Historian Iain MacGregor discusses his book 'Battle: The Moments That Transformed Warfare from Ancient Greece to Ukraine' with BBC journalist James Naughtie.
Iain MacGregor is at The Edinburgh Bookshop on Thursday 29 October, talking about his new book Battle: The Moments That Transformed Warfare from Ancient Greece to Ukraine. He'll be in conversation with journalist and broadcaster James Naughtie, so it's a proper sit-down rather than a reading.
Battle covers three thousand years of conflict, and the range is exactly what the title suggests. It goes from Hannibal at Lake Trasimene and the battles of Marathon and Agincourt through to the firestorms of Stalingrad and the drone warfare of modern Ukraine. It's a long stretch of history to pull together in one volume, and that's where MacGregor's background comes in. He's an award-winning historian and author who's spent thirty years in non-fiction publishing, editing major historians like Simon Schama, Max Hastings, Michael Wood and Richard Overy. He's also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. This isn't his first book either — The Hiroshima Men came out in 2025.
His chair for the evening is James Naughtie, a BBC News special correspondent who presented Today on Radio 4 for twenty-one years and has hosted every edition of the station's Bookclub since it started in 1998. He's spent a long time interviewing writers and historians, so he knows how to get a book open and keep the conversation moving.
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The talk runs from 7:00 to 8:30 on Thursday 29 October at The Edinburgh Bookshop, Edinburgh EH10 4DF. Tickets start from £5.
