Historical Fiction Research

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Old Man and His Grandson I have an off-again, on-again interest in family history. All history fascinates me,...

Ho, ho, ho! (from the Christmas Boar of San Gimignano) I had the best of intentions. I was going to do the research and come up with a desc...

We've made progress. As you may recall, in the first Puzzle installment I stated the problems (would Buondelmonte's opponents reall...

Last time, as you may recall, I had managed to persuade myself that Buondelmonte's foes would probably not have murdered him on Easter d...

In my last post, I briefly described the events surrounding the murder/assassination/honor killing of messer Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti i...

When I set out to write my first book, I didn't have much to go on. The story of Buondelmonte, the 13th-century knight whose hot temper...

Status, if you're a medieval Tuscan. As late as the catasto (tax records) of 1427, one historian estimates that only a third of the f...