THE WALLS OF TROY

They inspired writers from Homer to Chaucer and beyond

LIVE BOOK SIGNINGS - 25% DISCOUNT

This autumn I’ll be doing two Intelligence Squared evenings/book signings, to mark the launch of my new novel.

London: https://www.sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk/event/an-evening-with-dan-jones/

Bath: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-dan-jones-on-war-plague-and-lion-hearts-tickets-1312763323439

My Substack followers can use the promo code HISTORYETC25 for a 25% discount on the ticket price. This can be used for both London and Bath events.

You can pre-order the book in the UK (here) and USA (here).

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If we choose to believe what we read in Homer and Virgil, it was the dead of night some time around 1190BC when the Greek liar called Sinon crept up to the wooden horse, drew back the bolts in its belly and let out his warrior friends.

In the city around, everyone was sleeping - worn out from drinking and partying to celebrate the end of the war. For ten years the Greeks had been besieging Troy. Now, it seemed, they had given up and gone home, leaving only this horse, as an offering to the gods.

Treacherous Sinon had helped convince the Trojans to drag the horse inside their walls. Wily Odysseus, who helped mastermind the plan, was one of the men lurking inside its hollow frame.

Once the Trojans had tired themselves out with bibulous thanksgiving, the Greeks struck. They snuck out of the wooden horse and went to the city gates, unlocked them and let in the rest of their army, who had been a short sail away, hiding out.

So began the sack of Troy: the city was burned, plundered, razed, destroyed. King Priam was run through in his citadel palace. His subjects were slaughtered, enslaved or put to flight.

Many medieval peoples - Romans, Franks and Britons among them - would claim descent from the Trojans. But on that one, fiery, bloody night, the proud masters of the Hellespont had been vanquished, and in such savage fashion that bards, poets, playwrights and screenwriters would reimagine their deeds and their plight for more than three thousand years.

This week I hopped on a plane to Istanbul with a good mind to see the ruins of Troy for myself. And so I did. The drive from Istanbul to Çanakkale, the nearest town to the archaeological site of Troy and its fine museum, takes about three hours. The roads are fast and new, and the route takes you across the longest suspension bridge in the world, which crosses the rippling and brilliant blue water of the Dardanelles, the maritime highway that gave Troy (also known as Wilusa, Ilios and Ilium) its original reason for being.

I made this trip because I am working on a book about castles.