‘He left the world in ruins’: the author who defied the Taliban and burning tyres to tell Alexander the Great’s epic story

He is the most powerful ruler ever – and his first biographer was crucified. What drew Edmund Richardson, winner of the £50,000 Baillie Gifford prize, to his short tumultuous life?

He was the most powerful man in the world but he was brought down by one battle too many after a decade at the top. The story of Alexander the Great might be more than 2,000 years old, but it seems timely that a new biography of the ancient ruler won the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction just as President Trump took a battering in the US midterms. “This is a moment,” says its author Edmund Richardson, “where people are finding that there are limits to what unlimited wealth and power can do, and that humanity catches up with you…