Helen Constantine

Hugh Shankland

In ways no guide book can achieve, these twenty absorbing tales by Italian authors ranging from Boccaccio in the Middle Ages to contemporary new writers offer the delight of discovering and exploring one of the world's most unique cities thorough a wide variety of individual lives and epochs. Casanova sets about seducing the hotelier's daughter only minutes after his arrival, a notorious Spanish prostitute in Renaissance Rome endures a public hiding withoutflinching, a Danish tourist in her sixties finds an unusual lover, Pope John Paul II uncovers a vast conspiracy against him, a medieval revolutionary demagogue suffers almost the same fate as Mussolini. Adeep sense of timelessness, of separate destinies entwined across a gulf of centuries, is the cumulative effect of this vivid mosaic of dramatic or comic or tragic stories set in the Eternal City.

Stories

Rome Tales

Author Hugh Shankland has 'known' Italy as a tourist, student and scholar for over thirty years: In discovering the 'heart' of Italy and what makes Italians tick, he is able to lead the reader to a level of understanding and provide an insight that will prove indispensable to the traveler, for business or pleasure. This is more than a book of 'do's and don'ts' when in Italy: it is equivalent to the insider's Priviledge Card.

Simple Guide to Italy

Lucrezia Borgia

If history remembers Lucrezia Borgia at all, it is as a woman of extravagant vices whose name has become synonymous with political intrigue and poison. Cardinal Bembo is remembered primarily as the namesake of a popular typeface. But as this book of letters reveals, there was real substance, and real faces, to both of them. Borgia, a child bride who was ruthlessly exploited for political advantage by her three husbands, proved to be a girl of surprising resilience and cunning, anything but a monster. Pietro Bembo, the learned and (as demonstrated here) surpassingly gentle scholar, was the perfect product of the Renaissance. The covert love affair they conducted over sixteen years under the nose of Borgia s ruthless brother, Cesare, was as dangerous as it was impassioned and their letters, which provide a unique record of life during the Italian Renaissance, are a testament both to a relationship of rare beauty and to a feudal society of strict boundaries, dark dynastic drives, boundless political ambition, and extraordinary gallantry. Set in (what else?) Monotype Bembo, illustrated with the charming and delicate wood engravings of Shirley Smith, this elegant paperback will be a memorable gift for modern lovers.

Letters Between Lucrezia Borgia and Pietro Bembo, 1503-1519

The Prettiest Love Letters in the World

A guide to Italy and Italian society, which covers such topics as climate, dress, family life, physical contact and body language, eating out, travel, food and drink, doing business, the spoken word, the Italian attitude to foreigners, leisure pursuits and taboos.

Hugh Shankland

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