Cream Tea with Sarah Dunant: The Marchesa - Part of Autumn Derby Book Festival

Description

Sarah Dunant’s novels, including The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan, brilliantly evoke the Italian Renaissance.  Her latest focuses on Isabella d'Este, the first female art collector and patron of her time. Her famed collection has long since been dispersed or lost, but what remains is her correspondence - thousands of letters preserved in a deconsecrated church and convent in the archive of Mantua.

The Marchesa is Renaissance history at its most vivid, mixing historical fiction with biography, scholarship and imagery.   It is also a meditation on our attitude to history itself, challenging how far we can set aside our own values and certainties when it comes to understanding those who grew out of very different cultural soil.

Email ally@derbybookfestival.co.uk regarding your scone choose (Plain, fruit or alternative/dietary requirements) and seating requests, otherwise seating will be allocated on first come first serve. 

This event will be filmed and made available as a digital recording after the Festival. Available for purchase here.