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HISTORIAN · AUTHOR · LECTURER

Stella Fletcher

Welcome

Stella is a chronologically versatile historian who has taught and published on European history across the medieval, early modern and modern periods, often with an emphasis on relations between Church and State, and a geographical focus on Italy and Britain.

As part of her undergraduate studies at the University of Warwick, she spent a term in Venice, studying Florentine and Venetian history of the Renaissance period. Following a year volunteering at Warwick County Record Office, she returned to Italy to undertake doctoral research on later fifteenth-century Venetian cardinals in Rome and received her PhD, again from the University of Warwick, in 1992.

Stella’s teaching career took her from King Alfred’s College, Winchester, to the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester, alongside which she served on the Council of the Society for Renaissance Studies (1996–2010) and as Honorary Secretary of the Ecclesiastical History Society (2005–14). From 2012 she combined writing with caring responsibilities, and in 2025 returned to active involvement in academic history when she was elected as a Councillor of the Royal Historical Society. Since 2002, the Warwick connection has been maintained by means of an honorary research fellowship in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance.

Although Stella kept writing and publishing during her time as a carer, when that phase ended, she had no historical work in progress and no publication deadlines to meet. In order to maintain the habit of writing, she worked on memoirs, but that required introducing family members who had no public profiles. She kept researching the family until she came across individuals who could be linked to well-known figures and trends, thereby placing her ancestors in familiar contexts. As the family history grew, the memoirs had to be postponed. The result, Curtain-raiser: A family history, is available here.

Current Projects

Following the death of Warwick-based impresario Richard Phillips in 2026, Stella has been sorting his archive and that of his grandfather, Arts and Crafts architect Edwin F. Reynolds (1875–1949).
She has been invited to edit the blogposts of ‘Digitalnun’ Catherine Wybourne (1954–2022) for publication by Gracewing.
Another new subject is Henry Woods RA (1846–1921) in Britain and Italy.
Notes on S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice, from the travel diary of Edwin F. Reynolds, 1902 (Private collection)

Forthcoming Lectures

In addition to undergraduate teaching and postgraduate supervision, Stella has considerable experience of lecturing to general interest groups in Britain and Italy, whether on Florentine, Venetian or papal history, or on the figures of English Renaissance such as Thomas Penketh, William Caxton and Thomas More. In the modern period her topics have included A. W. N. Pugin, historian Julia Cartwright, Stephen Remarx (a Christian Socialist novel), Art Nouveau architecture in Turin, Abbot Hugh Edmund Ford, and Archbishop Frederick William Keating.

Stella’s forthcoming lectures include:

The British in Venice

Date and time: 5 October 2026, 7.30 p.m.
Friars’ Green Independent Methodist Chapel, Warrington WA1 1EH
This lecture is for the Warrington Literary and Philosophical Society, which Stella has previously addressed on Machiavelli and the princes of Renaissance Europe, and on Concepts of the Renaissance in the long nineteenth century.

Richard Phillips Memorial Lecture: Edwin F. Reynolds, a Warwickshire architect

Date and time: 9 October 2026, midday
Unitarian Chapel, High Street, Warwick CV34 4AX
From 1989 Stella lodged at Northgate, the home of Richard and Veronica Phillips. The house had been acquired by Richard’s grandfather, architect Edwin F. Reynolds, in whose work Richard took an intense interest. Richard’s legacy to his home town includes the Warwick Words History Festival, the most appropriate context in which to celebrate both the architect and his grandson.
Warwick Words History Festival
Stella at Stockton Heath Library, 14 March 2025, before speaking on the history of conclaves.

Broadcasting

In 2002–4 Stella wrote and presented extensively for Vatican Radio’s English programme: an 11-part series on fifteenth-century cardinals, a 10-part series on sixteenth-century cardinals, a 10-part series on the English in Rome, and a 4-part series on the English Reformation, together with ‘it was on this very spot’ pieces recorded around Rome. Meanwhile, for the English Africa programme she made a 20-part series on relations between Church and State (with an African twist) and a 4-part series on schism and ecumenism.

For the papal interregna and conclaves in 2005 and 2013 she made numerous contributions across BBC Radio and Television, as well as making a podcast on the history of conclaves for the BBC History Magazine.

