This extraordinary re creation of the life of a medieval Italian merchant Francesco di Marco Datini is one of the greatest historical portraits written in the twentieth century.Drawing on an astonishing cache of letters unearthed centuries after Datinis death it reveals to us a shrewd enterprising anxious man as he makes deals furnishes his sumptuous house buys silks for his outspoken young wife and broods on his legacy. It is an unequalled source of knowledge about the texture of daily life in the small earthy violent striving world of fourteenth century Tuscany.Datini has now probably become most intimately accessible figure of the later Middle Ages ... brilliant and intricate The Times