Bøker av Danny Chaplin

The history of possibly the most notorious dynasty in papal history is revealed in a new narrative from the author of "The Medici: Rise of a Parvenu Dynasty, 1360-1537", "Pietro Aretino: The First Modern", and "Sengoku Jidai. Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu: Three Unifiers of Japan". Danny Chaplin serves up a fresh history of the Borgia which neither flinches from their grisly deeds nor seeks to paint an unduly "revisionist" picture of what is without question one of history's most infamous papal dynasties.The Borgia were that quintessential Renaissance phenomenon, a parvenu family which emerged from relative priestly obscurity to soar to the heights of political and pontifical power in the colourful Italy of the 1400s. Established on the backs of the careers of two popes, Calixtus III and Alexander VI, the family held court initially as princes of the Church and arbiters of European clerical politics. From the abstemious, crusading Pope Calixtus to the venal, sensual and nepotistic Pope Alexander (Rodrigo Borgia), this Spanish house from Valencia quickly established itself as one of Rome's major players.Later, Cesare Borgia, the model for Niccolò Machiavelli's prototypical Renaissance prince, would be recognised as a secular lord in his own right. As "Il duco Valentino" he would blaze a trail of destruction and conquest across the length and breadth of central Italy. The Borgia brokered deals and dynastic alliances with kings, princes, and dukes, often at the point of a sword. They appropriated Church lands for their own aggrandisement. They also walked a delicate tightrope between France and Spain, two emerging superpowers which sought to enact their great rivalry on the Italian Peninsula. Their murders, assassinations, and poisonings have by now become legendary in the annals of European history.Five centuries later, the names of Rodrigo Borgia, Cesare Borgia, Juan Borgia, and their much-slandered sister Lucrezia Borgia are synonymous with everything regarded as being at fault with the Renaissance papal establishment. But is the received wisdom concerning the Borgia entirely accurate or indeed warranted? Cinematic in scope, this meticulously-researched new history of the House of Borgia re-examines their lives and their legacy with uncompromising candidness in the context of late fifteenth-century Italian power politics.

Some called him "The Scourge of Princes" whilst to others he was a rogue and a scoundrel. This is a new biography of Pietro Aretino, the sixteenth-century poet, satirist, journalist, publicist, propagandist, art critic, social climber, lothario, pornographer and blackmailer of Kings, Popes and Emperors. It is the astonishing story of a man who began life as the penniless son of a cobbler and his wife, the town harlot, who rose to amuse Pope Leo X, infuriate Pope Adrian VI with his acerbic pasquinades, and befriend Pope Clement VII. Minted as a Knight of Rhodes, given a pension (and a golden necklace of lying tongues) by the King of France, and permitted to ride at the side of the Emperor Charles V, Pietro Aretino refused to allow his modest social beginnings to define him. An entirely self-created individual, "The Divine Aretino" was arguably the first modern celebrity. He was the close friend of perhaps the greatest Venetian artist of his era, Titian. His "Lustful Sonnets" scandalised all of Rome, he had the nerve to teach Michelangelo how and what to paint, whilst his bestselling collections of candid and personable Letters leave us with an astonishingly vivid account of life in sixteenth-century Venice. This is the engaging portrait of a man, a poet, a lover, and a survivor in turbulent times.

Japan's Sengoku jidai ('Warring States Period') was a time of crisis and upheaval, a chaotic epoch when the relatively low-born rural military class of 'bushi' (samurai warriors) succeeded in overthrowing their social superiors in the court throughout much of the country. Into this tumultuous age of constant warfare came three remarkable individuals: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Each would play a unique role in the re-unification of the disparate, fragmented collection of warring provinces which constituted Japan in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries. This new narrative history of the sengoku era draws together the epic strands of their three stories for the first time. It offers a coherent survey of the Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568-1600) under both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, followed by the founding years of the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1616). Every pivotal battle fought by each of these three hegemons is explored in depth from Okehazama (1560) and Nagashino (1575) to Sekigahara (1600) and the Two Sieges of Osaka Castle (1614-15). In addition, the political and administrative underpinnings of their rule is also examined, as well as the marginal role played by western foreigners ('nanban') and the Christian religion in early modern Japanese society. In its scope, the story of Japan's three unifiers ('the Fool', 'the Monkey', and 'the Old Badger') is a sweeping saga encompassing acts of unimaginable cruelty as well as feats of great samurai heroism which were venerated and written about long into the peaceful Edo/Tokugawa period.