Pope Pius XI, founder of Vatican Radio, opening the Holy Door at St Peter’s Basilica, 24 December 1924

Select Publications

2026
Curtain-raiser: A family history
2023
St Joseph’s, Penketh, 1923–2023: A centenary celebration
2023
Editor, Benedictus: A Blest Life. Essays in honour of Abbot Geoffrey Scott, Weldon Press
2022
Editor, Arthur Keates Brown and the Isle of Man, privately printed
2022
‘Margery Kempe’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2022
‘Marino Sanudo’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2022
6 new and c.250 revised entries, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 4th edn, ed. Andrew Louth
2022
‘Pope Innocent VIII’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2022
‘Pope Paul II’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2022
‘Polydore Vergil’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2021
‘Abbot Edmund Ford, Secret Agent’, British Catholic History, 35 (4), 440–61
http://doi:10.1017/bch.2021.18
2021
‘Concepts of the Renaissance, c.1780–c.1920’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2021
‘Edmund Campion’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2021
‘Margaret Clitherow’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2021
‘The Italian Wars’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2020
‘Edward IV, King of England’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2020
‘Renaissance Cities Through Ruskinian Eyes: An English architect in Italy in 1902’, in Humfrey Butters and Gabriele Neher, eds, Government and Warfare in Renaissance Tuscany and Venice: Civic Identities and Urban Transformations, Amsterdam University Press, pp. 365–84
2020
‘Pope Nicholas V’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2019
‘Bishops, 1550–1700’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2019
‘Caught Between Fact and Fantasy: The Borgia in English literature’, in The Borgia Family: Rumor and representation, ed. Jennifer Mara DeSilva, Routledge, pp. 145–60
2019
‘Francesco Guicciardini’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2019
‘Henry VII, King of England’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2019
‘Lucrezia Borgia’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2019
‘Margaret Beaufort’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2019
‘Pope Sixtus IV’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2019
‘Religion’, in Gordon Campbell, ed., Oxford Illustrated History of the Renaissance, Oxford University Press, pp. 82–116 (pb 2023)
2019
‘Richard III, King of England’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2018
‘Bishops, 1400–1550’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2018
‘Cesare Borgia’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2018
‘The Borgia: From fact to fiction’, The Historian, 137, pp. 26–9
2017
The Popes and Britain: A history, I.B. Tauris
2017
‘Cardinals and the War of Ferrara’, Royal Studies Journal, 4, 2, pp. 64–77
http://doi.org/10.21039/rsj.v4i2.174
2017
‘Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2017
‘Pope Alexander VI’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2013
‘Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2013
‘The Medici Family’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2012
Editor, Roscoe and Italy: The reception of Italian Renaissance history and culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Ashgate
2012
‘Cardinals’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2011
A Very Agreeable Society: The Ecclesiastical History Society, 1961-2011, EHS
2011
‘Italian visitors’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2010
‘English Reformation’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2010
‘Girolamo Savonarola’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2010
‘Lorenzo de’ Medici’, Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King, Oxford University Press (rev. 2022)
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline/renaissance
2009
Cardinal Wolsey: A life in Renaissance Europe, Continuum
2005
Co-author with Dominic Aidan Bellenger, The Mitre and the Crown: A history of the archbishops of Canterbury, Sutton Publishing
2001
97 entries, Cassell Dictionary of Christian Biography, ed. Michael Walsh
2001
Co-author with Dominic Aidan Bellenger, Princes of the Church: A history of the English cardinals, Sutton Publishing
2000
‘Cardinal Marco Barbo as protector of English interests at the Roman Curia in the late fifteenth century’, The Downside Review 118, 410, pp. 27–44
2000
Co-editor with Christine Shaw, The World of Savonarola: Italian elites and perceptions of crisis, Ashgate
1999
The Longman Companion to Renaissance Europe, 1390-1530, Longman
http://doi.org/10.4324/978135841359
1996–2005
Editor, Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies
1996
‘The making of a fifteenth-century Venetian cardinal’, Studi Veneziani NS XXXI, pp. 27–49
1995–6
Local history editor, Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society/Hampshire Studies

[1] Available from stella.fletcher317@gmail.com for £5.00 + postage.

[2] Available from stella.fletcher317@gmail.com for the cost of postage only.

Curtain-raiser: A family history (2026)

In Curtain-raiser, historian Stella Fletcher turns her attention to her own ancestry, tracing generations of ordinary people and placing their lives within the wider history of Britain.

Purchase The Book

Contact

Email Stella directly at : stella.fletcher317@gmail.com