The Grammar of Angels

By: Edward Wilson-Lee

Narrated by: Edward Wilson-Lee

'Ingenious… a glorious portrait of the great 15th-century prince of learning' Daily Telegraph

'A deeply fascinating, sui generis book by a brilliant scholar-writer, which uses the life story of a Renaissance prodigy to summon an angel-host of ideas, people and stories, all circling the question of language's ability to transcend the mortal realm' Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland

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Does there exist a form of speech so powerful as to allow the speaker to control the listener, taking over their thoughts and even their will? Renaissance prodigy and polymath Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – the uncontested marvel of an age of true wonders – believed that there was.

The Grammar of Angels tells how Pico dedicated his short, brilliant life to finding a philosophy that would settle the most important questions about human existence. This philosophy would, he believed, provide tools by which man could transcend his mortal limitations and join the ranks of the angels.

At the heart of Pico’s ideas were questions that he traced through the breadth and depth of human thought, from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to the medieval Arabs and Jews. He made use of everything at his disposal from Europe’s broadening horizons and asked primal questions of himself and the world. Why is it that we can be astonished by beauty? That the hairs on the backs of our necks can be made to stand by intoxicating rhythms and harmonies? That we can be provoked to ecstatic experiences by the simple means of an incantation?

In 1486, when he was just twenty-three, he declared his intention to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all comers and for which he wrote a speech that is often deemed the ‘manifesto of the Renaissance, even though the ideas it introduced were subject to an unprecedented ban by the Church. He died mysteriously aged only thirty-one.

The implications of his thought were dangerous in the Europe of his day, suggesting as they did that the notion of the individual might be just as much of an illusion as a flat earth or a geocentric universe. Pico’s tempestuous life at the heart of the Renaissance was a testament to intellectual daring, to a human dignity founded in the willingness to think the unthinkable and to peer over the edge of the abyss in search of answers.

©2025 Edward Wilson-Lee (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

'The life of Renaissance thinker Giovanni Pico della Mirandola quivers with intellectual fizz and sadomasochistic energy…[A] marvel…As a biography of Pico and an account of his thought, this is a first-class book… such range and ambition is, after all, very Renaissance. It’s very Pico. It is also a joy to read'

Sunday Times

'Wilson-Lee is good at carnivalesque historical colour… he skilfully conveys the propulsive, addictive thrill when interpretation is taken for revelation…[he] pulls in analogies from times or cultures that even Pico was not familiar with, suggesting affinities in a kind of comparative sociology of incantation. In another work this might be more of a problem; in the shadow of an accretive, universalist intellect like Pico’s, however, it makes perfect sense for this impressive and scholarly book to see its subject everywhere it looks'

Guardian