I would have liked to read more about Grand Duke Cosimo's terrible siege of Siena (my favourite Italian city), in which so many inhabitants starved, and the dramatic and murderous events surrounding his immediate heirs Francesco and Ferdinando, but these were covered quite briefly (they also formed the backdrop to an excellent novel I read recently, The Shepherdess of Siena). After this period, the remaining two centuries are dealt with in just 50 pages. There are some fascinating characters in the form of Cosimo the Elder, Lorenzo the Magnificent, the fanatical priest Savonarola who held power for a few years after a French invasion, and the two Medici popes, Giovanni (Leo X) and Giulio (Clement VII, the Pope who declined to agree Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon). The course of this book is very unbalanced in terms of chronological coverage, with the first of the three centuries of Medici dominance covering five sixths of the narrative but this is mostly justified in terms of the wider importance and sheer drama of the events involved.

Rising from the merchant class they came to dominate the republic's government and become effectively a hereditary monarchy, though for a long time Florence continued to preserve a republican constitution, in which people from the merchant class were chosen by lot to form the city government, the Signoria. This is a fairly detailed political and personal history of the famous and colourful Medici family, who dominated the history of Florence and central Italy, and indeed more widely, for most of a 300 year period between the early 15th and early 18th centuries.

The house of medici christopher hibbert