One of the bestselling books of the fifteenth century was an erotic novel entitled The Tale of Two Lovers. Who was its unlikely author?
Answer: Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II.
Source: Cassell Dictionary of Italian Literature by Peter Bondanella and Julia Conway Bondanella
1180 – Philip Augustus becomes king of France aged fifteen. He will be the first monarch to style himself ‘King of France’.
1739 – The Treaty of Belgrade is signed, placing Belgrade under the control of the Ottoman Empire.
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A short, sharp hit of history in video format. Acclaimed Irish playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde was the toast of London society in the 1890s until things came decidedly unstuck through an association with a young British aristocrat, Lord Alfred Douglas, known as ‘Bosie’.
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Last week’s answer:
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
“I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.”
Jane Austen (1775-1817), British author, on the accounts of history.
Welsh king. He became King of Gywnedd in 1039, and Deheubarth in 1044 and ruled virtually all of Wales by 1055. He began to attack a number of English settlements before eventually being defeated by English forces at Rhuddlan. He was later killed by his own followers.
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