‘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, whether you like it or not. Alexander wants to transform the world – and he leaves it in ruins.”Wearing a purple velvet jacket, purple scarf and matching socks, with a high forehead and corona of auburn curls, Richardson himself might have stepped out of an earlier age