Naples
The simple flatbread that conquered the world
Luca Cesari describes pizza’s journey from the poor man’s staple of 18th-century Naples to today’s global favourite, worth billions
The enduring lure of Atlantis
Damian Le Bas goes in search of the fabled city beneath the waves in an attempt to overcome the grief of losing his father
A choice of thrillers for end of summer escapism
Charlotte Philby’s appropriately titled The End of Summer skilfully explores the strains of a double life. Also reviewed: Ajay Close, Charlotte Vassell and Giuseppe Miale di Mauro
Gentle genius
Dissatisfied with his unfinished epic, the dying Vergil called for his scrolls to be burned, but was fortunately overruled by the Emperor Augustus
Passchendaele all over again
When Allied forces landed at Salerno on 9 September, they expected an easy run to Rome. But the intelligence proved dangerously faulty, as James Holland explains
Two for the road
Jane Glover follows the rapturous Wolfgang around Venice, Bologna, Florence and Naples on three journeys that would change the young composer’s life
Feasts and fabrications
Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade
The war in the shadows
When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…
Hopes and fears
When Violet wakes up in Birmingham Women’s Hospital at the start of Alex Hyde’s debut novel her first thought is…
Mother’s ruin
The Lost Daughter is an adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel about motherhood that says, quite ferociously: it’s complicated. And:…
‘I am not able to answer your question’
Hermione Eyre talks to an irascible Paolo Sorrentino about therapy, Vesuvius and why he kept things simple and easy for his latest film
The reel deal
Hand of God is the latest film from Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian filmmaker who won an Oscar with The Great…
The truth is difficult
‘I don’t at all hate lies,’ Elena Ferrante explained in Frantumaglia, her manifesto for authorial anonymity. ‘I find them useful…
Creative destruction
For three months art lovers have had nothing but screens to look at. As one New York dealer complained to…
On photography, shrines and Maradona: Geoff Dyer’s Neapolitan pilgrimage
At the Villa Pignatelli in Naples there is an exhibition by Elisa Sighicelli: photographs of bits and pieces of antiquity…
Gripping and heartbreaking but I wanted to know more: Diego Maradona reviewed
Diego Maradona, Asif Kapadia’s take on the poor boy from the slums of Buenos Aires who became a footballing god,…
Naples drowns in deluge and corruption
There are nods to dark masters in Malacqua — undercurrents of Kafka, a drumbeat of Beckett — but Nicola Pugliese’s…
The Grand Tour
The Grand Tour usually culminated with Naples, ragamuffin capital of the Italian south, where Vesuvius offered a visual education in…
Real life
‘Piccolo problemo.’ Luigi, the hotel manager, delivered the fateful news as he served me my first lemon soda of the…
