You can admire a roguish old pagan without approving of him

Recently I managed to get hold of a copy of Alone by Norman Douglas. This series of essays about Italian towns at the time of the first world war was the author’s favourite book. But it is not easily found. Indeed several of Douglas’s works are rarities. Most people know his novel South Wind, about wicked goings-on in pre-1914 Capri. And Old Calabria, my own favourite, which deals with the toe and instep of Italy, is one of the finest books of travel ever written. It has been republished, notably in a 1955 edition, with an introduction by John Davenport. So has Siren Land, another fine travel discourse on the Sorrentino peninsula, and there is a modern edition of a third, Fountains in the Sand, about the hinterland of Tunisia. But what we need is a collected edition of all Douglas’s books, which would include his learned monographs about Italian history, geology, flora and fauna, published as pamphlets. Perhaps that enterprising firm, Pickering & Chatto, would consider undertaking this arduous, expensive and valuable work.

Who was Norman Douglas? A good question for, though he was a celebrity in his day, wrote various pieces of autobiography and has been the subject of several books, mysteries remain. When I first

went to Italy there were three famous men one hoped to meet, if the right introductions could be arranged: Bernard Berenson at I Tatti, Harold Acton at his superb villa outside Florence, and Douglas, spending his declining years in an apartment in the villa of a rich friend in Capri. He could be called on there, or if one was bold enough, spoken to while taking his aperitif at his favourite café.

He was a striking figure: tall, powerfully built and formidable even at 80, with a fine beaky face and brilliant white hair parted in the middle.