The new age of the refugee
After years of estrangement in a foreign land, what can immigrants expect to find on their return home? The remembered…
Mach the Knife
The business of banking (from the Italian word banco, meaning ‘counter’) was essentially Italian in origin. The Medici bank, founded…
The Ben and Clara affair
As a child in fascist Italy, Clara Petacci (known as Claretta) was dutifully adoring of Benito Mussolini and the cult…
The Ben and Clara affair
As a child in fascist Italy, Clara Petacci (known as Claretta) was dutifully adoring of Benito Mussolini and the cult…
Satirising the artful Hoxha
Blood, they say, is quick on the knife in Albania, where Balkan-style revenge killings, known as giakmarrje (‘blood-takings’), settle ancient…
Satirising the artful Hoxha
Blood, they say, is quick on the knife in Albania, where Balkan-style revenge killings, known as giakmarrje (‘blood-takings’), settle ancient…
Blackouts and white coats
In the cult Steve Martin film The Man With Two Brains, a doctor falls in love with a surgically removed…
The art of getting by
Naples, ragamuffin capital of the Italian south, is reckoned to be a hive of pickpocketing and black-market manoeuvrings. (A Neapolitan…
Filming the Final Solution
In July 1986, nine months before he died, I met the Italian author and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi at his…
The Grand Tour
The Grand Tour usually culminated with Naples, ragamuffin capital of the Italian south, where Vesuvius offered a visual education in…
Cats, whisky and modernity: the J.G. Ballard I knew
That cinema is having another Ballardian moment will surprise few fans. J.G. Ballard, who died of cancer in 2009 at…
Cruising
By the end of my ten-day Atlantic crossing to New York, a new wellbeing seemed to radiate from me. Lulled…
Bookends: A network of kidney-nappers
Raylan Givens, an ace detective in the Raymond Chandler mould, has encountered just about every shakedown artist and palooka in…
Bookends: Saving JFK
Stephen King’s latest novel is a time-travel fantasy about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. At almost 750 pages, 11.22.63…
