Description: Was Alexander one of history’s greatest leaders and visionaries, or a ruthless tyrant who massacred tens of thousands of people and destroyed ancient civilisations in his all-consuming thirst for power?

In this book, Michael Wood retraces Alexander’s amazing journey from Greece to India, searching for the truth behind the Alexander legend and experiencing at first hand the tremendous scale of his achievements.  Using the ancient historians as his guides, Michael Wood follows Alexander’s journey as closely as possible today. Travelling on foot and by camel, boat, pack horse and Jeep, he crosses deserts and mountain ranges, rivers and plains, through Turkey, Israel, Egypt and Iran to worn-torn Afghanistan and Tajikistan. He travels on through the North-West Frontier into Pakistan and India, to the scene of Alexander’s last great battle, before embarking on the gruelling return to Babylon.

As the journey progresses, he re-creates the drama of Alexander’s epic marches and bloody battles, the drunken orgies, murderous feuds and the destruction of cities across the Persian Empire. All along the way he finds proof of the survival of the legends surrounding Alexander, a leader whose life has excited the imagination of East and West for the last two thousand years.