• Machiavelli's recommendation for the conduct of political leaders hold an enduring fascination
• His best-known work,The Prince is still widely read
• Quentin Skinner's introduction has been praised as 'compulsive reading'

 
Niccolo Machiavelli taught that political leaders must be prepared to do evil that good may come of it, and his name has been a byword ever since for duplicity and immorality. Is his sinister reputation deserved? In answering this question Quentin Skinner focuses on three major works, The Prince, the Discourses, and The History of Florence, and distils from them an introduction to Machiavelli's doctrines of exemplary clarity.