Persian Fire (2018 Folio Society edition) by Tom Holland is a sumptuous bibliographic tribute to the historian’s electrifying account of the Greco-Persian Wars, transforming his 2005 narrative masterpiece into a physical artifact worthy of its epic subject. This exclusive Folio production wraps Holland’s modern-classical prose—which reads like a Herodotus for the 21st century with its cinematic battle scenes and psychological portraits of Xerxes and Leonidas—in olive-green cloth boards gold-stamped with intricate Greek key patterns and Persian lotus motifs. The volume’s scholarly heft is enhanced by newly commissioned antiquarian-style maps showing the strategic sweep from Marathon to Salamis, while a gilt-embossed slipcase protects its sewn signatures like the walls of Troy.
What elevates this edition beyond typical history books is its interweaving of form and content: chapter openings feature Spartan helmets and Achaemenid griffins rendered in archival ink, the cream paper stock mimics aged parchment, and Holland’s new introduction draws chilling parallels between ancient empires and modern geopolitics. The Folio Society’s artisans paid particular attention to the Battle of Thermopylae section, where a three-page gatefold map reveals the fatal topography that doomed the 300 Spartans. A triumph of contemporary historical publishing, this edition makes Holland’s revisionist take—that Persia’s tolerant cosmopolitanism nearly triumphed over Greek fractiousness—feel as urgent as today’s headlines.
