Rome
The spiritual journey of St Augustine
Christians should consider themselves ‘peregrini’, said Augustine, and his life on the periphery of the Roman empire taught him that we are all citizens of nowhere
The key to Giorgia Meloni’s resounding success
The once sullen, bullied girl, abandoned by her father as a baby, found iron in her soul and refused to become a victim
How Rome copes with the Conclave
Ordinary Romans, famous for their cheerful working-class familiarity, loved Pope Francis for his common touch. For the first time in…
How Pope Francis kept the faith
As timing goes, a pope simply can’t do better than to die just after Easter Sunday. The moral of the…
The Francis effect
Pope Francis was a man of remarkable complexity who cultivated an image of utmost simplicity. He began the moment he…
World leaders pay tribute to Pope Francis
Pope Francis has died aged 88. At 7.35 a.m., the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had ‘returned to the house…
Francis and the Vatican reckoning
Modern popes, for better or for worse, tend to be defined in soundbites. John Paul II’s clarion call of ‘Be…
What Ovid in exile was missing
The poet complained bitterly of the barbarism of Tomis, on the Black Sea – but it was actually a thriving entrepot with a rich culture, like many of the Roman empire’s remoter cities
Truly inspirational: the hospital diary of Hanif Kureishi
‘My world has been smashed...and there is nothing I can do about’, writes Kureishi of the freak accident in 2022 that has left him paralysed. ‘But I will not go under. I will make something of it’
Conrad Black adheres firmly to the ‘great man’ view of history
The movers and shakers of Volume I of his projected history of the world are Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal rather than any socio-economic forces
Familiar and strange
Each story circles around events both big and small, such as lunch at a simple trattoria, a birthday party, a summer holiday or the funeral of a friend
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
Blood sports
In the year 2023, the Neo-Roman Empire was at the height of its powers. A potentially restive populace was kept…
Death in Rome
On Sunday 17 September 1820, John Keats and his travelling companion, the young painter Joseph Severn, set sail for Italy,…
Saint or hustler?
Laura Gascoigne dishes the dirt on Raphael
The great divide
According to Nina Power’s forceful and rather unusual What Do Men Want?, we in the West are currently engaged in…
Letter from Rome
‘Excommunication,’ reads a stone plaque on the wall of the church of St Theodore in Rome, ‘and a fine of…
High life
Gstaad I was very sad to read of Rupert Hambro’s death. I didn’t know him well, but first met him…
High life
Gstaad During these dark, endless periods of lockdown, let’s take a trip down memory lane to a time when we…
The road to Rome
Matthew Kneale is much drawn to people of the past. In his award-winning English Passengers, he captured the sensibilities of…
Nazi on the run
In 1926, while putting in place the repressive laws and decrees that would define his dictatorship, Mussolini appointed a new…
For a solution to the backstop, team up like Rome and Carthage
The EU is demanding that, in return for a new deal, the UK must come up with a solution to…
How Boris’s Roman predecessors took back control
The Tories, allegedly a ‘one-nation’ party, are currently imposing Brexit on a divided nation. As a result, some Tory MPs…
Angels through the ages
A good question for your upcoming Lent quiz: where are angels mentioned in the Nicene Creed? I asked this at…
