Illustrated Price 15/- net
The striking personalities of the Borgia have afforded a fascinating problem alike for historian, for psychologist, and for novelist. A lurid legend grew up about their lives, and for three centuries their name was a byword for the vilest infamy. But in our own day a number of writers have attempted to rehabilitate the characters of the Borgia by that process of juggling with historical evidence popularly termed “whitewashing.”
In the present volume, Mr. Fyvie attempts to present the true history of this extraordinary family after a careful sifting of all fresh evidence. No monograph on any single one of the family can ever be satisfactory. The lives and careers of Rodrigo, Cesare, and Lucrezia Borgia are so interwoven that their portraits must all appear in the same picture. They played their parts on an elevated stage, surrounded by all the material, intellectual, and artistic splendour of the Italian Renaissance, and with the magnificent background of the Holy Roman Church. They were magnetic personalities; and their story is as intensely interesting and as profoundly tragic as anything in the whole range of fiction.
ENGLAND’S WEAK POINTS
By a German Resident—Mariano Hergellet
Price 3/6 net
This little book is the outcome of close observation during the social and business life of a German, fifteen years resident in London.
Its conclusions are not flattering, its statements are extremely frank, and it is naturally being read with avidity throughout the Fatherland.
After a tribute to our many qualities, which are quite unknown to or unappreciated by his countrymen, the author postulates fifteen rules of life to which, he says, the average Briton adheres, and he proceeds to describe the results of these habits.