Places of Destiny

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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.

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Ben Dupre read Classics at Exeter College, Oxford before pursuing a career in reference publishing. He was Children's Reference Publisher at Oxford University Press from 1992 until 2004 and, all told,has more than 20 years' experience of bringing complex and challenging concepts to the widest possible audience in an accessible but authoritative manner. A gifted performer on both harpsichord and viola da gamba, Ben lives in North Oxford with his family.