Kirsty Jane Falconer is Scottish a writer and translator who moved to Italy to escape Brexit. After an initial spell in Tuscany, she relocated in late 2020 to Ferrara. Kirsty studied history and theology. Her writing has been published inter alia in America Magazine, Times Literary Supplement and The Tablet.
Born in Ferrara in 1452. Burned in Florence in 1498. Those are the bare facts of the life of Ferrara's most famous son, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola. Kirsty Jane Falconer, who lives in Ferrara, introduces us to the life and times of Savonarola, noting how his shadow still inflects Ferrara today.
With the restoration of Medici rule in Florence in 1512, Niccolò Machiavelli retreated to his family estate in the Tuscan hills. Kirsty Jane Falconer visits the village of Sant’Andrea in Percussina where Machiavelli wrote his best-known book: Il Principe (The Prince).