Italy

Despite his shortcomings, writes Colin Davies, the great orator served his city with unselfish zeal; sensitiveness, determination and humanity characterized both Cicero's public and private life.

This cultured but energetic ruler left behind him ‘a governmental machine that was the wonder and envy of Europe’.

Stewart Perowne describes how, in the fourteenth century ‘the last of the Roman tribunes’, but one of the first of political liberators.

Judith Mason describes how, in February 1525, Francis I of France was defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia by an Imperial army, led by his rebellious subject the Constable of Bourbon, who later launched an attack upon the Holy City.

H. Ross Williamson profiles the life and career of Cardinal Reginald Pole: cousin to Henry VIII; once Papal candidate; ‘a humanist of European reputation’; Pole spent much of his life abroad, in an artistic and philosophical circle that included Michelangelo.

Once described as “the first Whig,” the great Christian philosopher of the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas, is here introduced by Maurice Cranston as an exponent of order, justice and government.

Described by Bossuet as “a Protestant in friar's clothing,” Sarpi was an historian who saw that religion might be a cloak for political designs and, as Peter Burke describes, organised his historical writings around this point.

“... At the distance of twenty-five years,” wrote Edward Gibbon, “I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first ... entered the Eternal City.” By J.J. Saunders .

Ernestro Landi assesses Machiavelli, his theories as well as the life of the historical character. Translated by Maurice Cranston.

In the year that saw the birth of Shakespeare, Galileo Galilei, the revolutionary Italian astronomer and mathematician, was born in Pisa.