To recreate the past as a living, breathing place, the historical novelist has visited churches, archives, museums and art galleries all over Italy. In this lecture, she tells the story of her discoveries; how the decoding of old paintings alongside the work of the most modern historians helped her to penetrate hidden worlds inside the Renaissance, finding wonder and drama in ordinary lives and exploring the complexities of politics and religion along with emotion, the senses and the heady appetites of body and soul. Dunant’s novels include the acclaimed trilogy The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan and Sacred Hearts, her two novels about the Borgias, Blood and Beauty and her latest In the Name of the Family.