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...

Bloomsbury presents Catherine de' Medici by Mary Hollingsworth, read by Sophie Hunter and Rachel Bavidge. A new biography of Catherine de' Medici, the most powerful woman in sixteenth-century Europe, whose author uses neglected primary sources to recreate the life and times of a remarkable –...

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...