Two years ago, on the same day that friends and fellow writers met up at Paolo’s superb Cantina di Carignano for the traditional Thanksgiving lunch, organized by Lucca’s ‘Grapevine’ magazine’s indefatigable editor Norma Jean, I found myself a thousand miles away walking in a part of London which has deep resonance with the original idea of American thanksgiving.

Rotherhithe is a former area of docks which has now largely been given over to new housing. Yet the romance and hardship of sea-faring journeys, the close-knit warehouse alleys and the Thameside pubs which once served mariners and smugglers still permeate this district.

Nowhere is this felt more than in the vicinity of Saint Mary the Virgin’s church in whose graveyard is buried Christopher Jones, the captain of the ‘Mayflower’.

This iconic ship gave passage to one hundred and two of the first English puritans – the pilgrim fathers (and mothers) – in a stormy passage lasting two months to finally land them in the New World by Cape Cod, surviving the most terrible winter with few supplies and insufficient clothing.

And it was from where I stood in Rotherhithe that the eighty-foot long cargo vessel began her epic voyage from the shore of one of the oldest riverside pubs in London, aptly called ‘The Mayflower’.

I lingered by the old river and, in Conradian mind, pondered on the history that has flowed down this great waterway. I thought of those latter day refugees fleeing from religious persecution and realised that thanksgiving is more than just a harvest festival: it’s a thanksgiving for the freedom of thought that so much of the world, despite ever-present menaces, is able to enjoy thanks to the courage of so many of our forefathers and our contemporaries.

(PS. Today I am, once more, present in Italy and will gladly attend Thanksgiving at Carignano).