This book illustrates the diverse and simultaneous happenings in the varied and complex Europe of the 1500s and 1600s AD, mainly focusing on England and Italy, the two major protagonists of this most fascinating period of history, when military interventions, literature, art and religious philosophies formed the Europe which we have inherited today.

The book is enriched with more than 1000 illustrations and a 100-year calendar of historical events, in addition to references to 1,168 important contemporaries who lived in England, Italy and Europe during the Elizabethan and Jacobean...