Dolce vita
The Italian approach to cheating
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The unseasonably warm wind blowing in across the fields from the brooding Adriatic caused my wife Carla…
My family dinner table debates about Gaza
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I was in the Land Rover Defender with Rita, my youngest daughter (16), parked up near Dante’s…
My run-in with airport security
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna ‘Welcome back, signore!’ said the woman in uniform at the all-seeing security doorway which passengers must walk…
Was I the victim of a sex crime?
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I went up to her and got straight to the point: ‘What are you using for bait?’…
How Italy’s ‘new young’ party
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The Feast of the Assumption began for me just after midnight with a WhatsApp message from my…
Our seven chickens are ruling the roost
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna All seven chickens we recently acquired are now laying eggs – except the one called Giovanna, which…
My daring escape from the Italian police
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I often feel as if I know what it was like to be a member of La…
No, I’m not a British spy
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The youngest of our six children, Giuseppe, nine, received the Eucharist for the first time on Sunday.…
Pope Francis, my love rival
To be honest, I felt relief when Pope Francis died. This had nothing much to do with his regular assertion,…
The day the King came to Ravenna
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna ‘Fortune’s a right whore: If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,/ That she may…
Why I won’t accept the Laurels of Dante
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I have just refused to accept the local equivalent of an Oscar, which was to have been…
Drinking with The Chemist – and God
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The closest I get to a social life these days is when I sneak off into town…
My night with Mussolini’s ghost
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I came to Italy to write a biography of Benito Mussolini in the summer of 1998 and…
The slippery business of catching a snake
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna It is strange how events elide and create a pattern whose significance remains elusive. I had just…
My teenage Interrailing adventures
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna In my life I have nearly killed myself mainly with cigarettes and alcohol and dangerous journeys into…
My Egyptian mau pyramid scheme
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna Was it chance or destiny, I wonder, that caused the eldest of our six children, Caterina, to…
Watching the Euros final in Italy was a bad idea
There was not a Spaniard in sight, I was pretty sure of that. But I was surrounded by the enemy,…
Italians are beautiful – but not on this beach
When Pope Francis complained recently about too much frociaggine (faggotry) in the Catholic Church, he certainly struck a chord in…
Who will my wife marry next?
Since I had a brush with death a couple of years ago, I have often wondered who my far younger…
Under the Italian sun, the insects are stirring
The sun was setting on the first day of spring and I felt unusually happy as I fed the donkey.…
How I ran away to Italy
A quarter of a century ago I somehow managed to get out of Paris where I had haunted a cheap…
