In 480 BC, Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece.
There is no competing popular book describing these events..
Once again he has found extraordinary parallels between the ancient world and our own.
Tom Holland's brilliant new book describes the very first 'clash of Empires' between East and West.
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.
Greece remained free.
The Persians were turned back.
Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out.
As a result of those conquests, Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet.
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.
For seventy years, victory - rapid, spectacular victory - had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire.
Its success should have been a formality.
In 480 BC, Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece
