Alexander

'A thrilling story, wonderfully told by one of the great historians' KEN FOLLETT

'Dazzling... This is biography of great brilliance and rare resonance' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

'A pulsating, vivid life of a true historical titan' DAN JONES

'A splendid book, lively, erudite... where myth and heroism meet' RORY STEWART

A stunningly written new biography of Alexander the Great, based on a series of important new discoveries and the author's own translations of source material from twelve ancient languages.

In 336 BCE, at the age of twenty, Alexander, a wide-eyed boy from the hills of Macedon, inherited a tumbledown kingdom, a pile of debts and an army which answered to nobody. Desperate to hold on to power, he led the army east, into the heart of the vast Persian Empire, and inadvertently began the greatest military campaign in history. The young man became a king, the king became a hero, the hero became a living god, and the god died aged thirty-two, broken-hearted in Babylon.

For centuries, historians have told his story, yet Alexander has remained a mystery. But now, the ruins of his cities have emerged from the bottom of the sea and the dust of Central Asian hillsides. The diaries of Babylonian astronomers who knew him have been deciphered. The tombs of his ancestors have been unearthed. For the first time, instead of the legend, we can meet Alexander the man.

Based on more than a decade of cutting-edge research, Alexander allows readers to feel the desert wind and experience the full horror of battle. Richardson's research has taken him from the catacombs of Egypt to the passes of Afghanistan. Alexander is a cinematic work of non-fiction: a revelatory retelling of one of the most famous and elusive stories in history.

About the Author

Edmund Richardson is Professor of Classics at Durham University. He studied for his PhD in Classics at Cambridge and took a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton. In researching this book, he translated material from twelve ancient languages including Aramaic, Greek, Babylonian and Sanskrit.

In 2016, he was named one of the BBC New Generation Thinkers - one of ten academics selected nationwide. His previous book, Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021.