Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West [Hardcover]

'Tom Holland is a born storyteller' GUARDIAN 'Meticulous about literary and historical accuracy - scarily bright' DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘Excellent’

‘Masterly and gripping’

'Holland is too canny a scholar ... (and) too canny a storyteller ... he paints a fine portrait'

‘Holland knows his stuff … scintillating narrative of one of the great conflicts of the ancient world’

‘Tom Holland’s masterly study brings the Persians to vivid life … panoramic and gripping book’

'Astonishing well written ... Holland vividly describes the crash
of metal and bone at Marathon' --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

'Holland makes it all sound as fresh as if it happened yesterday'
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

In 480 BC, Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory - rapid, spectacular victory - had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. In the space of a single generation, they had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. As a result of those conquests, Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet. Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out. The Persians were turned back. Greece remained free. Had the Greeks been defeated at Salamis, not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely that there would ever have been such and entity as the West at all. Tom Holland's brilliant new book describes the very first 'clash of Empires' between East and West. Once again he has found extraordinary parallels between the ancient world and our own. There is no competing popular book describing these events.

Tom Holland received a double first from Cambridge. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for BBC Radio. He was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for RUBICON and won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2004.