Books by Paul Strathern

A sweeping 400-year history of the Florentines who gave birth to the Renaissance, by the author of The Medici and The Borgias.

The sensational story of the rise and fall of one of the most notorious families in history, by the author of The Medici.

Marseilles, 1891: as Arthur Rimbaud lies dying in hospital, his mind wanders fitfully - taking him back to Commune-era Paris, and the scandalous life he led with Verlaine. But, above all, he is transported to Harar, Abyssinia, where he ventured in 1880 to seek his fortune, having chucking in the disreputable game of writing poetry...Paul Strathern's second novel, published in 1972, won a Somerset Maugham Award both for its superb evocation of the colour, squalor and hurlyburly of Harar and for its inspired 'impersonation' of Rimbaud - restless, ragged self-overcomer, would-be explorer-imperialist, and genius poet repulsed by his past literary life. In a new preface to this edition Strathern discusses the mercurial personality of Rimbaud, his novel's bold shifts between first and third person, and his own travels in East Africa that informed the book.

Presents the history of the economic and naval power of the modern Western world, from its struggle to ascendancy, through the arc of its glory. This book offers the story of the Venice of Marco Polo, Titian, Tintoretto, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Casanova, and an array of equally captivating heroes and villains.

In the autumn of 1502 three giants of the Renaissance period - Cesare Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli - set out on one of the most treacherous military campaigns of the period.

Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 was the first attack on a Middle Eastern country by a Western power in modern times. He was just twenty-eight when he invaded Egypt and it was an episode which contained in embryo many seminal events in his later life. This work looks at his epic military victories and his declaration of himself as emperor.