Alexander the Great

About the book

From award-winning historian Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great searches through the mass of conflicting evidence and legend to focus on Alexander as a man of his own time.

Tough, resolute, fearless, Alexander was a born warrior and ruler of passionate ambition who understood the intense adventure of conquest and of the unknown. When he died in 323 BC aged thirty-two, his vast empire comprised more than two million square miles, spanning from Greece to India.

His achievements were unparalleled - he had excelled as leader to his men, founded eighteen new cities and stamped the face of Greek culture on the ancient East. The myth he created is as potent today as it was in the ancient world.

Combining historical scholarship and acute psychological insight, Alexander the Great brings this colossal figure vividly to life.

'So enjoyable and well-written ... Fox's book became my main guide through Alexander's amazing story'
Oliver Stone, director of Alexander

'I do not know which to admire most, his vast erudition or his imaginative grasp of so remote and complicated a period and such a complex personality'
Cyril Connolly, Sunday Times

'An achievement of Alexandrian proportions'
New Statesman

Robin Lane Fox was the main historical advisor to Oliver Stone on his film Alexander, and took part in many of its most dramatic re-enactments. His books include The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome, The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer and Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine.