An Italian secret

A miserable day: grey, grizzling, drizzly — October going on February. Our host had reluctantly given up the crazy idea of lunch in the garden; the first guests helped him move the tables and chairs inside. It may have been an attempt to warm ourselves against winter, but the talk turned to Italy, further stimulated by someone spotting a copy of David Gilmour’s In Pursuit of Italy. In the event of your not having devoured it already, a treat awaits you.

We agreed there is a basic distinction in the way that one thinks about Italy, and about France. Although there are vast differences between the French regions, there is an ultimate unity; there lives the dearest Frenchness deep down things. There is a France profonde. But Italy remains as Bismarck described it: a geographical expression. The convulsions from 1789 onwards created a French national identity; the Risorgimento did not unify Italy. Giulio Andreotti, that silken, suave, sophisticated… operator, who had seven stints as prime minister, was once asked whether he feared a coup d’état. ‘That could not happen,’ he replied. ‘There is no état.’ But there was a long coup d’état in the mid-19th century. The winners called it the Risorgimento.

Douceur de vie, dolce vita: why do we not have such a phrase in -English? ‘The good life’ cannot convey the same gracious sensuality. Apropos of grace, the lunch-table agreed that no human beings have more of it than northern Italians (I suggested Afrikaners and Ulster Prods, but found no seconder).

I reminisced about the days when you could buy a litre of grappa for 500 lire. That was not a gracious drink. But it was preferable to some of the modern boutique girlie-man grappas, which taste of aftershave.