In the affluent but militarily weak city of fifteenth and sixteenth-century Florence, an ambitious family of financiers from a modest provincial country background rose through shrewdness and wealth to ultimate command of the state. Eventually, the House of Medici would lend its Tuscan mercantile bloodline to the royal dynasties of France, Spain, Austria and England. Their astonishing story is inextricably intertwined with that of Florence itself. Using their artistic patronage of such geniuses as Brunelleschi, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to legitimise and propagandise their regime, they inadvertently triggered the Florentine Renaissance in Italy which later spread throughout the whole of Europe and dragged the world out of the middle ages. This epic new narrative history of the Medici, which covers the crucial period from 1360 to 1537, charts the family's meteoric rise from the humble, unassuming beginnings of Giovanni di Bicci, to the 'Pater Patriae', Cosimo de' Medici, and his battle with Rinaldo degli Albizzi. It progresses to Cosimo's son Piero 'the Gouty', his grandson Lorenzo 'il Magnifico' and the golden age of Laurentian Renaissance Florence, touching upon the treachery of the Pazzi Conspiracy, the family's expulsion and exile from Florence under Piero 'the Unfortunate' and the Medici's subsequent restoration to power under the two notable but deeply flawed Medici popes: Leo X and Clement VII. Ultimately this grand narrative culminates in the brutal assassination of Duke Alessandro de' Medici and the ascendancy of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who would establish total Medici hegemony over Florence for the ensuing 168 years. Examining the family's rise and the specific strategies and mechanisms by which they gained and maintained absolute political power, their saga is also placed within the wider context of the history of other key Renaissance Italian city-states and includes a sweeping overview of the disastrous Italian Wars of 1494-1559. Many of the most illustrious personalities of the Italian Renaissance are also examined from an intimate perspective including, amongst others, Francesco Sforza and his descendants, Girolamo Savonarola, Cesare Borgia, Niccolò Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini, Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Aretino, Francis I and the Emperor Charles V. Such notorious Renaissance popes as Sixtus IV, Pius II, Paul II, Alexander VI, Julius II and Paul III also play a prominent role in this gripping narrative. Danny Chaplin presents a rich and enthralling pageant of all the secular, ecclesiastical, artistic and humanist personages associated with the lives of this most remarkable Italian family.

Some called him "The Scourge of Princes" whilst to others he was a rogue and a scoundrel. This is a new biography of Pietro Aretino, the sixteenth-century poet, satirist, journalist, publicist, propagandist, art critic, social climber, Lothario, pornographer and blackmailer of kings, popes and emperors. It is the astonishing story of a man who began life as the penniless son of a cobbler and his wife, the town harlot, who rose to amuse Pope Leo X, infuriate Pope Adrian VI with his acerbic pasquinades, and befriend Pope Clement VII. Minted as a Knight of Rhodes, given a pension (and a golden necklace of lying tongues) by the King of France, and permitted to ride at the side of the Emperor Charles V, Pietro Aretino refused to allow his humble social origins to define him. An entirely self-created individual, "The Divine Aretino" was arguably the first modern "celebrity". He was the close friend of perhaps the greatest Venetian artist of his era, Titian. His "Lustful Sonnets" scandalised all of Rome, he had the audacity to teach Michelangelo how to paint The Last Judgement, whilst his bestselling collections of candid and personable Letters leave us with a vivid account of life in sixteenth-century Venice. This is the engaging portrait of a man, a poet, a lover, and a survivor in turbulent times. This "revised edition" provides several updates as well as a slightly larger typeface for those with reading difficulties.