Hardback, 2007, Signal Books. First edition. Illustrated in b&w. Dustwrapper clean, small mark of glue left by old label on back board. Small marks to pageblock. At the beginning of the fourteenth century anarchy in Italy led to the capital of the Christian world being moved from Rome for the first and only time in history. It was a critical moment, and it resulted in seven successive popes remaining \"in exile\" for the next seventy years. The city chosen to replace Rome was Avignon. And depending on where you stood at the time they were seventy years of heaven, or of hell opinions invariably ran to extremes, as did the behaviour of the popes themselves. This is a portrait sketch of that era. And at the centre of the picture is Avignon itself, as it grew from being a relatively insignificant town on the Rhône to become, albeit briefly, one of the great capitals of the world.