Green cloth binding with gilt design and title.

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Venice: The Most Triumphant City written by George Bull was first published on January 01, 1981.

A very solid book on Venice written by George Bull

George Bull: Journalist and polymath drawn to Italy and Japan – A combination of expertise on Machiavelli, Michelangelo, the Renaissance, Rome, Japanese history and contemporary political life, is not common among journalists, even of the old school of scholarly craftsmen: but George Bull, who has died aged 71, was an exceptional journalist -constantly reaching out for fields unconquered by his restless, inquiring mind.

No doubt because of his Catholic upbringing he was attracted early on to Italian culture and art and developed a love of Renaissance Italy. He translated Vasari, Cellini, Castiglione, Aretino and Machiavelli for Penguin books. His book on The Prince is a classic of its kind and remains in print after 40 years, having sold more than a million copies. His 1995 biography of Michelangelo is a notable contribution to the volumes written on that genius. Yet throughout, he remained the working journalist, brilliant interviewer, excellent reporter and distinctive editor.

Bull was born to working- class parents in the east end of London and was very young when his father died. His mother, Bridget, came from an Irish immigrant family and was the family’s principal support. George was educated by the Society of Jesus, an institution for which he retained a lifelong regard; it was the society that took him to Wimbledon College and from there to Brasenose College, Oxford. At Wimbledon he started and edited a school magazine, the Distributist, inspired by George’s devotion to GK Chesterton’s ideas and writings. After Oxford, he was recruited to the Financial Times by its great talent-spotting editor Sir Gordon Newton. Bull was first a reporter and then foreign news editor (1956-59). He then spent a year with the London bureau of McGraw-Hill World News as news editor before joining the Director, the Institute of Directors’ monthly magazine. Under his and Eric Foster’s control it effectively became the British equivalent of Fortune magazine.

Bull was successively the Director’s editor and editor-in-chief from 1960 till 1984. Two years after leaving it he became director of the Anglo-Japanese Economic Institute, a body which links Tokyo with the widest range of British political, industrial and cultural activities. And as the organiser-in-chief of this rather special, if largely unpublicised institution, Bull became a de facto Anglo-Japanese ambassador at large in London.

For this, in 1999, he was awarded by the emperor of Japan the prestigious Order of the Sacred Treasure (Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon).

There were no boundaries to Bull’s activities: he launched and ran a series of monthly and quarterly journals dealing with Japanese affairs: an independent journal on banking and another journal to analyse the psychological aspects of international conflict, International Minds.

He was a director and trustee of the Tablet and the Universe; governor of Westminster Choir School and St Thomas More School and of St Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill 1976-87; a member of the United Kingdom committee of the European Cultural Foundation since 1987 and co-founder in 1996 – and director – of the Institute of Public Enterprise Studies. He was appointed OBE in 1990.