Buondì. Here we are with the final part in our FREE, 30-part Summer Series of Italian articles with audio. Has it been worth it? Well, I’ve certainly learnt a lot! Hope you have, too. Today we’re continuing Wednesday’s profiles of notable medieval women, with the stories of a saint (one of Italy’s TWO patron saints, […]
Medieval women (and a NEW ‘easy reader’ ebook!)
Buondì. The penultimate in our FREE, 30-part Summer Series of Italian articles with audio is ready for you to read and listen to. Over the past couple of months, we’ve had a thousand years of warriors, nobles, kings, emperors and popes, men whose, mostly bad, deeds have been sufficiently notable to earn them a slot […]
What’s the difference between an ‘epoch’ and an ‘era’?
Buondì. What’s the difference between an ‘epoch‘ and an ‘era‘? I confess, I had to look it up (see the links above, which are to Dictionary.com, a site which was new to me until today, but seems quite useful…) My ignorance can be blamed on my nineteen-seventies-era (not ‘epoch’) comprehensive school education, perhaps. I bet […]
Lesson number one about doing business in Italy
Buondì. I’ll keep this very, very quick. Today’s free Summer Series article with audio is ready for you to read and listen to. And it’s an interesting one, with a link to an entertaining video about the De Medici family, which I assume was produced for Italian teenagers (who are obbliged to memorise medieval history), […]
How to marry the boss’s daughter and become Duke of Milan
Buondì. Episode 26 of our FREE thirty-part Summer Series of articles with audio recordings, which cover the thousand-year medieval period in the Italian peninsula, is now ready. We’re in the middle of a sequence of four related articles, which recount how the various powerful ‘comunes’ ended up back being ruled by hereditary figures. Monday’s article […]
“What happened next?”
Buondì. In Friday’s episode twenty-four of our FREE 30-part Summer Series of articles with audio on the medieval period in the Italian peninsula (scroll down past The Romans to get to it) we heard and read about the new, self-governing ‘comunes’, which were, perhaps, an early form of democracy. So what happened next? Did this […]
Italy is no Sweden!
Buondì. Episode 24 of our FREE summer series on the medieval period in the Italian peninsula is ready for you to read and listen to. Rivolte e disordini nei Comuni (XIII-XIV secolo) For any aspiring or actual revolutionaries out there, this is quite an exciting one as it explains how the ‘comunes’ (basically cities, those […]
Sicily becomes French, then Spanish!
Buondì. Episode 23 of our FREE 30-part Summer Series on the medieval period in the Italian peninsula is ready for you to read and listen to: Episodio 23, Gli invasori francesi e la rivolta dei siciliani (XII-XIII secolo) As you can see from the title, this time we’re in the twelfth/thirteenth centuries, in Sicily. ‘Italians’, […]
Know your Guelfi from your Ghibellini?
Buondì. Episode 22 of our FREE Summer Series of articles with audio, on the medieval period in the Italian peninsula, is now ready. Below are the links, to that one, and to the club’s History page, where you’ll find the previous 21 along with all thirty articles from last year’s Summer Series on the Romans: […]
The Antichrist is dead, long live the communists!
Buondì. A short one today, as I messed up and spent ages proofreading (and listening to) the wrong episode of our FREE Summer Series, then had to go do the correct one as well. Also, we got up late this morning, after a disturbed night of vomiting, diarrhoea – what a horrible word to spell […]
