How I ran away to Italy

A quarter of a century ago I somehow managed to get out of Paris where I had haunted a cheap hotel for months like a ghost trapped between this world and the next. I drove to Italy where I have lived ever since.

I had a great contract with a famous publisher to write a biography of Benito Mussolini but had already spent the hefty advance and had yet to write a single word. On arrival in Italy, I did not even have enough money to pay the motorway toll. But the young woman in charge handed me a form to fill in and waved me through with a smile.

I had diverted to Paris only because a treacherous Frenchman persuaded me to write an instant book with him about the death of Princess Diana in August 1997.