Blogs in May 2020

The Merchant of Prato 25th May 2020

Francesco di Marco Datini, the 14th-century Tuscan merchant who forms the subject of the Marchesa Origo’s study, has now probably become the most intimately accessible figure of the later-Middle Ages. In 1870 the whole astonishing cache, containing some 150,000...

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War in Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943-1944 19th May 2020

At the height of the Second World War, Italy was being torn apart by German armies, civil war, and the eventual Allied invasion. In a corner of Tuscany, one woman – born in England, married to an Italian –...

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