Italy
Harry’s Bar, where a slice of cake costs €32 – and is worth it
Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held…
The mathematical revolution behind ‘the greatest picture in the world’
The Indian inspiration with which Piero della Francesca created ‘the greatest picture in the world’
Clarissa Tan's Notebook: Why I stopped drinking petrol
Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…
Christmas past in Spectator letters
This is a selection of seasonal letters from The Spectator’s 185-year archive, now online at archive.spectator.co.uk. The emblem to the…
Alexander Chancellor: I don’t like traffic jams or lager louts but that doesn’t mean I hate Britain
The Italians are often thought of as being unpatriotic, and one can see why. They relentlessly denigrate their national institutions,…
Italians for Maggie
The Circolo Culturale Margaret Thatcher, which wants to institute an Anglo-Saxon Tory party in Italy, has a plan
Letters: James Whitaker’s widow answers Toby Young
Absent friends Sir: Alec Marsh (‘Welcome to Big Venice’, 10 August) accurately observes that Londoners are priced out of central…
How can you be racist and Italian? Quite easily, it seems
The Italian shop assistant accused by Oprah Winfrey of showing racial prejudice towards her in a shop in Zurich has…
Attack of the nudist lawyers
How a little bird saved my favourite beach
Dear Mary: How can I tell her that her table manners are disgusting?
Q. My mainly male colleagues and I were happy to learn that an attractive young woman would be joining the…
Melissa Kite is punished for ignoring the Madonna of the sea
‘Benvenuti alla Small Cluster Band!’ And about time, too. We had been sitting in the Castello in Castellabate for half…
Will Melissa Kite’s former Italian waiter boyfriend stir up trouble again?
‘Piccolo problemo.’ Luigi, the hotel manager, delivered the fateful news as he served me my first lemon soda of the…
