18 Thursday Jun 2020
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This story was told to me years ago, one summer afternoon, in a centuries-old library in Mantua. It was whispered by an elderly scholar, as we took a short break after hours of patient, careful philological work…
It begins with a boy of eighteen, the shy, bookish sort, with the kind of passion for Ancient Greece that makes one court girls by lending them books of Greek poetry. Continue reading
04 Thursday Jun 2020
Posted in Books
When I found out that there was an Italian edition of Conrad’s Lord Jim for children, reading age 10+, I couldn’t rest until I saw it with my own eyes.
Because, really: from age ten? Ten?! And I wondered because, on first reading it at the slightly more mature age of sixteen, I’d found LJ such hard going. I’d also eventually fallen in love with it in several fundamental ways – but, heavens above, it had been hard. And mind, I don’t mean technically difficult to read – although both language and structure are definitely not easy – but emotionally exhausting. And here was this children’s publisher, springing it on ten-year-old kids? Continue reading
16 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Books
The 18th century is lazily going by in the fictional English town of Airenchester, when we meet hour hero, Thaddeus Grainger, the type of young gentleman of means and taste. A bright, clever, careless boy in the words of his doting housekeeper, Thaddeus is in equal parts bored and disillusioned when it comes to the fine society he confidently belongs to, but that is the way of things, and what is a fellow to do – except navigate the currents, and keep apart from the worst of it? In fact, Thaddeus’s only rebellion is to cultivate the close friendship of reasonably genteel but penniless William Quilby, a vicar’s son and journalist… Continue reading
20 Thursday Feb 2020
Posted in Books
I remember picking up Matthew Plampin’s Will and Tom in the bookshop at the Tate Britain – and then putting it back, just as I’d put back half a dozen other hardbacks in the last day. In truth, after lugging many and many and many pounds of books across Europe over the years, I’ve learned, when I’m travelling, to only buy the ones that can’t conceivably be procured through the Net – either digitally or physically. So I jotted down the title in my notebook’s dedicated page, and in time the novel found its way to my Kindle. Then, for some reason, it took me a few years to get round to actually read it. If you have a To Read List of any length, you know how these things happen… Continue reading
03 Thursday Oct 2019
A couple of weeks ago my mother discovered, with considerable amusement, the existence of Talk Like a Pirate Day, and asked why I didn’t post about it.
“Never have,” I said. “I don’t even like pirate stories.”
“Nonsense,” was the answer. “You’ve read lots of them.”
And I protested that no, really – in fact, I rather dislike pirate stories… And I was thinking of Jack Sparrow and company, but even more of Salgari’s insufferable Sandokan and multi-coloured corsairs, without which no Italian childhood is considered complete… Continue reading
29 Thursday Nov 2018
How my father happened to lose his own old copy of Gösta Berling’s Saga, I have no idea. When it came to books, the Colonel was an odd mix of jealous worship and carelessness… But somehow or other the book was lost.
What I know for sure is that, many years later, I found an old copy of the Saga in a second-hand bookshop in Pavia – an old, tiny and delightful place named Il Parnaso, the kind of place where one can while away a rainy afternoon making discovery after wonderful discovery… oh, you know what I mean. Now, my found Saga was not the same edition my father had lost – but it was old, a little worse for wear, and bore an ex-libris explaining how it had been saved during some flooding or other of the Ticino, Pavia’s river. Continue reading
11 Thursday Oct 2018
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History, Jacobite Risings, novels, R. L. Stevenson, Rosemary Sutcliff, Scotland, Susanna Kearsley, Walter Scott
Obviously Scotland does this to me: it sends me on Jacobite tangents. Fictional tangents, mostly – because really, the moment you try a history book, the whole adventure loses much of its shine. Then again, seven decades of intermittent and unsuccessful attempts at restoring a royal line with the dubious aid of a foreign power were bound to be, on the one hand not terribly well organised, and on the other, perfect novel material… I mean: how can you have plenty of exiles headed by a handsome and charming prince, loyal clans, recurring bursts of violence, conspirations, secret messages, toasts to the King Across the Water, songs, divided families, spirited ladies, battles, and an ultimately doomed cause – and not expect an abundance of fiction? And of course, the foremost charm of the Jacobites is that of the doomed and defeated. Would we care very much about them, would we write novels, if they’d won? Continue reading
13 Thursday Sep 2018
Posted in Books
Do you remember my Reading Week – the one I could not have this year?
Well, it seems that I must have it, after all – in fact, quite a bit longer than a week, whether I want it or not. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love the chance to read, read, and read some more – and a longish vacation is something I haven’t taken in… oh, something more than a decade, I’d think. Still, I’d have vastly preferred to do without the trouble and hospitalisation that caused this one particular vacation… Continue reading
09 Thursday Aug 2018
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Annie Whitehead, Henslowe's Diary, historical novels, Internet, Mercedes Rochelle, Philip Henslowe, research
There is no doubt that, when it comes to researching historical novels, there is a Before the Internet and an After the Internet.
I daresay the same applies to a lot of fields – but let me stick to mine: I’m old enough to remember a time when, if you were Italian and wanted, say, to read Henslowe’s Diary, your best option was a trip of several hundred kilometers – to read the book in Bologna or Venice, supposing someone had told you that Nineteenth Century copies of JP Collier’s edited version were to be found there at all*… Continue reading
12 Thursday Jul 2018
Posted in Books
A few days ago I was talking books with a reasonably educated and definitely adult acquaintance – and, on saying that I’ve read a good deal of Dickens through the years, I earned a raised eyebrow and this question: but isn’t Dickens a children’s author?
Right then I raised an eyebrow in turn – but I have to admit that my acquaintance had reasons to think so. Very Italian reasons that have little to do with the audience Dickens wrote for… Continue reading
