by Valerie | Feb 21, 2019 | General interest, history, people, travel, Uncategorized
‘Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all…’ Hamlet Is there a deep, unreconcilable fault line in British democracy that is snagging the conscience of many in the Westminster ‘mother of parliaments’? I did not often agree with Mrs Thatcher, but how wise she was to... by Valerie | Sep 20, 2018 | art, Fashion, General interest, history, Italy, museums, travel
One of the most powerful of many memorable sequences in the Visconti film of Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) is when the hero and heroine – Tancredi and Angelica (acted by Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale) – run, frolicking, through the attic rooms of an immense and... by VT | Aug 10, 2018 | history, Italy
The Lombards moved south from modern-day Hungary in the 7th century A.D. to set up their kingdoms of Benevento and Spoleto. They passed by the Etruscan and later Roman hilltop city of Cortona to rule from a network of castles. Suspicious of cities, they chose to... 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 | May 23, 2015 | art, General interest, history
For some time I have been excluded from my own emails, treated as an intruder on my own life, or as a negative alien. Hence my blog silence. This happens the moment I take my notebook away from its home base in Beverley. It starts playing up like a recalcitrant child....
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