Renaissance

The conflicts that devastated Renaissance Europe were justified by ancient ideas rooted in natural law and Christianity. Though replaced by legal frameworks for the conduct of war between states, the killing continues.

Newfoundland was England’s first overseas colony, but its settlement did not follow the usual patterns: its communities were nomadic, moving around the island with the seasons.

A rich and complex portrait of the author of The Prince manages to combine scholarly analysis with the imagination of the historical novelist.

What did the indigenous people of the Americas think of Christopher Columbus?

A compelling narrative on the machinations of a Borgia pope and his offspring, with the added spice of Machiavelli’s cool observations.

The reforming Tsar sought to westernise his empire, yet in 1723 he published an uncompromising reassertion of his absolutist doctrine, which has traditionally marked Russia’s national consciousness.

Poor and small, Portugal was at the edge of late medieval Europe. But its seafarers created the age of ‘globalisation’, which continues to this day.

Michael Greenhalgh describes how Roman architecture and Graeco-Roman statues made a profound impression upon the great Renaissance artists.

Today it is hardly possible to equate the Italian Renaissance with the modern world, as Burckhardt did a century ago. But, argues Denys Hay, his discerning study has helped to transform the Western attitude to the past, and its influence remains profound.