Machiavellianism is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct", deriving from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe (The Prince) and other works. The word has a similar use in modern psychology where it describes one of the dark triad personalities. "Machiavellian" (and variants) as a word became very popular in the late 16th century in English, though "Machiavellianism" itself is first cited by the "Oxford English Dictionary from 1626.

In the 16th century, immediately following the publication of the Prince, Machiavellianism was seen as a foreign plague infecting northern European politics, originating in Italy, and having first infected France. It was in this context that the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 in Paris came to be seen as a product of Machiavellianism, a view greatly influenced by the Huguenot Innocent Gentillet, who published his Discours contre Machievel in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over the next four years. Gentillet held, quite wrongly according to Sydney Anglo, that Machiavelli's "books [were] held most dear and precious by our Italian and Italionized [sic] courtiers" in France (in the words of his first English translation), and so (in Anglo's paraphrase) "at the root of France's present degradation, which has culminated not only in the St Bartholemew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers". In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, not that politicians telegraph their intentions in writing, until Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism.

Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner (born 26 November 1940, Oldham, Lancashire) is the Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London.

Quentin Skinner was born the second son of Alexander Skinner, CBE (died 1979), and Winifred Rose Margaret, née Duthie (died 1982). Educated at Bedford School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, he was elected into a Fellowship there in 1962 upon obtaining a double-starred first in History, but immediately gained a teaching Fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he remained until moving to the University of London in 2008. He is now an Honorary Fellow of both Christ's College and Gonville and Caius College.

In the middle 1970s he spent four formative years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, initially as a historian and latterly in the School of Social Science. It was there that he met Raymond Geuss, later a colleague at Cambridge. Together with John Dunn and J. G. A. Pocock Skinner has been said to have founded the "Cambridge School" of the history of political thought. In 1978 he was appointed to the chair of Political Science at the University of Cambridge, and in 1996 he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History. He was pro-vice-chancellor of Cambridge in 1999. In 1979 he married Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London; they have a daughter and a son.

Barone Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola (May 19, 1898 – June 11, 1974) also known as Julius Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esotericist. Evola regarded his stances and spiritual values as aristocratic, masculine, traditionalist, heroic and defiantly reactionary.

Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga, a Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites, spiritual oblivion and organised deviancy. To counter this and call in a primordial rebirth, Evola presented his world of Tradition. The core trilogy of Evola's works are generally regarded as Revolt Against the Modern World, Men Among the Ruins and Ride the Tiger. According to one scholar, "Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century." Much of Evola's theories and writings are centred on spiritualism and mysticism; the inner life. He authored books covering themes such as Hermeticism, the metaphysics of war and of sex, Tantra, Buddhism, Taoism, mountaineering, the Holy Grail, the essence and history of civilisations, decadence and various philosophic and religious Traditions dealing with both the Classics and the Orient.

Stanley Bing is the pen name of Gil Schwartz (born May 20, 1951 in New York, NY), a business humorist and novelist. He has written a column for Fortune magazine for more than ten years, after having spent a decade at Esquire, and has written many books (see below). Schwartz is the executive vice president of corporate communications for CBS.

Stanley Bing is a columnist, novelist, and writer of a large body of work dedicated to exploring the relationship between pathology and authority. He first appeared in the pages of Esquire Magazine, writing a one-page column on corporate strategies at the back of the magazine. In a few years, he had moved to the front of the magazine and began to issue a series of 2500-word essays, mostly on business, sometimes not, that are still remembered by many who got their first options in the 90s.

Richard Clayderman (born Philippe Pagès, 28 December 1953, Paris, France) is a French pianist who has released numerous albums including the compositions of Paul de Senneville and Olivier Toussaint, instrumental renditions of popular music, rearrangements of movie soundtracks, ethnic music, and easy-listening arrangements of most popular works of classical music.

Clayderman learned piano from his father, a piano teacher.

At the age of twelve, he was accepted into the Conservatoire de Paris, where he won great acclaim in his later adolescent years. Financial difficulties, not the least precipitated by his father's illness, forestalled a promising career as a classical pianist. So in order to earn a living, he found work as a bank clerk and as an accompanist to contemporary bands. He accompanied French singers such as Johnny Hallyday, Thierry Le Luron, and Michel Sardou.

In 1976, he was invited by Olivier Toussaint, a French record producer, and his partner Paul de Senneville, to record a gentle piano ballad. de Senneville had composed this ballad as a tribute to his new daughter "Adeline". The 23-year-old Pagès was auditioned along with 20 other pianists and got the job. "He was an interesting musician with a soft touch and good technique", said Toussaint. "And he looked good, too".