For the historiographical pedant, this is most certainly a book to eschew, for they will find not a single footnote, end note, or exhaustive bibliography. However, for the avid historian, Thermopylae: the battle for the West is an absolute must-read. The research is indeed impeccable, the insights piquant, and the pace breathtaking. The author, Ernle Bradford, was not the prototypical historian with the usual panoply of degrees amassed; rather he was largely self-educated, driven one might well suspect by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding.
An enlisted seaman during the Second World War, he rose to the rank of First Lieutenant serving on a Hunt-class destroyer in the Mediterranean, where he would later spend 30 years as a yachtsman and researcher. Bradford became a noted broadcaster for the BBC and wrote a number of books on diverse topics ranging from antique furniture and jewellery to historical figures and episodes. His work on Thermopylae, and, in truth, the entire second Greco-Persian War, was published initially in 1980 and remains a classic work on the subject.
In some ways, the title of the book is misleading, for while the epic battle at Thermopylae is indeed addressed thoroughly, this book goes much deeper, plumbing the depths of the Greeks’ struggle with a massive and exceptionally aggressive Achaemenid Empire. The author traces the roots of the war back to the first attempt by the Persians under Darius to suppress and absorb Greece, which ended disastrously for him in 490 BC at the Battle of Marathon, where the Persian forces were routed by the Athenians. Darius’ son Xerxes was determined to fulfil his late father’s ambitions, and by 479 BC had begun assembling a large force with which to thrash the fractious Greek city-states that defied him – especially Athens and Sparta.
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