David Grant has a masters degree in ancient history. He is responsible for a number of international patents stemming from ideas that set out to challenge the status quo in one way or another, life experience which gave him his tenets : always challenge accepted norms, the past is never dead, and believe what you read at your peril.
Unsurprisingly, he set out to question and contest the ‘standard model’ (as he puts it) of the Macedonian king. The result is In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great. Grant explains his rationale for writing it: ‘After reading the available texts, both the ancient testimony and modern reconstructions, I was dissatisfied with conclusions drawn to date and suspicious of an opacity that ought to have been black and white.’
‘I graduated from an easy grazer of information, to an inquisitive browser of competing sources, to a chewer of contentious fat, and on to a voracious devourer of the still unexplained, in my own gradus ad Parnassum and a correspondent Masters degree with a thesis on Alexander. This book retraces the path of that ascent, and it was substantially written to answer my own questions about the man and his era. The journey took me in many unexpected directions, some oblique, but all relevant to the heart of the investigation, and all retained here.’
Grant now resides in London and is embarking upon his next book about Alexander’s campaigns in the Persian Empire. He is fortunate enough to be in contact with the anthropologist who heads the osteoarchaeological research at the tomb sites in ancient Macedonia, results from which are providing unique insight into their occupants, who may well include the family of Alexander the Great.
