Buondì. We’ve done it! With today’s final installment, we’ll have read and listened to thirty episodes on The Renaissance (and after…). In Italian! Well done to everyone who’s been following along! We finish today with Garibaldi, the ‘hero of two worlds’, and my favourite biscuit as a child (if you’re into dried fruit, source a […]

Buondì. Tomorrow evening’s dinner at our house will be la carboneria, which is Tom’s favourite, and has the added advantage that it’s familiar enough to pass muster with Roomie, who can be fussy about new dishes. No wait, I got that wrong! Because our vegan daughter’s away, we’ll be dining on la carbonara – La […]

Buondì. My motto is “Honour and Women!”. I had it engraved on my sword, so as not to forget. No, not really. And I didn’t become King of Naples, either. But read about someone who did, and presumably enjoyed plenty of fights and rumpy pumpy during his ascent from humble shop-keeper’s son to Emperor Napoleon […]

Buondì. You may have noticed the similarity between the French and Italian flags, but did you know that Napoleon, besides being emperor of France, was also King of Italy? Perhaps, being one of the earliest Italian migrants (see today’s P.S. for the newest ebook in our Italian Diaspora series) he was homesick, who knows? Find […]

Buondì. Well, The Renaissance has been a bit of a disappointment, hasn’t it? I thought there’d be plenty of stuff on science, philosophy, and so on, but apart from Galileo, the odd crispy philosopher, and a handful of painters and sculptors, it’s been a lot of articles on various European powers fighting for territory. Not […]

Buonasera. I’d long suspected there were only a handful of club members following our Summer Series. So when in today’s earlier article I forgot to replace the link to Wednesday’s Episode 23# with Friday’s Episode #24, and indeed to add the new link to our History page (now done!), two of that handful made themselves […]

Buondì. They say there’s nothing new under the sun, and reading today’s episode from our Summer Series on the Renaissance (and the following century or two), I was reminded of that. We’re in the middle of the eighteenth century now, in Genova, where the locals are fed up with being bossed about by Austrian queens, […]

Buondì. A super-quick one today, as I’m back in Italy after my holiday in the UK. The house is full of grown up children (we’re five adults and an infant at the moment), which means shopping, cooking, and washing up, not to mention taxiing Roomie to and from her distant kindergarten and, um, actually trying […]