Hawkwood : Diabolical Englishman - Softcover

Saunders, Frances Stonor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571219098 ISBN 13: 9780571219094

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2005

Synopsis

The second son of a minor Essex landowner, John Hawkwood chose to head south in 1360 after serving as a captain in the Black Prince's wars against France. He and other freebooters besieged the Pope at Avignon, and when they were paid to go to Italy, discovered that the threat of force could be very profitable indeed. The Italian city states - Florence, Milan, Siena and Pisa - offered the richest pickings in Europe. Hawkwood became the most successful, clever and reliable mercenary leader of the time, leading the Italians to conclude that 'the Devil is an Englishman'. This is the story of an age when everything came to have a price - when the mercenary companies were vastly rich corporations, with their own accountants, lawyers and orators. But Frances Stonor Saunder's book is also a glittering and hard-edged evocation of a time of cultural greatness, peopled by characters ranging from Chaucer, Petrarch, Boccaccio and St Catherine of Siena to corrupt Popes and the Visconti tyrants of Milan. Above all, Hawkwood is a brilliant illumination of one of the outstanding figures of English and European history.

About this title

About the Author:

Frances Stonor Saunders is the former Arts Editor of the New Statesman. Her first book, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, has been translated into ten languages, and was awarded the Royal Historical Society's William Gladstone Memorial Prize. She is the author of The Woman Who Shot Mussolini. She lives in London.

Review:

"'Superb and quite unputdownable... Addictively readable, handsomely produced and compellingly intelligent' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times"

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0571219098
• ISBN 13: 9780571219094
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384