In Places of Destiny, Ben Dupre offers a rich selection of dramatic historical events and locations: the resistance of Leonidas' Spartans, an enduring epic of last-ditch heroism, in the face of Xerxes' Persians at the lonely pass of Thermopylae in 480 BC; the sack of Rome in AD 410 when the Visigothic army under the command of Alaric swarmed into Rome and subjected the Eternal City to three days of looting; the establishing of a settlement of courageous dissenters, harbinger of a great new nation, on Jamestown Island, Virginia, in 1607; the storming of a prison and the birth of modern republican politics in Paris on 14 July 1789; the extinction, senseless and bloody, of an entire generation of Western European manhood on the shattered plains of the Somme Valley in 1916; and the irruption of terror from the skies into a bright Manhattan morning on the most dreadful day of the infant 21st century. As well as retailing the extraordinary stories of the events associated with each site, Places of Destiny also examines how succeeding generations have commemorated and interpreted those events.
Richly informative and deeply thought-provoking, and interspersed throughout with informative maps and colour illustrations, Places of Destiny offers an enthralling and often moving sequence of narratives that will appeal to anyone who enjoys top-notch popular historical writing.
- ISBN10 1847248330
- ISBN13 9781847248336
- Publish Date 4 June 2009
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 18 March 2011
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Quercus Publishing
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English