Terrifying and fascinating ... If you thought the Renaissance was all about beautiful pictures and the ‘rediscovery’ of Classical writing, you are quite wrong … The Beauty and the Terror dismantles our assumptions about the Renaissance with the precision of a wheellock arquebus … an ambitious, multifocal book, encompassing more than 150 years [that] shine[s] a light on figures often forgotten in conventional histories

Impressive and lucid … Fletcher’s narration excels in such colourful details … a scholarly, but vivid history that shows the impact that the machinations of the great, good and not so good had on the insignificant … a persuasive account of how Italy was brought low even as the culture floated high

Richly well-informed and admirably well-written, containing material of real interest on every page ... has added a wealth of information that will be new to most of us

A story of alliances, betrayals, sacks, sieges, famines, assassinations and gruesomely ingenious tortures … Fletcher navigates this difficult terrain with great skill. She creates atmosphere and drama without any surrendering of clarity... A powerful book

Fletcher’s expertise is enviable … she knows better than anyone else just how treacherous a time and place it was. At its best, The Beauty and the Terror is as enlightening as you might hope: a chapter tracing early modern ambivalence about the rise of handguns … is exactly the alternative history you might wish for, as are the sections on slavery, sexual mores and pornography

[A] magnificent introduction to the history of the era … Fletcher’s book covers not just the wars and Renaissance art but also Italy’s political systems, courtly ceremonies, the Protestant Reformation and Catholic renewal, anti-Semitism, European colonialism, slavery, military techno­logies, early efforts at gun control, women’s poetry and even pornography … Fletcher shows how digging below the artistic and commercial riches of Renaissance Italy can reveal strong connections between culture, business, religion and violence

Brilliant and gripping, here is the full true Renaissance in a history of compelling originality and freshness, revealing the filth and thuggery, slavery, sex, slaughter and skulduggery behind the exquisite art of Leonardo and Michelangelo

Leading us into the world of the high Italian Renaissance in all its rich, blood-soaked glory, Catherine Fletcher shows us how the violent energies of war gave birth to some of the greatest art ever seen. Devastating in its detail, The Beauty and the Terror is a powerful, intimate and deeply humane portrait of this age of extreme destruction and exceptional creativity

A wonderfully dark, gritty, hard-edged tour behind the scenes of the Italian Renaissance. Catherine Fletcher is an expert and eloquent guide through the fire, blood and steel that inspired some of the greatest art in the world

Catherine Fletcher’s eye for the skewering detail makes the citizens of renaissance Florence live again

Astonishing … gripping and original … a compelling portrait

Packed with intrigue … Fletcher describes with cool menace the plotting and politicking … rought splendidly to life in this excellent book

An approach that enables her to touch on many aspects of this complex time … Above all, it is the women who interest Fletcher, whether painters, poets, politicians or prostitutes … an absorbing read

A finely-written, engaging and clear essay… The force of Fletcher’s narrative is not so much in offering a radical new evaluation of Italian Renaissance civilisation as in insisting that we see it as a cluster of cultural strategies and techniques within an exceptionally turbulent political milieu

A pulsating history of sorcery and superstition ... an academic feat but reads like a Stephen King thriller - and it's just right for our conspiracy-laden times.

A riveting micro-history, brilliantly set within the broader social and cultural history of witchcraft. Drawing on previously neglected source material, this book is elegantly written and full of intelligent analysis.

Bowler's affecting narrative offers fresh insight on life and chronic illness. Readers will be engrossed by this heartfelt memoir.

Higgins’ darting, spooling path connects myth with faith, art with literature, landscape with architecture, anecdote with interpretation… its images and schematic diagrams of labyrinths adding a visual dimension to a book already rich in thought and observation.

Richly erudite and compellingly personal.

A rich cultural history of mazes and labyrinths… Beautifully designed and precisely structured, it’s also a personal book about childhood memories, dreams and feeling at times lost in life.

[An] immersive, unusual love tale

Stokes-Chapman can write fascinating, three-dimensional characters... Meanwhile, extensive research brings the period so much to life you can taste it... full of buried family histories and fantastical archaeological theories, Pandora is a readable, solid debut

Whether the discussion is about artificial intelligence, the future capacities of knowledge, politics, philosophy, intuition, history (philosopher Thomas Metzinger shares experiences from post–World War II Germany that are hard to look away from), religion, reason, or the nature of consciousness, Harris grounds lofty discussions with concrete examples and his gift for analogy . . . free and open debate, in the best sense of the word . . . the book’s advantage over the podcast is that readers can linger as they need to and cherry-pick interviews at will. Recommended for anyone who wants to spend time with intelligent minds wrestling not with each other but with understanding.

One of the most eloquent and inspiring memoirs of recent years... A Dutiful Boy is real-life storytelling at its finest

Mohsin Zaidi...in a compassionate, compelling and humorous way, tells his story of seeking acceptance within the gay community, and within the Muslim community in which he grew up

A powerful portrayal of being able to live authentically despite all the odds

Zaidi's affecting memoir recounts his journey growing up in east London in a devout Muslim household. He has a secret, one he cannot share with anyone - he is gay. When he moves away to study at Oxford he finds, for the first time, the possibility of living his life authentically. The dissonance this causes in him - of finding a way to accept himself while knowing his family will not do the same - is so sensitively depicted. One of the most moving chapters includes him coming home to a witch doctor, who his family has summoned to "cure" him. This is an incredibly important read, full of hope.

A beautifully written book, a lovely story, life-affirming

Zaidi's account is raw, honest and at times quite painful to read. It's so vivid that it feels almost tangible, as though you're living the experiences of the author himself.

This heartfelt and honest book is beautifully written and full of hope