Italy

‘And they lived happily ever after. The end.’ ‘Again.’ My poor father, bidden to read the story of the moment over and over again. Long after I could read perfectly well for myself, at bedtime I needed to hear his quiet monotone that never failed to send me to sleep, just as, though my taste in books was always adventurous, I had a narrow range of preferred stories at night, or if I was unwell. When the shadows thrown by the lamp form themselves into monsters, familiar comforts are required. Alice in Wonderland was read until the words must surely have faded on the page, and if he missed a

Now that I’m about to turn 70, I’m wondering: shall I grow old gracefully, or disgracefully? Everyone I know, young and old, tells me that I must go disgracefully (and that’s how they plan to go, or so they say). It seems that growing old gracefully has gone out of style – especially for women – but maybe it’s time for a revival? After a life of doing right and responsible things, you can now let your hair down – if you have any left What’s the difference between the two? Growing older gracefully is about letting go of the pleasures of youth – sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll or

Nouakchott in Mauritania is often referred to as the ‘worst capital city in the world’. That may be a little harsh, but it is difficult to recommend it to Spectator readers as a must-visit destination. The heat is savage, the poverty endemic, corruption is off the scale and this west African country is one of the last on Earth where you can still find hereditary slavery. Which is why I’m here. Troubles begin on arrival. A succession of three police officers grill me in the airport. Why have I come to Nouakchott, who am I working for, who am I planning to meet, why, what are their telephone numbers, what

When Pope Francis complained recently about too much frociaggine (faggotry) in the Catholic Church, he certainly struck a chord in our house here at Dante’s Beach near Ravenna. Nudism used to be illegal on pain of up to three years in prison, but the nudists simply ignored the law We live a mile inland from one of the last stretches of Adriatic coast not lined by umbrellas and concrete but by sand dunes and pine forests. It is a spiaggia libera (free beach) as well, and so belongs to everyone. However, the most beautiful bit cannot be used by the silent majority: it has been stolen by a small minority

Every year I’m summoned to a gathering which I strive to avoid. My first cousin, who loves a boozy party, assembles the extended clan in an Italian restaurant for a convivial lunch. I fear that my list of excuses – ‘back pain’, ‘gout’, ‘baptism in Scotland’, ‘last-minute undercover journalism assignment’ – is wearing a bit thin and I’ll have to show up this year. No sane human could feel fondness for a cuisine whose leading dish, pizza, can’t be eaten with a spoon It’s not my relatives that I dislike. It’s the stuff on the plates. No sane human could feel any fondness for a cuisine whose leading dish, pizza,

Every year at the beginning of April, I tell myself I must top up my Isa before the 5 April deadline. And all my friends tell me I must. My financial adviser tells me I must. Articles in the press and adverts on social media tell me I must. And every year on 6 April I ask myself: why didn’t I top up my Isa? Yes, I know investing in an Isa is the smart, sensible thing to do – so why haven’t I done it for the past ten years? Every year I have an excuse. Capitalism is about to collapse; it’s government-sanctioned tax avoidance; I should give the

The sun was setting on the first day of spring and I felt unusually happy as I fed the donkey. Winter, along with the fog and all the rest of it, had gone at last. But then from somewhere near my right ear I heard a small whining sound that for a moment I did not recognise. It was the first mosquito of the year. And I remembered how biblical it all gets round here under the Italian sun, insect-wise. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed up in the Apennines where there were no mosquitoes, just giant wasps There are a whole host of insects and other things, real, imagined, and

The Newt is an idealised country house in Somerset which won the World’s Best Boutique Hotel award last year. It is small, beautiful and mind-meltingly expensive, even for the Bruton Triangle and its mooing art galleries. Poor Somerset! It never wanted to be monied enough to have a triangle, but the rich make their own mythology. Since they paint every-thing grey – and now green, I learn at the Newt – they need it. A triangle fills the day. The Newt is for people who think that Babington House is stupid (it is) and though the Newt has its own issues – like the King, its taste is almost too

Hôtel de Crillon sits on the Place de la Concorde, a vast square renamed for bloodshed, then the lack of it – it was the Place de la Révolution, with knitting and bouncing heads. Now it is placid, and the Crillon is the most placid thing in it. No one does grand hotels like the French, except perhaps the Swiss, who have nothing better to do. Hôtel de Crillon was one of twin palaces commissioned by Louis XV before the French butchered his grandson and his wife outside them: it looks like Buckingham Palace but prettier and with possible PTSD. It has been a hotel for 115 years and next

The Cinnamon Club appears on lists of MPs favourite restaurants: if they can still eat this late into a parliament. It lives in the old Westminster Library on Great Smith Street, a curiously bloodless part of London, and an irresistible metaphor wherever you are. When once you ate knowledge, you now eat flesh, but only if you can afford it. Now there is the Charing Cross Library, which lives next to the Garrick Theatre, and looks curiously oppressed. Perhaps soon it will be a falafel shack and knows it. There is also the Central Reference Library, which could be a KFC, and soon will be. Public spaces are shrinking. They

Pensione La Calcina is one of John Ruskin’s houses in Venice. He stayed here in 1877, after completing The Stones of Venice and going mad, and there is a plaque for him on the wall: a stone of his own. It is next to the Swiss consulate on the Zattere, but never mind them. I think the Zattere is for people who have tired of Venice. It has a view to the Giudeccacanal, and the waterbus to the airport: to the exit. You can breathe here. I am staying in San Marco, where I can’t. My son falls from a water gate into a canal, and Italian grandmothers tut at

It is eight years now since The Spectator sent me to Lampedusa to see the boats coming in. That was at the start of the 2015 migrant crisis. The island, which is home to just 6,000 locals, had just buckled under the weight of another 1,300 arrivals. I followed them to Sicily and then on up and across the continent. If I may be self-referential for a moment, it was on Lampedusa that I realised the scale of the problem and got the opening lines of my resulting book, The Strange Death of Europe: ‘Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide. Whether the

The Romans wrote the history, or at least the myths. But long before Romulus murdered Remus, the Mediterranean – the Great Sea – was the principal conduit of civilisation. The Greeks spread their wings across the wine-dark seas, to the extent that even later Romans accepted that much of southern Italy was actually Magna Graecia. The Greek settlements included the city of Sybaris. Although it was destroyed around 2,500 years ago, it has passed into the language. Sybaritic – the very word is expressive – denotes ease and pleasure, the beauties of nature amid the adornments of art and architecture: champagne and dancing girls. Sybaris is in Calabria, the toe