The Florentine and the British Institute of Florence invite you to the Italian launch of Sarah Dunant's new novel In the Name of the Family.

Sarah will give an illustrated talk entitled The Borgias: The most infamous family in History?

Murder, poison, corruption and incest: all perfect ingredients for sensational popular culture. But in an age known for its brutality and church corruption were the Borgias really so bad?

In her lecture Sarah Dunant will reveal the real family which dominated the Papacy and Italian politics during the last decade of the 15th century: the charismatic and womaniser figure of Pope Alexander VI, living inside his sumptuously decorated apartments, his son Cesare, cardinal, general, employer of Da Vinci and the model for Machiavelli’s The Prince and daughter Lucrezia who moves from being known as “the greatest whore in Rome” to a devout and treasured duchess of the city of Ferrara. And finally, Niccolò Machiavelli himself, a young Florentine diplomat who experiences a master class of power and politics on the job. Sometimes truth is more intoxicating than myth.

Sarah Dunant is an historian and a novelist who writes internationally acclaimed books set in the Italian Renaissance. In the Name of the Family is the concluding novel of a two-part story on the Borgia family.

The first novel Blood and Beauty was published to great acclaim in 2013.

The event takes place in the Harold Acton Library. Library membership is required. For further information about membership please click here.