The Borgia were perhaps the most notorious family in all history. Legends of poisoning and incest, corruption and appalling cruelty rapidly grew up around them. What was the truth behind it all? E. R. Chamberlin presents at last a believable portrait of these extraordinary people, and his book is popular history on a grand scale. He begins with Pope Alexander, whose ambition to found a great dynasty was the driving force that set the whole violent story in train. He continues through the lives of Alexander's children, notably Cesare and Lucretia, tracing the intrigues, alliances and wars by which they struggled to create a great Borgia kingdom in Italy, following their fortunes as they rose to the point at which they 'held the world in fear' and then crashed in final ruin. As important as the characters in the foreground is the Italy against which their drama is played out, a place of warring cities and dynastic machinations where high culture and gross cruelty went hand-in-hand. Above all, there is Rome itself, caught at the moment when the great city was rising from its long, squalid sleep into the glory of the Renaissance dawn.