Blood & Beauty - Softcover

A wonderful novel - taking you deep into the world of Renaissance passion and the Renaissance papacy. Part of me was happily lost in the time travel, part of me repeatedly struck by how vividly ancient Rome met modern Rome, and how the city of history came to life. (Mary Beard)

Blood & Beauty is a fascinating read full of vivid detail and human pathos. Dunant opens a window into the extraordinary machinations and skullduggery of the Borgias and provides us with a richness of description that beautifully locates them within their own time. (Amanda Foreman)

What a marvellous feast of vices and desires Sarah Dunant gives us in Blood & Beauty - lust and ambition, passion and power, destiny born and bought. The Borgias are arguably the most intriguing and ruthless family in all of history, and Dunant brings them ravishingly, bristlingly to life. Absolutely convincing on every page. I was enthralled. (Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife)

An ambitious, thrilling read from a novelist at the height of her powers. The Borgias leap from the page . . . the book offers total immersion in an alien Rome (The Times)

'What a marvellous feast of vices and desires Sarah Dunant gives us - lust and ambition, passion and power, destiny born and bought' Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

'Sarah Dunant's gripping novel . . . is a must read' Kathy Stevenson, Daily Mail

'Full of vivid detail and human pathos. Dunant opens a window into the extraordinary machinations and skullduggery of the Borgias' Amanda Foreman

'Just as Mantel humanized and, to an extent, rehabilitated the brilliant, villainous Thomas Cromwell,

Dunant transforms the blackhearted Borgias and the conniving courtiers and cardinals of Renaissance Europe into fully rounded characters, brimming with life and lust' New York Times

'The Borgias appear as flawed but passionate, painted in all their voluptuous glory against a background of shifting European allegiances. It is a mark of Dunant's skill that these internecine feuds remain intelligible without overwhelming the human dramas that allow her characters to emerge from the damning gossip of history' Stephanie Merritt, Observer