Q. While staying for a weekend in a five-star Umbrian paradise south of Siena, you can imagine my horror when my breakfast partner recoiled at my pulling out my Baedeker on Siena. I always carry Baedeker when centreville-ing, but my companion expressed abject mortification and begged me to put it away. I consider myself to be a person of reasonably good lineage but did not realise it was bad form to have Baedeker in a public place. Can you rule, Mary?
A. It depends on whether you are interested in posing as so entrenched an habitué of Siena that you do not need Baedeker or whether you are more interested in self-improvement. You could do worse than to take your cue from the Florentine über-smartie, the late Sir Harold Acton, who openly boasted of ‘wearing out a Baedeker a year’ and could more often than not be seen openly wielding one as he accompanied visiting English friends around the art treasures of that city.
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