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Booksrss

Straying from the Way

26 May 2012
The Server Tim Parks

Harvill Secker, pp.278, £16.99

No sensible writer wastes good material. A couple of years ago Tim Parks published a memoir, Teach Us to Sit Still, a tale of chronic, debilitating back pain that appeared… Read more

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A cult of virility and violence

19 November 2011
Il Duce and His Women Roberto Olla

Alma Books, pp.486, 25

Mussolini’s brutal sex-addiction makes for dispiriting reading, but provides material for a fine psychological study, says David Gilmour Bunga bunga may be a recent fashion, but adultery for Italian prime… Read more

The scandal that inspired La Dolce Vita

13 August 2011
Death and the Dolce Vita: The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s Stephen Gundle

Canongate Books, pp.353, £14.99

At about 5.15 p.m. on 9 April 1953, Wilma Montesi, a 21-year-old woman of no account, leaves the three-room apartment in a northern suburb of Rome that she shares with… Read more

Wool of bat and lizard leg

16 July 2011
Thin Paths Julia Blackburn

Cape, pp.250, 17.99

When Julia Blackburn and her Dutch husband Herman move into an old village house perched on a cliff high above the Italian Ligurian Riviera they become part of a dwindling… Read more

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Bella vistas

9 July 2011
The Best Gardens in Italy: A Traveller’s Guide by Kirsty Mcleod, photographs by Primrose Bell

Frances Lincoln, pp.262, 30

Great Gardens of Italy Monty Don and Derry Moore

Quadrille, pp.224, 25

Many moons ago when I went to Sissinghurst to ask Nigel Nicolson (late of this parish) if I could write about his mother, Vita Sackville-West, he raised his hands, and… Read more

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A reluctant country

5 March 2011
The Pursuit of Italy: Italians and their Diversities from the Romans to the Present David Gilmour

Allen Lane, pp.446, 25

The unification of Italy 150 years ago was a terrible mistake, according to David Gilmour, imposing a national state on a diverse collection of people with little sense of patria.… Read more

Not so serene

9 September 2009
Venice, Pure City Peter Ackroyd

Chatto & Windus, pp.387, 25

Is there anything original left to say about Venice? Probably not, but that doesn’t stop the books from coming, tied in, as they mostly now are, with a television series.… Read more

Acute observations

9 September 2009
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham Selina Hastings

John Murray, pp.614, 25

In the 1950s, when I was 14, I spent a winter fortnight with my parents at the Villa Mauresque, which Somerset Maugham had lent to them to entertain the recently… Read more