You might expect an introduction to The Divine Comedy written by one of the world’s foremost Dante scholars, an Australian-born, much admired academic in British universities for several decades, who has spent many a year working in the dark corners of libraries decoding manuscript after manuscript, to be astute and accomplished, perhaps even definitive. But you would not necessarily expect it to be completely enthralling, even – perhaps especially – for the non-specialist reader. But Prue Shaw’s remarkable Reading Dante succeeds on both scores. It is a virtuoso performance. The appeal of the Commedia is universal, yet there can be no such thing as an objective approach to Dante’s poetry. Perhaps Shaw’s greatest achievement is to show that we each have