by VT | Mar 15, 2021 | art, history, Italy
Ever since I was a student, I have had recourse to the same image of hope. Everyone now must be dreaming of somewhere beyond the horizon where life as we once knew it can return – with some gentle tinkering carried out by our imagination in the meanwhile. Mine is in... by VT | Feb 18, 2021 | history, Italy
Herculaneum I read somewhere that history begins fifty years ago and progresses backwards as far as there are written records. Before that, it is archaeology – stones and bones. When I was told that Mary Beard has been examining the remains left in Roman latrines, I... by VT | Apr 8, 2020 | history, Italy
Five centuries or more ago in Christians would be fervently praying to San Rocco, the patron saint of plague. He is usually painted as a scantily dressed pilgrim with a staff and sores more or less prominently painted over his body, and he is particularly popular in... by VT | Mar 25, 2020 | history, Italy
Historians expound many themes and often disagree, but none can deny that a plague devastated Christendom in the first half of the 1300s. It was just when literature in the language of the people – – the ‘vulgar tongue’ emerged at the same time as the new... by VT | Mar 12, 2020 | General interest, history, Italy
After Easter Britain’s country houses or ‘stately homes’ will open their doors to curious visitors intrigued by the scale of the rooms and the treasures on display, but they rarely look into the alcoves. They could be small, once cherished retreats from the grander... by Valerie | Mar 4, 2020 | childhood, General interest, history, Italy, people, travel, writing a novel
Gretel and Zita It is a strange coincidence that a book about a mayor and a bear in a north Italian mountain town is published, just when young people worldwide are questioning the human species’ relationship to and role in climate change and the floods that devastate...
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