"For much of the last fourteen hundred years the relationship between Christianity and Islam has been extremely troubled. Competition, misunderstanding and fanaticism led to frequent conflicts between those marching under the banners of the two religions, often ferocious in the extreme and studded with atrocities. Yet between these episodes - even at times in the midst of them - Muslims and Christians traded and associated with each other without any inherent animosity." "This book describes an event widely believed to herald the ultimate supremacy of western culture. On the morning of 7 October 1571, at the mouth of a gulf in western Greece, the fleets of the Muslim Ottoman Empire and the Roman Catholic Holy League collided in the last great battle ever to be fought between oared fighting ships. The Battle of Lepanto was the outstanding military event in a sixteenth century marked by constant warfare, and the greatest single battle ever fought between crescent and cross. Many believe that it changed the balance of power in the Mediterranean forever, and turned back a Muslim tide that threatened to engulf Europe." "However, as Hugh Bicheno shows here, the symbolic importance of Lepanto far outweighed its military significance. This timely book is the first major study of the battle ever written in English, and the first for many years in any language. It is enormous in scope, tracing the lines of history that came together at that time and place to explain why an event that barely affected the geopolitical balance in the Mediterranean is regularly counted among the decisive battles of history. Not least, as an illustration of the complex human reality behind an age-old conflict, the story is acutely relevant to the history we are living at present"--