Showing titles in Renaissance

Rough Crossings is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence. With gripping, powerfully vivid storytelling, Simon Schama follows the escaped blacks into the fires of the war and into freezing, inhospitable Nova Scotia, where many who had served the Crown were betrayed in their promises to receive land at the war's end.

The Rape of Europa is one of Titian's great masterpieces, a work charged with eroticism and classical mystique behind which lies a tale as compelling as the painting itself. Here Charles FitzRoy weaves a unique account of its history and the painting's movement following the rise and fall of the countries in which it has been housed. This is the tale of how Titian's masterpiece has captivated kings, nobles, artists, and lovers alike for over four centuries since its conception and continues to do so today.

Accessible to students, tourists, and general listeners alike, this book provides a broad overview of Russian history since the ninth century. Paul Bushkovitch emphasizes the enormous changes in the understanding of Russian history resulting from the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, new material has come to light on the history of the Soviet era, providing new conceptions of Russia's pre-revolutionary past.

WINNER OF THE 2019 PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE The fascinating history of Christopher Columbus’s illegitimate son Hernando, guardian of his father’s flame, courtier, bibliophile and catalogue supreme, whose travels took him to the heart of 16th-century Europe’ Honor Clerk, Spectator, Books...

The fifth in the new Naxos Audiobooks series "In a Nutshell", The Renaissance is a short and accessible introduction to the era that gave us Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Palestrina. The Renaissance swept across Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries, heralding intellectual revolutions in science, art, philosophy and politics, and marking a decisive shift towards modern thinking.

Henrietta Maria is the most reviled consort to have worn the crown of Britain's Three Kingdoms. Condemned as that 'Popish brat of France', a 'notorious whore' and traitor, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches and turned her husband Catholic—so causing a civil war—and a cruel and bigoted mother. Leanda de Lisle's White King was hailed as 'the definitive modern biography about Charles I' (Observer). Here she considers Henrietta Maria's point of view, unpicking the myths to reveal a very different queen. 

Bloomsbury presents Tigress of Forli by Elizabeth Lev, read by Daphne Kouma. If I were to write the story of my life it would shock the world', Caterina Sforza, 1463-1509. As action packed as as a Game of Thrones novel, the complete life of one of Italy's most fearless women. Between her birth...

Ten remarkable women. One remarkable era. In the Tudor period, 1485 to 1603, a host of fascinating women sat on the English throne. The dramatic events of their lives are told in The Turbulent Crown: The Story of the Tudor Queens.  

What lights the spark that ignites a revolution? What was it that, in 1775, provoked a group of merchants, farmers, artisans and mariners in the American colonies to unite and take up arms against the British government in pursuit of liberty? Nathaniel Philbrick, the acclaimed historian and...

Some ladies who served at the Tudor court are only faceless silhouettes lost to the sands of time, but there are those who dedicated their lives to please their royal mistresses and left documentation, allowing us to piece their life stories together and link them to the stories of Tudor queens. These female attendants saw their queens and princesses up close and often used their intimate bonds to their own benefit. Some were beloved, others hated. This is the story of the ladies of the Tudor court like you've never heard it before.

Most historians credit the city-state of Florence as the starting place of the Italian Renaissance, a process carried out through the patronage and commission of artists during the late 12th century. If Florence is receiving its due credit, much of it belongs to the Medici family, a Florentine dynasty that ruled at the height of the Renaissance. Both Leonardo and Michelangelo were members of Lorenzo de Medici's court. The famous leader, who also considered himself an artist and poet, became known for securing commissions for the most famous artists of the age.

Since the publication of The Prince five centuries ago, Machiavelli has been associated with political amorality. But that characterization is unfair. In Be Like the Fox, Erica Benner sets the record straight: far from the ruthless "Machiavellian" henchman that people think he was, Machiavelli emerges here as a profound ethical thinker who fought to uphold high moral standards and restore the democratic freedoms of his beloved Florence.

Mark Gregory Pegg’s history of the Middle Ages opens and closes with martyrdom, the first that of a young Roman mother in a North African amphitheater in 203 and the second a French girl burned to death beside the Seine in 1431. Both Vibia Perpetua and Jeanne la Pucelle died for their Christian beliefs, yet that for which they willingly sacrificed their lives connects and separates them. Both were divinely inspired, but one believed her deity shared the universe with other gods, and the other knew that her Creator ruled heaven and earth.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. The Reformation was a long struggle of ideas between the established Catholic Church and the questioning of faith brought about by the Renaissance in Western Europe. Started by Martin Luther in 1517, religious dissidence spread across Europe...

A shocking ancient secret. The origins of western civilization discovered. The Renaissance - our most fundamental age of technological and artistic advance, was built upon a secret passed down to a banking family in Florence - the Medici. 500 years ago that secret was buried. Florence, Italy, present day. A trove of letters belonging to the Medici family is discovered underground. Archaeologist Kat Cullen comes across a map that leads her to the Swiss Alps where her partner is murdered and she is left for dead.

Professor Farah Karim-Cooper grew up loving the Bard, perhaps because Romeo and Juliet felt Pakistani to her. But why was being white as a ‘snowy dove’ essential to Juliet’s beauty? Combining piercing analysis of race, gender and otherness in beloved plays from Othello to The Tempest with a radical reappraisal of Elizabethan London, The Great White Bard entreats us neither to idealise nor to fossilise Shakespeare but instead to look him in the eye and reckon with the discomforts of his plays, playhouses and society.

'An outstanding revisionist portrait of an age' Telegraph 'Targoff tells their stories with vim and vigour' i Paper '[A] fascinating excavation of four intellectual powerhouse women' Tina Brown, New York Times A New Yorker Book of the Year Discover the lives and work of four ambitious...

It is generally accepted that the European Renaissance began in Italy. However, a historical transformation of similar magnitude also took place in northern Europe at the same time. This 'Other Renaissance' was initially centred on the city of Bruges in Flanders (modern Belgium), but its...

Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to the Tudor Queen Elizabeth has trained Kit Scarlett since she was a girl. Aware that she is able to infiltrate places that his male agents cannot, he sees her as an invaluable member of his team. When Walsingham discovers that a rebel alliance is planning to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and put Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne, he summons Kit immediately. Together with loyal Scottish agent Iomhar Blackwood, Kit is tasked with finding out the full details of the treasonous plot.

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.