Before going to Venice, we spent two days in Verona. It was my first time in Italy and I got a crick in the neck from looking up at so many amazingly old, beautiful buildings. ‘If you think this is beautiful, wait till you see Venice,’ they said.
Our host was David Petrie, a Scottish lecturer of English at the university. David is currently suing the Italian state for discriminating against foreign lecturers, and naturally this course of action hasn’t endeared him to his hosts. He’s been sent to Coventry. He’s been given a smaller office, then given no office at all. He’s been sacked. He’s been reinstated by an order of the court. He’s received death threats via the telephone. He’s been offered bribes. (The government official’s exact words, translated into English, were: ‘All right then, how much do you want?’)
Far from taking all this lying down, Mr Petrie, a patriotic Scot, is battling his opponents all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.
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