Jacopo Ligozzi’s Watercolour of a Parrot is one of the many illustrations in a beautifully produced book published by OUP and edited by Gordon Campbell, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Renaissance. Considering when the period began and ended, and what exactly it included, the book is full of beauty and wonder, as it covers art, religion, war, science, craft, techology, and ancient Greece, and engages with cultures as far afield as China and Spanish America (£30 (£27); 978-0-19-871615-0)