by VT | Aug 31, 2018 | General interest, Italy
Some years ago young summer travellers to Scotland returned tanned on a late summer ferry from Dover to Calais. We were returning from a rainy Tuscan summer and looked at them enviously. One vivid memory was of a visit to Perugia. A host of umbrellas hurried along the... by VT | Aug 23, 2018 | General interest, history, Italy, travel
A few years ago I went to the archives of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence to find out when the Tuscan mountainsides were first terraced. I had already walked through every room in the famous picture collection, hoping to find landscape replacing the gold of heaven in... by VT | Aug 3, 2018 | General interest, history, Italy
Some years ago young summer travellers to Scotland returned tanned on a late summer ferry from Dover to Calais. We were returning from a rainy Tuscan summer and looked at them enviously. One vivid memory was of a visit to Perugia. A host of umbrellas hurried along the... by Valerie | Jul 24, 2018 | General interest, history, Italy, people, travel
No rain for nearly six weeks. Occasionally clouds, but light and carefree. Or they pile up on the horizon like mountains shimmering behind a grey haze, and then disperse to leave the sun to reign by day and the moon by night. At dusk this Friday Britain will witness a... by Valerie | Jul 19, 2018 | art, General interest, history, Italy, people, travel
The very word – ghost – evokes fear and fascination. It conjures up, literally, a host of images from will o’ the wisps dancing in cemeteries to Anne Boleyn running along a corridor in Hampton Court clasping her head under her arm. A country house near us boasts of a... by Valerie | Jul 11, 2018 | book reviews, General interest, history, people, reading groups, travel
Not far away is Spurn Head, a wobbly tip of land that sticks out into the North Sea. Much of the land around it is below sea level and prone to flooding. The Greenwich meridian passes through it and whales swim around it. They sometimes are swept on to the beaches and...
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