In his award-winning book PERSIAN FIRETom Holland gives us a brilliant account of the world’s first clash of civilisations as the Persians met the Greeks in 480 BC. When Xerxes, King of Persia attacked Greece the result of the invasion should have been a formality. Decisive, rapid, spectacular victory was surely theirs by right – after all in the space of a generation the Persian army had swept across the Near East, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. As a result Xerxes was revered as a god and considered invincible. Yet somehow, astonishingly, the Greek mainland managed to hold out, the Persians were turned back and the Greeks remained free.
As a result the Persian empire never extended into mainland Europe and the course of world history was altered for ever.