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Historian and adviser to the BBC’s Wolf Hall series Professor Catherine Fletcher uncovers a tale of assassination, spying and betrayal in Renaissance Italy.

Fletcher explains how the bastard son of a Medici duke and a half-negro maidservant, Alessandro de’ Medici, was able to ride into 16th-century Florence and rule the city. He successfully confronts bloody family rivalries and hostility from Italy’s oligarchs and reasserts the Medici grip on the city state. Six years later he is murdered in another man’s bed by his cousin. Fletcher’s account is the first retelling of Alessandro’s life in 200 years, and it sheds new light on a world of fabulous wealth, illicit sex, betrayal and vendetta.

Fletcher first worked in politics and the media before returning to university for a PhD in Renaissance history. She is associate professor in history and heritage at Swansea University, author of The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story and Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome, and advised the BBC on its adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.

This event is part of Italian day at the festival.