A gripping tale of naval warfare, dynastic rivalry, and technical innovation, by the author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

The boldly original, dramatic intertwined story of Catherine de' Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots - three queens exercising power in a world dominated by men.

'Alluring, gripping, real: an astonishing insight into the lives of three queens' ALICE ROBERTS

'Takes us into the hearts and minds of three extraordinary women' AMANDA FOREMAN

'Conveys the vitality of the past as few books do. An enviable tour de force' SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB

Sixteenth-century Europe: Renaissance masters...

When we picture the ancient world, we tend to envision the soaring pyramids of Giza, the Coliseum conquests in Rome and the bustling agora of Athens. Indeed, the classical authors who shape our understanding of the world considered the edges of these ancient civilisations the domain of monstrous humanity. For these writers, from Ovid to Herodotus, the outer reaches of the world was where civilisation, or their conception of civilisation, ceased to exist. But at the borders of the empires we n...