Showing titles in Renaissance

Brought to you by Penguin. From the acclaimed author of The Watchers, the untold story of Robert Cecil - the ultimate Tudor spy-master Robert Cecil, statesman and spymaster, lived through an astonishingly threatening period in English history. Queen Elizabeth had no clear successor and enemies...

The papal tiara has been worn by a number of infamous men through the course of its history. Some have been accused of murder, many have had mistresses, while others sold positions in the church to their followers or gave land and wealth to their illegitimate children. E. R. Chamberlin examines the lives of eight of the most controversial popes, from the reign of Pope Stephen VI, who had his predecessor exhumed, put on trial and thrown in the Tiber, in the ninth century, through to Pope Clement VII, whose failed international policy led to the Sack of Rome in 1527.

On 9th September 1560 Amy Robsart, the wife of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite courtier, Robert Dudley, was found lying dead at the foot of a staircase. It was a death that scandalised Tudor England. Was it an accident, suicide or murder? Robert Dudley’s open flirtation with the young Queen Elizabeth only fuelled rumours that he had orchestrated his own wife’s death. With Dudley now conveniently widowed, perhaps the queen had found her consort at last.

In How the Medici Shaped the Renaissance, you’ll study the remarkable trajectory of the Medici from the late 14th century to 1737, when the Medici dynasty ended. Across that span of time, you’ll witness the birth of the Italian Renaissance, and the rise of the Medici as an economic powerhouse under founder Giovanni de’ Medici. You’ll learn how the Medici came to dominate Florence and how they played diverse roles in politics, religion, and culture.

An enthralling account of Mary, Queen of Scots' captivity in England, revealing intrigue, plots, and political turmoil. Discover a thrilling true story of treachery, deceit, hope, and despair. From the moment Mary, Queen of Scots set foot on English soil in 1568 until her execution at...

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes or filled with bean bags and children's drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied and stuffed full of incident. In this, the first major history of its kind, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen explore the contested and dramatic history of the library

The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice, and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy. Examples of infamy flourished alongside some of the finest art produced in western history.           

As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire.

Bloomsbury presents Young Queens by Leah Redmond Chang, read by Olivia Dowd. LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION WATERSTONES' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: HISTORY The boldly original, dramatic intertwined story of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots –...

A sweeping 400-year history of the Florentines who gave birth to the Renaissance, by the author of The Medici and The Borgias. Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642 something happened which transformed the entire culture of western civilisation. Painting, sculpture...

The Prince is a timeless political treatise that explores how power is gained, maintained, and lost. Written in the early 16th century, Machiavelli offers sharp, practical guidance for rulers navigating unstable political landscapes. Drawing from historical examples and real-world observation, he examines leadership, strategy, diplomacy, and human nature—arguing that effectiveness often outweighs morality in matters of state. Provocative and influential, The Prince remains one of the most important works ever written on politics and power.

A brilliant and compelling account of the apprentice years of Elizabeth I. An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man’s world, passionately sexual yet – she said – a virgin, Elizabeth I was to be famed as England’s most successful ruler. This absorbing new...

In the course of their investigation into Leonardo da Vinci, Lynn Pickett and Clive Prince found clues about his strangely passionate belief in the importance of John the Baptist. Here, along with a reassessment of the significance of Mary Magdalene and the sacred feminine, the authors reveal that Da Vinci’s apparently peculiar religion was shared by the Knights Templar. And their profoundly heretical belief that the Baptist was superior to Jesus himself still has the power to pose a threat to the very foundations of the Christian Church….

The Teutonic Knights were powerful and ferocious advocates of holy war. Their history is suffused with crusading, campaigning, and struggle. Feared by their enemies but respected by medieval Christendom, the knights and their Order maintained a firm hold over the Baltic and Northern Germany and established a formidable regime that flourished across Central Europe for 300 years. William Urban's narrative charts the rise and fall of the Order and, in an accessible and engaging style, throws light on a band of knights whose deeds and motives have long been misunderstood.

Staying Power is a panoramic history of black Britons. Stretching back to the Roman conquest, encompassing the court of Henry VIII, and following a host of characters from Mary Seacole to the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, Peter Fryer paints a picture of two thousand years of Black presence in Britain. First published in the 80s, amidst race riots and police brutality, Fryer's history performed a deeply political act; revealing how Africans, Asians and their descendants had long been erased from British history.

Bloomsbury presents Catherine de' Medici by Mary Hollingsworth, read by Sophie Hunter and Rachel Bavidge. A new biography of Catherine de' Medici, the most powerful woman in sixteenth-century Europe, whose author uses neglected primary sources to recreate the life and times of a remarkable –...

In this landmark study of Italy from the 14th through the early 16th centuries, Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt chronicles the rise of Florence and Venice as powerful city-states, the breakup of the medieval worldview that came with the rediscovery of Greek and Roman culture, and the new emphasis on the role of the individual. All these, Burckhardt explains, went hand in hand with the explorations of science and the more naturalistic depiction of the world in art and literature.

An unprecedented portrait of the Renaissance-era Borgia family and their storied milieu, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tudors “A vivid and at times startling reappraisal of one of the most notorious dynasties in history . . . If you thought you knew the Borgias, this book...

Volume Three of 2,000 Years of Christ's Power, in showing the progression of the Reformation era and the daring bravery of its figures, presents a period of history from which there are many lessons to be learnt—not least of all, the vibrancy of people's lives and the courage with which they faced death.

When we imagine Renaissance medicine, the cliché is dreadful–unsterile instruments, a total lack of anaesthetics and shocking levels of infant and maternal mortality. And that’s before you get into astrology, bloodletting and a litany of bizarre ‘treatments’, more likely to kill than cure… As ever, the true picture is somewhat different. Here, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, modern medicine began to take shape.