the cairngorm crystal ball, to the scandalous story of Flint Jack, whose forgeries still populate many museums in the UK today.

Journeying from granite and old red sandstone, rocks formed deep within the Earth's crust, to the moon rock samples that only recently revealed how Earth's only satellite was formed, and through the realms of art, myth, geology, philosophy and power, from the Stone Age onwards, Lapidarium is a dazzling, epoch-spanning story of humanity, told through the minerals and materials that have shaped us and inspired us.

(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critics Review

  • A collection of extravagant stories about artists, miners, princes, chancers, criminals – and above all collectors . . . a real cabinet of curiosities

    Sunday Times

  • Delightful . . . a charming book, full of surprising insight

    Prospect

  • A storybook, and a delightful one . . . The essays are shaped with great skill and Judah finds curious and pleasing symmetry and coincidences in the varied stories she tells . . . a portrait of our whole world created from the contents of the ground

    Literary Review

  • A beautifully illustrated collection of insightful essays . . . This clever outing fascinates

    Publishers Weekly, starred review

  • A gem of a collection . . . a highly accessible guide delivered in a light, informative tone. Quietly authoritative, the author sustains our attention through the pithiness of her essays and the verve of her storytelling

    Business Post

  • Lapidarium sifts through the quarry spoil of history and uncovers gems. Judah’s pages are filled with eccentrics and inventors, with the obsessive pursuit of beauty, the hopeful constructions of belief and the thirst for progress and improvement. Her stories also bear out the tragic pattern of so much engagement with the natural world – what begins in wonder leads to greed andrapacious extraction. Behind the glitter of jewellers’ windows lies the shadowy back-rooms of polluted water sources, conflict diamonds and the mercury poisoning of artisanal goldworkers.

    The Spectator

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