Home thoughts from abroad

I have just been staying outside Rome near a town called Ladispoli. In ancient times, the area, which was a luxury seaside resort for various Roman emperors, was called Alsium. During the second Punic war it managed to exempt itself from having to send troops to fight Hannibal. Later, both Tiberius and Marcus Aurelius had villas there in order to escape from the broiling heat of the Roman summer and its accompanying stench.

Getting into Rome is probably more difficult now than it was those thousands of years ago. A la Livingstone, a lot of the city has been pedestrianised and cars require a special permit to enter the centre. This leaves one at the mercy of the Roman taxi-driver, who makes his English counterpart look like Talleyrand for subtlety and good manners. One example will suffice. One afternoon I asked one of these Roman taxi-drivers to take me to a street called Via Giulia, which is near the Tiber.