Catherine, Empress of All The Russias

Vincent Cronin is well known for his historical biographies and for his two-volume history of the Renaissance ("Probably the best book that has ever been written on the Renaissance" Times Educational Supplement). His other historical biographies include Louis and Antoinette, Catherine, Empress of All the Russias and Napoleon, the last of which has been translated into eight languages and is a standard biography both in Britain and in France ("To present Napoleon plausibly... takes nerve, originality, prodigious powers of research and a true historical imagination" Michael Foot, Standard). His most recent book is Paris on the Eve 1900-1914, a collective portrait of the key figures in art, literature, science and politics in the cultural capital of Europe on the eve of the First World War. His dual biography of Louis and Antoinette ("an impressive addition to the small list of biographies that are neither journalism nor Christmas pudding" Robin Lane Fox) and his biography of Louis XIV ("The most sympathetic account of Louis XIV as a man we have" A. L. Rowse), are also available as Harvill Paperbacks.

Catherine II, Empress of all the Russias, was the archetypal Enlightenment monarch. She reigned for more than 30 years, and during that time, as politician, diplomat, commander-in-chief, educator, builder, picture-collector, lover, mother, playwright, writer of fairy stories, autobiographer and indefatigable correspondent, she reformed and developed her largely unenlightened and backward country. Yet this woman, who at the age of 33, after 17 years of unhappy marriage, placed her deposed and murdered husband's crown on her own head, had begun life as an insignificant German princess. Catherine is interesting today not only as one of the most effective sovereigns of the late eighteenth century, but also as a determined career woman and head of government who dominated a vast empire as easily as she did her lovers and her court.

Louis XIV

Vincent Cronin has also written "Louis and Antoinette" and "Catherine, Empress of All the Russias".

First published 25 years ago, this biography of the Sun King uses contemporary sources to examine what sort of monarch Louis XIV really was. The author's researches reveal a portrait of the man and an account of the principal events of his long reign (1642-1715). The book provides an overview of the entire civilization inspired by and reflecting the glory of the Sun King. Thus, while Louis occupies the foreground, artists like Racine, Moliere, Lully and Mansart, the architect of Versailles, share the middleground with politicians such as Cardinal Mazarin and Nicolas Fouquet and courtiers such as the king's mistress, Louise de La Valliere.

The Florentine Renaissance

This is probably the best book that has ever been written in the Renaissance and probably the most readable... Mr Cronin's fluent pen and his delight in the subject turn the whole account into something of a love story.

One of the first books to recommend to someone who wishes to discover the Florentine Renaissance.

A fascinating story, eloquently told and packed with recondite material... a model history for the general reader.

With the selective skill of a great master painter who makes the most minute detail play its part in the whole composition, Vincent Cronin has, in this distinguished book, sifted for us the living spectacle of the quattrocento in the hub of Tuscany.

Vincent Cronin was educated at Ampleforth College, Harvard University, and Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated with honours in 1947. In addition to being a recipient of a W.H. Heinemann Award (1955) and a Rockefeller Foundation Award (1958), Cronin is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His works have been widely translated into European languages.

Florence in the fifteenth century was the undisputed centre of the Italian Renaissance. Its legacy is apparent today in every aspect of human endeavour. Our art and science, our learning and literature, our Christianity and our civic liberties, even our conception of what constitutes a gentleman, have all been shaped by Florentine thought and deed. 
 
In this brilliant and absorbing book Vincent Cronin brings vividly to life the people and myriad achievements of this astonishingly fruitful epoch in human history.

The Flowering of the Renaissance

An evocative picture of Rome at the turn of the sixteenth century... the account of Michelangelo is particularly memorable. At the same time Mr Cronin places the Renaissance firmly in its historical, political and religious setting... The book is beautifully written, and in his discussion of such artists as Titian and Giorgione Cronin shows a rare talent for describing and dissecting paintings.

It is Mr Cronin's outstanding achievement to have given this truly chaotic period a form which makes it intelligible - but without distorting its meaningthrough over-simplification.

Vincent Cronin was educated at Ampleforth College, Harvard University, and Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated with honours in 1947. In addition to being a recipient of a W.H. Heinemann Award (1955) and a Rockefeller Foundation Award (1958), Cronin is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His works have been widely translated into European languages. He died in January 2011, aged 86.

Following the collapse of Medici rule in fifteenth-century Florence, the centre of Renaissance activity moved first to Rome and finally to Venice. In the Rome of Julius II and Leo X which Michelangelo remodelled and beautified, in the Venice of Titian and Tintoretto and Palladio, the Renaissance reached the height of its splendour, not only in the visual arts but also in the theatre, history, biography, epic poetry and music.

Vincent Cronin

Matteo Ricci, an early recruit of the Jesuit order, was sent to China as a missionary in 1582. If he approached the Emperor with a Bible in one hand, in the other he carried much of the accumulated technological and philosophical wisdom of the late Renaissance Europe, and thus found favour among the Mandarins, the men of learning who enjoyed high status at the Imperial Court. He learned Chinese the better to discuss with them the problems in science and technology, as also questions of religion and the hereafter. But his progress was not unopposed, for the Wise Man from the West came to be seen as an unsettling element in a too-settled society. Ricci died in 1610, disappointed in his ambition to convert the Emperor, and with him the whole of China, to Christianity. But the seed was sown and the crop, even after almost a century of atheistic communism, continues to grow in present-day China. 
 
This story of the first fully documented contact between West and East offers a fascinating insight into the history of ideas during one of the most fertile eras in European and Chinese history. Vincent Cronin has built up a reputation with his scholarly, elegantly written works of history and biography, as one of the finest popular historians of his generation. This early book proves his gift as an acutely observant and sensitive historian.

Vincent Cronin

Books by Vincent Cronin

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