'A highly lucid and readable account.' – Times Literary Supplement 'An impressive and absorbing book.' – Jonathan Phillips, Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway In over 2,000 years of Christianity, there has been only one pope from England: Nicholas Breakspear. Breakspear was elected pope in 1154, but his story started long before that. The son of a local churchman near St Albans, he would battle his way across Europe to defend and develop Christianity, facing turmoil in Scandinavia and the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula. But it was after he took the Throne of St Peter as Adrian IV that he would face his greatest threat: Frederick Barbarossa, who was determined to restore the Holy Roman Empire to its former greatness. In Breakspear: The English Pope Who Went to War, R.A.J. Waddingham opens the archives to tell the story of a man who rose from humble beginnings to glorious power – and yet has been all but forgotten ever since.

Although a highly visible part of the ecclesiastical furniture of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican for thirteen centuries, surprisingly little has been written about cardinals or (apart from some notable individual biographies), about the men who became papal princes . The cardinals of the Roman Church are the nearly men of Catholicism - those whose office since the 11th century has been chiefly to choose the Pope, following efforts to wrest this power from Rome s nobility and militia. This compelling history traces the origins and growth of the office of cardinal and tells the stories of some of the remarkable (for all kinds of reasons) men who have worn the red cap, coveted by some, refused on occasion and sometimes laid down in exchange for marriage, though one maverick got wed in his red hat. The Cardinals is an informative and entertaining look at the lives of some of the more colourful characters who have worn the cardinatial red or purple. It reveals an unlikely company of saints and villains, patrons of the arts and scholars, cardinals who might have been pope but who were blackballed, and cardinals who were deprived of the title because of their dissolute lives, doubtful opinions, or interference in papal policies. There are diplomats in these pages, statesmen, kingmakers and soldiers. There are members of royal and noble families, and the son of a Doge of Venice. And there are the cardinals whose fame simply lies in their goodness and their care of the dioceses entrusted to them.

Each volume of the Dictionary of World Biography contains 250 entries on the lives of the individuals who shaped their times and left their mark on world history. This is not a who's who. Instead, each entry provides an in-depth essay on the life and career of the individual concerned. Essays commence with a quick reference section that provides basic facts on the individual's life and achievements. The extended biography places the life and works of the individual within an historical context, and the summary at the end of each essay provides a synopsis of the individual's place in history. All entries conclude with a fully annotated bibliography.