Strathern has a magnificent way of pulling you into a time period and allowing you to walk alongside the historical figures while understanding the city’s complicated politics, beliefs and familial connections.

In The Florentines, Strathern takes you on a journey from the birth of the first Renaissance writer, Dante Alighieri, in 1265, to the death of Galileo Galilei in 1642. Along the way, he introduces you to some of the most important lives of some of the most important Florentines of the period, introducing you to the ideas, discoveries, creations and philosophies which helped to shape the Renaissance as we know it.