Happy New Year! To start off 2018, I take us back to Venice, dear readers. But it's not the Venice of dreams and watery, lyrical descriptions. This 16th-century Venice, elegantly depicted In The Company of the Courtesan, is a hard, rough place, stinking of rotten canal water and fish, and is as often the deathplace of … Continue reading In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant