Author: charinoxford

The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

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Excerpts All this amused Don Fabrizio, and in people of his character and standing the fact of being amused makes up four-fifths of affection. [p.60] (‘all this‘ is: ‘[Tancredi’s] intelligence; that quick adaptability, that wordly penetration, that innate artistic subtlety with which [Tancredi] could use the demagogic terms then in fashion while hinting to inititates that for him, the Prince of Falconeri, it was only a momentary pastime) His discomfort…must have deeper roots somewhere in one of those reasons which we call irrational because they are buried under layers of self-ignorance. [p.92] What would the Senate do with me, an inexperienced legislator who lacks the faculty of self-deception, essential requisite for anyone wanting to guide others? [p.148] “You see, Don Pietrino, the “nobles”, as you call them, aren’t so easy to understand. They live in a world of their own, created not directly by God but by themselves during centuries of highly specialised experiences, of their own worries and joys; they have a very strong collective memory, and so they’re put out or pleased by …

Day Six

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Yesterday we left earlyish, on a beautiful day, to Spoleto. Imo and I walked up the hill to meet Mum who had been at the post office. More vines!       We then went to a vineyard in San Marco, owned by the Antonelli family. We were       given a great tour by Wendy, an Australian lady who runs the vineyard’s cooking school, and whose grandparents lived in the same town in rural Victoria, Australia (Bendigo) as my Mum’s grandparents, it turned out.     A wine tasting followed the tour. Mum bought a few, including a delicious Sagrantino (the Umbrian grape) passito, a delicious, viscous dessert wine.   Nearby were two houses bought recently by American acquaintances of Beverley’s to restore – we had a good peek around.

Day Four

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I’ve arrived in Campello’s Bar Le Logge for my morning cappuccino and write-up at 11.45am on Sunday and people are skipping into the church, late or nearly late, with that shroud of hurry we used to put on coming into Canterbury Cathedral late for assembly, trying to look more trite than we felt, or perhaps just annoyed at not being on time. On my walk back up to the house yesterday, the sun suddenly came roaring out but it’s still autumn-chilly today. Yesterday Beverley was at our house when I got back and the four of us segued into lunch, Imo hacking the tomatoes into chunk-like slices, mozzarella, bread, oil; the standard fare had here over and over. Mum and Beverley did various gardening things after lunch. 6 o’clock we went to Vincanta, a wine bar just outside Campello, at the bottom of the hill, to meet Rodney, an Australian classics academic and friend of Beverley’s, who lives in Poreta, the neighbouring village to Campello. Rodney had in tow an American couple, arrived that morning …

Day Three

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We picked Imo, my sister, up from Perugia airport yesterday morning, waking up too late really to catch Spoleto market beforehand –  no matter. We sat and gabbed in the rather-too-smart-for-an-airport cafe while Mum made some calls and Imo told us about the rather too charming Stansted hotel she had stayed in. The sun the day we got here was a lie: it’s reverted to April uncertainly since. Yesterday evening in the house was cold. The house has granite floors and does get cold. All you could ask for in the summer sun, a relief and refuge, but just matter-of-fact unwarm in an April with the heating off. L’Alchemista restaurant in Montefalco had us for lunch yesterday. A compact ground floor, local wines for sale meeting your eyes as you eat, with higgledly-shaped savoury baked goods in stapled cellophane packets next to you. Most proclaim ‘farro’ – I think this is wheat. A short but complete menu: to start, I had a zupetta- little soup – of nettles with poached egg, truffles and bacon; sublime …

Day Two

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A long, better sleep. A bowl of breakfast something on the terrace. The sun is too spritely for spring already. I hung around the house to meet the Totalgaz man who came to fill up the gas tank. I walked down the scrappy hillside, on a path set through the olive groves, to Campello for a coffee at its sole cafe. I had a cappuccino for €1 (80p). I sat outside at the very accommodating plastic movable table and wrote. At 1, Mum turned up in the car from Spoleto, leash to Figaro in hand (Beverley’s dog), while the pet yanked her, nosing into short shrubbery. Mum approached the cafe, and we both met Fernando, in place, he told us, to collect Giarda, his thirteen-year-old granddaughter, from school. Fernando was one of about ten men, mostly grandfathers, having a rum old chat waiting for the school bell to holler. Fernando bought us two more cappuccinos in the meantime. He stood and necked his espresso at the bar counter, waylaid by a tall friend talking to …

Day One

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Yesterday we got the 7.30am flight from Stansted to Perugia. Blank with tired bags, emptied for bomb checks. I’ve discovered sleeping in a plane seat with your head straight down on the fold-down table, rather than curling it round for apparently better position, is a great improvement and avoids those dastardly cricks later in the day. I empty my mind here. Obligations are few and usually mediated by Mum. The house is in place, peaceful, little is superfluous. The terrace is always there, ready to receive you, to sit or wonder or eat or come in or out, or ruminate on a swim, or on how lovely a swim would be if the pool had been set up for the summer, which it hasn’t been yet. Fernando, our olive-man and gardener, came round for his usual friendly check-in, still irritated we can’t speak Italian. Beverley, my Mum’s friend who moved here ten years ago, handles him. I nap, in a bed that smells of washing machine, in sheets too clean to be slept in. I …

Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon: Guardian Review

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Horace Walpole described Mary Wollstonecraft as a “hyena in a petticoat”; to the conservative writer Richard Polwhele she was an “unsex’d female”. A generation later, Wollstonecraft’s daughter Mary Shelley was accused of being part of a “league of incest” and a founding member of “the Satanic School”. Since their deaths, both women have been the subject of many more words than they ever wrote, and enduring interest in their turbulent personal lives is fed by a steady stream of biographies, novels and literary studies.

Welcome to the Londonsphere: FT Magazine

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London’s future is up for grabs. When you try to imagine what direction the city might go in, it’s useful to think about Vienna. A century ago the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire was a rich cosmopolitan metropolis. It was an incubator of modernity, attracting people from all over, some of them nuts. Here are a few of Vienna’s residents in 1913 (as listed by BBC radio’s Today programme): Sigmund Freud, Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and a young automobile worker named Josip Broz, who eventually became the Yugoslav dictator Tito.

But by 1918, the Austro-Hungarian empire was gone. Today most Freuds live in London, and Vienna is a backwater.