Italy
Dangerous secrets: Verdigris, by Michele Mari, reviewed
A lonely teenager on holiday in Italy befriends his grandparents’ elderly gardener and slowly coaxes out his painful memories of betrayals and reprisals during the war
Politicians can’t win on illegal migration
It is eight years now since The Spectator sent me to Lampedusa to see the boats coming in. That was…
You have to be truly incompetent to eat badly in Paris
Paris has enough great restaurants to maintain its claim to be the world capital of gastronomy. That said, Parisian residents…
A perfect slice of Calabria
The Romans wrote the history, or at least the myths. But long before Romulus murdered Remus, the Mediterranean – the…
Italy is under attack from a killer crab
Italy is under attack from a foreign crab
Where to drink Tuscany’s finest summer tipples
Some subjects invite an eternal recurrence. One such is Tuscany. The other day, I wrote about that glorious region: its…
What’s so super about Super Tuscans?
In Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the hopes embodied in the title dissolve into grimness and black irony. It was all…
Tuscan chiaroscuro
A trio of formidable British women are enjoying peaceful retirement in Italy – until their idyll is disrupted by a series of unforeseen events
Georgia Meloni’s first 100 days have proved her critics wrong
Macho Italy’s first woman prime minister Giorgia Meloni has now governed for 100 days and I cannot help but notice…
Portrait of the week: Chancellor unveils his unBudget, Hilary Mantel dies and corgi prices soar
Home Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented a far-reaching ‘fiscal event’ (ineligible to be called a Budget), said…
Giorgia Meloni can’t afford to fight the EU
Ravenna, Italy The victory of Giorgia Meloni in Italy with ahuge majority of seats in parliament has prompted the expected…
Will Meloni be able to govern Italy?
Mario Draghi’s national unity government lost badly in yesterday’s Italian election – worse even than the polls predicted. Fratelli d’Italia,…
Second chances: The Marble Staircase, by Elizabeth Fair, reviewed
To reject ‘in rainy middle age the poignant emotions that belonged to youth and Italy’ is the lesson learned by…
Pre-Mussolini, most Italians couldn’t understand each other
Towards the end of Dandelions, Thea Lenarduzzi’s imaginative and deeply affecting memoir, the author quotes her grandmother’s remark that there…
Europe’s new migrant crisis
Earlier this month I spent a week in Sicily, driving south from Palermo to Agrigento and then east to Syracuse…
Dark days in Hollywood: Mercury Pictures Presents, by Anthony Marra, reviewed
Summer is a time for blockbusters and Anthony Marra has delivered the goods with Mercury Pictures Presents, a sweeping book…
Italy’s hostility to Nato is building
Ravenna, Italy The war in Ukraine has caused an unholy convergence of the left and right in Italy.…
The horror of gluten-free beer
I was reminded of the worst liquid that I have ever consumed. It was the last occasion on which I…