Acton's history is more than forty years old, but it still reads well even if 700-odd pages about a rather minor dynasty may seem too much. No city or province of Italy has had more foreign rulers than Naples, but when Charles of Bourbon arrived there in 1734, after two centuries of Spanish rule, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies began probably its happiest period in history. The Bourbons were not displaced until Italy became a united kingdom in 1870. They were not all good or benevolent rulers - the notorious "King Bomba" was an obvious exception to that - but generally they were accommodating and popular with their volatile subjects. Nelson and Lady Hamilton play an important role in the narrative, but Acton was also a cultured aesthete and his disquisitions on Neapolitan art, architecture and music (including that of Rossini) are among the most valuable elements in the book.