I realised it was a while since I’d posted an update here. This is a busy teaching term for me, but I have several events coming up, including a couple of talks in London, which are listed on my Events page.

I’m particularly looking forward to the first rehearsed reading of a new play on which I’ve been historical advisor. Shakespeare and his Black Mates, by Lynda Burrell and Fran Hajat, is at Nottingham Playhouse on Thursday 2 November, and it’d be great to see people there.

In academic life, I’ve been writing for and co-editing a volume on Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe, which is close to completion and I hope will be out in 2018. That (I think) will be the last of my publications relating to the history of diplomacy, and I’ll be turning my attention to sixteenth-century guns for a while (as a research topic, that is).

Alongside all that, I’m writing a new non-fiction book for Bodley Head with the working title The Crucible of Europe. This will be my take on the period of the Italian Wars, 1494-1559. There are lots of famous names from these years (Christopher Columbus, Lucrezia Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, Isabella d’Este, Michelangelo Buonarroti…). This is a book about the world in which they lived, and also–importantly–about lots of other people who you probably haven’t heard of but are just as intriguing. Publication is some way off, though: it’s a big project!

And… some of you will know that I’ve been writing a novel. I hope to have more news of what’s happening with that in the New Year.

Now to survive Intro Week and evade the pernicious Freshers’ Flu.