It was the rebuff to a question at his first University tutorial about the battle of Marathon that first ignited the interest in author Nick Brown’s interest in Ancient Greece.
Now his latest book in a series of tales about Ancient Greece, The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae has just been released and Nick, taught Archaeology and Ancient history for many years., tells of that story.
A young man from a state school, surrounded by privately educated people was dismissed by his tutor as he asked a the question why the victor of the Battle of Marathon, a key moment in the fight for democracy in ancient Athens, was put to death by his people barely a year later.
Later his tutor would apologise for the rebuff and a future career which would involved excavations on the Greek island of Samos and undercover ing the Roman West Wall in Castlefield would be assured.
The book is set between 507-450 BC in an Athens has achieved democracy, but the high ideals of government continue to come under threat on all sides.
Young Mandrocles, the Luck Bringer, and his friends are trying to forge lives and love affairs in an Athens consumed by political infighting.
The city fears the vengeance of Persia’s Great King, who has been left seething over the Greeks’ remarkable victory at Marathon. Will Athens follow the lead of the democratic leader Themistocles to defy Persia, or capitulate and let democracy die before it has its chance in the sun? As Persia gathers the greatest army the world has ever seen, Themistocles recruits Mandrocles, Miltiades’s noble daughter Elpinice, the dramatist Aeschylus, and the flute girl Lyra as pawns in the perilous game for Greece’s ultimate survival.
Paul’s novels rely on the use of real characters from History. his inspiration in this one includes Aeschylus, whom Nick describes as the first war poet and he has made great use of the stories of women in Ancient Greek history, a subject riven in sexual and political intrigue which is seldom told.
This is a story of the heroism, love, and sacrifice of Greek men and women during a period of epic struggle, continues Nick Brown’s audacious The Luck Bringer series, and charts the true story of the bloody road to Thermopylae, where a Spartan army and an Athenian fleet would determine the history of the democratic world.
Political skulduggery, military ingenuity and even the increasingly significant roles of women are all discovered anew under historian and archeologist Brown’s searching pen, as he expertly blends his cast of original characters with some of the greatest figures of Ancient Greece.
The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae by Nick Brown (published by Clink Street, RRP £8.99 paperback, RRP £2.99 ebook) is available online now at retailers including amazon.co.uk and can be ordered from all good bookstores. For more information, please visit www.NickBrownBooks.com.
