Acknowledgments

For conversations, advice, readings, and intellectual generosity of all kinds, I would like to thank the wise and resourceful people who have helped me, particularly Hamza bin Walayat, Andrew Copson, Peter Mack, Scott Newstok, Jim Walsh, and Nigel Warburton. In Florence, I would like to thank Enrica Ficai-Veltroni, Giovanna Giusti, and Mara Miniati for their generosity with their time and expertise. Thank you also to Stefano Guidarini for our conversation about Leon Battista Alberti, and to Peter Moore for much sharing of ideas and inspiration and for passing so many discoveries my way.

Much of this book was written in the realm of marvels that is London’s Warburg Institute Library, and in the British Library. Thank you very much to the staff of both, especially Richard Gartner of the Warburg, and to those of the other excellent libraries and archives I used, notably the Bishopsgate Institute Library, the Conway Hall Library, the Wiener Holocaust Library, and, as ever, the London Library.

My thanks to Humanists International and Humanists UK for all their help, including in making the 2022 Declaration of Modern Humanism available to be quoted in full. Thank you especially to Catriona McLellan for her help with the Humanists UK logo.

Many thanks to Becky Hardie, Clara Farmer, and the rest of the team at Chatto & Windus, and to Ann Godoff and the team at Penguin U.S., especially Casey Denis, Victoria Lopez, and my erudite and judicious copy editor, David Koral. I feel very lucky to have had so much expert and warmhearted support from my beloved agents: Zoë Waldie and everyone else at Rogers, Coleridge & White, and Melanie Jackson in the United States.

A special thank-you to Judith Gurewich, especially for our conversations about Petrarch and our shared hero, Lorenzo Valla.

Thank you to all involved with the Windham-Campbell Prizes; receiving such an unexpected honor in the early stages of writing this book made all the difference.

Above all, thank you to my wife, Simonetta Ficai-Veltroni, for the many years of love and encouragement, for her excellent insights and instincts, for reading innumerable versions of the work in progress, and for much, much more.

This book is dedicated to all the people who have quietly (or loudly) stood up for their humanistic beliefs over the centuries, often in situations where doing so has required exceptional courage. There are many such people still doing exactly that today.