Mary Hollingsworth

A history of the Renaissance told through the lives of its most influential patrons. From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of 15th- and 16th-century...

Conspiracy, intrigue and faction-fighting as the future of Europe hangs in the balance: Mary Hollingsworth tells the extraordinary story of the papal conclave in 1559 - the longest and bitterest of the 16th century. Tasked with choosing a pontiff to replace a previous incumbent (Paul IV) whose...

History is rarely kind to women of power, but few have had their reputations quite so brutally shredded as Catherine de’ Medici, Italian-born queen of France and influential mother of three successive French kings.