Dr Alexander Lee is a research fellow at the University of Warwick, with expertise in the cultural and political history of the Renaissance in Italy. He is the author of ‘Machiavelli: His Life and Times’ (2020), which was chosen by the New Statesman and the Financial Times as ‘Book of the Year 2020’. He also writes regularly for History Today, and his work has been published in the Sunday Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal and the Times.