The Book Club: the glory years of Antwerp

In this week's Book Club podcast Sam Leith is talking to Michael Pye about his new book Antwerp: The Glory Years. For most of the 16th century, as he tells Sam, Antwerp was the most important town in the western world – a city in which, as never before, ideas, information, goods and money circulated free of almost any authority. It was a time of extraordinary excitement – here are Bruegel, Thomas More and William Tyndale – and enormous danger and corruption. Michael tells Sam how it came about, what lessons it offers our own age... and how it reached an abrupt and bloody end. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.