Renaissance History

Joining the bestsellers Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, a lively and intriguing tale of two artists whose competitive spirit brought to life one of the world’s most magnificent structures and ignited the Renaissance The dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore, the great cathedral of Florence, is...

Born in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort became the greatest heiress of her time. She survived a turbulent life, marrying four times and enduring imprisonment before passing her claim to the crown of England to her son, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs.

The 15th century saw the evolution of a distinct and powerfully influential European artistic culture. But what does the familiar phrase “Renaissance Art” actually refer to? Through engaging discussion of timeless works by artists such as Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, Tom Nichols offers a masterpiece of his own as he explores the truly original and diverse character of the art of the Renaissance.

The Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger Winning Author Winner of the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel ‘It’s hard to think of a better guide than D. V. Bishop to the brutality and glamour of Renaissance Florence’ – Andrew Taylor, bestselling author of The Royal Secret...

The Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger Winning Author Tuscany. Winter, 1540. Travelling north into the hills above Florence, investigator Cesare Aldo seeks answers about his past. The trail leads him to Ospedale de’ Pazzi, a secure institution for the criminally insane. Soon after...

Henry IV is not famous except for the plays that bear his name: He is not even a "much-maligned" king. He is normally overshadowed by his far more famous son, Henry V, despite his many achievements. Shakespeare is partly to blame for Henry's diminution and his son's exaggerated stature but not completely; we just don't know what to make of a man who took the throne from the rightful king.

More than ever before, the Renaissance stands out as one of the defining moments in world history. Between 1400 and 1600, European perceptions of society, culture, politics, and even humanity itself emerged in ways that continue to affect not only Europe but the entire world. In this wide-ranging exploration of the Renaissance, Jerry Brotton shows the period as a time of unprecedented intellectual excitement, cultural experimentation, and interaction on a global scale, alongside a darker side of religion, intolerance, slavery, and massive inequality of wealth and status.

The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissance: incest, political assassination, papal sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, unscrupulous power grabs. Yet, as best-selling biographer Sarah Bradford reveals in this breathtaking new portrait, the truth is far more fascinating than the myth.

Histoire du conflit franco-anglais qui dura 116 ans, depuis la revendication du trône de France par Edouard III jusqu'à l'abandon des Anglais sous le règne de Charles VII.

From the death of Richard III on Bosworth Field in 1485 to the execution of Charles I, after the Civil Wars of 1642-48, England was transformed by two Dynasties. Firstly the Tudors, who won the crown on the battlefield and changed both the nature of kingship but also the nation itself. England became a Protestant nation and began to establishment itself as a trading power; facing down impossible odds it defeated its enemies on land and sea.

Listen to this audiobook now and unlock the door to Europe's magnificent past, vibrant present, and promising future!

Appian of Alexander was a Greek historian who lived at the height of the Roman Empire during the first half of the 2nd century AD, having been born around AD 95 and died about AD 165. Very little is known about him beyond what he reveals about himself, along with the fact that he lived in Alexandria. He was a Roman citizen and held several senior-level public offices, both in Alexandria and in Rome.

In literary legend, Faustus is the quintessential occult personality of early modern Europe. The historical Faustus, however, was something quite different: a magus—a learned magician fully embedded in the scholarly currents and public life of the Renaissance. And he was hardly the only one. Anthony Grafton argues that the magus in sixteenth-century Europe was a distinctive intellectual type, both different from and indebted to medieval counterparts as well as contemporaries like the engineer, the artist, the Christian humanist, and the religious reformer.

From “one of the greatest writers of our time” (Toni Morrison)—the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God—a collection of remarkable stories, including eight “lost” Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time. New York Times’ Books to...

Master Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and writer Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for his magnificent autobiography. In this work, which was actually begun in 1558 but not published until 1730, Cellini beautifully chronicles his flamboyant times. He tells of his adventures in Italy and France, and his relations with popes, kings, and fellow artists.

New York City, uptown, Harlem. In the 1920s it was the most exciting place in the world. Poets, writers, dancers, and musicians all came together and invented a new American culture - a dazzling and revolutionary African American culture of music and poetry and art. Everyone who was anyone wanted to come to Harlem and hear the music of jazz genius Duke Ellington, the rap-like stylings of Langston Hughes, and the classical lyricism of Countee Cullen.

Here, National Book Award winner Richard Winston explores life in the Middle Ages - from the fifth to the 15th centuries - beginning with the fall of the Roman Empire and ending with the dawn of the Renaissance. In both countryside and cities, from the peasants to the bourgeoisie to the nobility, no aspect of life in this era is left unexplored.

What had previously been a European powerhouse for centuries had become a fractured mess of diverse territories. In the late 18th century, each of these states had fallen under heavy influence from both the French and Austrian nations. Discover the events which took place, including constant suppression from Metternich and the Austrians, three wars for Italian Independence, the attempted assassination of Emperor Napoleon III of the French Empire, and the sensational story of Garibaldi and the thousand.

A Waterstones Best History Book 2025 A BBC History Magazine Book of the Year 2025 ‘Learned, entertaining and highly approachable’ BOB MORTIMER ‘A treat’ ALICE LOXTON ‘Five stars from me…’ AL MURRAY An unmissable collaboration between two comedy legends – an irresistible...

“A journey as epic, and varying, as the Silk Road itself...[The Fabric of Civilization is] like a swatch of a Florentine Renaissance brocade: carefully woven, the technique precise, the colors a mix of shade and shine and an accurate representation of the whole cloth” (The New York Times)...