The death of Isabella de’ Medici, favourite daughter of Cosimo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, was as squalid as her life had been glittering. She was strangled in a particularly unpleasant and elaborate way ...

Machiavelli was born in 1469 in Florence, one of the many city-states of Renaissance Italy ... but over Machiavelli’s lifetime its dominant ruling family, the Medici, used careful alliances and ...