The one economic indicator that never stops rising: meet the Negroni Index

This dispatch comes to you from Venice — where I arrived at sunset on the Orient Express. More of that journey on another occasion, I hope. Suffice to say that if you happen to have been wrestling with the moral choice of bequeathing what’s left of your tax-bitten wealth to ungrateful offspring or spending it on yourself, don’t hesitate to invest in a last fling on this time capsule of elegant extravagance. Made up of rolling stock built in the late 1920s, the train itself symbolises everything that 20th-century Europe was good at — engineering, craftsmanship, style, cross-border connections — when not distracted by political folly and war. Views from the bar car of triple-dip-recession-hit industrial Milan and Bologna seem to symbolise much that Europe habitually gets wrong, starting and ending with economic management.

Or so I mused, with a negroni in my hand and the lounge pianist playing ‘As Time Goes By’ in my ear.