Recently we had one of those experiences that remind us why we love travelling around this part of Italy.
We went to the Archbishop’s Seminary at Ceneda for a concert by the Piccola Orchestra Veneta.

The concert took place in the chapel of the seminary, with its wonderful stained-glass windows, and it was part of the La Musica nel Sacro festival. This year is particularly special for the chapel, as it is celebrating the centenary of its dedication to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The soprano Nabila Dandara was absolutely stunning in the Vivaldi motet with its o.so joyful alleluia finale. Her voice filled that chapel seductively there was something particularly appropriate about hearing Vivaldi in such an sacred setting not too far from his own home town.

The harpist Carolina Coimbra Patrocinio was also brilliant. She played with delicacy and confidence and her rendition of the Danse sacrée et profane by Debussy was a real highlight for me. It was one of those performances where you suddenly realise just how difficult the instrument is and how completely at ease the player seems to be with it.
There were also some wonderful violin solos, particularly in the Tartini, as well as some lovely playing from the other members of the orchestra. The whole performance had that combination of precision and freshness that seems to characterise the Piccola Orchestra Veneta.

And then there was the setting itself. The chapel is beautiful, and before the music we heard something about its history and architecture from.its rector. Sitting there, surrounded by the stained glass, listening to Vivaldi and Tartini, was a rather special experience.

And this is one of the things I love about our little journeys around northeast Italy. You can turn up in a town you’ve never really explored, walk into a beautiful historic building, and find an excellent orchestra and first-class musicians performing wonderful music.
These are the discoveries that make travelling around Italy so enjoyable. You don’t always have to go to La Scala or the Arena di Verona. Sometimes the most memorable music is waiting for you in a seminarist chapel in Ceneda.

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Arriving at Lorenzo da Ponte’s birthplace, what more exciting thing could happen than to see an opera whose libretto he wrote performed in a theatre bearing his name?

The Marriage of Figaro was performed at the Teatro Lorenzo da Ponte by a brilliant young international cast. Figaro was Nicolò Donini, Italian; Susanna, Emily Christina Loftus, Welsh; the Count, Tim Alexander, English; the Countess, Monica McGhee, Scottish; Cherubino, Oryna Veselovska, Ukrainian; Bartolo, Alessandro Branchi, Italian; Marcellina, Olivia Rose Tringham, English; Basilio, Rhydian Jenkins, Welsh; Antonio, Ludovico Dal Pra, Italian; Don Curzio, Enrico Basso, Italian; and Barbarina, Anaïs Manz, Swiss. They were accompanied by the Venice Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Pietro Semenzato.
The production was absolutely delightful, and the theatre itself brought back memories. Many years ago it was a cinema, and it was here that we saw Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor.

It was a considerable change from our night at the Arena in Verona a few days earlier. The Da Ponte theatre is clearly a much smaller venue and far more intimate, with warm, immediate acoustics. And the padded seats are certainly more comfortable than the marble ones we suffered at the Arena, even though we did take our cushions to Verona!
But what struck me most was once again just how extraordinary The Marriage of Figaro is, and how brilliant the collaboration between Da Ponte and Mozart was. Da Ponte himself writes about it in his fascinating, if sometimes controversial, memoirs. As he says no sooner had he written a scene than Mozart immediately began setting it to music. And the whole work was done in six weeks flat.
Da Ponte’s remarkable life eventually took him to New York, which we visited earlier this year, where he became an important teacher and promoter of the Italian language and culture thus becoming a precursor of the Italian Cultural Institute, the London branch of which was once the home of my wife whose father was the Institute’s Secretary General.
The singers were all excellent with clear, discretely ornamented vocal lines and well enunciated words. The orchestra was equally good, giving the opera tremendous energy and zest. I particularly enjoyed the balance between strings (excellent pizzicati of which there are a lot in this opera) and wind where Mozart uses flute, clarinet and oboe to enchanting effect.
Of Mozart’s three Da Ponte operas, Figaro remains my favourite. First performed in 1786, it seems to me the ultimate caviar-and-champagne year for Mozart.
And it is an opera about much more than screwball-like comedy. Its great theme is forgiveness: people behaving badly, deceiving one another, making mistakes and eventually having to forgive each other. Nowhere is this more moving than in the final moments of the fourth act, when the hectic music suddenly becomes reflective and we arrive at that extraordinary perdono — forgiveness.
Isn’t it a miracolous moment!
Don Giovanni, which followed, is perhaps more dramatic and certainly darker. Although it is a dramma giocoso, there is something distinctly strange and sinister about it. And Così fan tutte has, as everybody says, some of Mozart’s most beautiful music, even if its plot can seem rather silly.
But for me, Figaro wins.
I was particularly fascinated by the fact that this was such a young cast. These weren’t established international opera stars, but young artists at the beginning of their professional careers, coming from Academy 1749 (the year of Da Ponte’s birth) an academy designed to take singers from the end of their formal studies into the world of professional opera.but its philosophy seems to be that becoming a professional singer involves much more than simply having a good voice. Young artists have to learn what it means to perform, to work internationally and to deal with the realities of a professional stage.
It reminded me of something my university contemporary David Conway helps create with Hampstead Garden Opera – of which he is a trustee – and where we have seen several performances of remarkably high quality and emphatically original staging.
And it made me think about the particular qualities of young singers. They may not yet have the polish or particular panache of famous, established stars, but they have something else: enthusiasm, freshness and voices that have not yet been shaped by years of performing. There is an excitement in hearing singers who are still discovering what they can do.
That freshness was very evident in this Marriage of Figaro. It was, in a sense, exactly what Figaro should be: a youthful cast bringing youthful energy to one of the greatest opere buffe ever written.
And what a setting! To hear Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, with its libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, in the Teatro Lorenzo da Ponte, in Da Ponte’s own hometown, was an absolute coup de théâtre in itself.

Many thanks to Alexandra for providing the photographs

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On our journeys through Italy, I love stopping in little towns that may not be of enormous artistic or historical importance, but which offer something just as valuable: a wonderful glimpse of everyday Italian life.
A couple of days ago, travelling eastwards, we stopped at Marostica for a rather welcome break — an ice cream and a coffee on what was an incredibly hot afternoon. I had heard of Marostica before, of course, because the town has a very special connection with chess. Every two years, its magnificent main square is transformed into a giant chessboard, and a game of chess is played out with real people as the pieces.
What I didn’t realise was that we had arrived in Marostica on precisely the day of the great chess pageant.
The performances are enormously popular, and tickets are sold out well in advance — and, from what I understand, they aren’t exactly cheap. We certainly hadn’t planned our journey around the event, and we had accommodation waiting for us further east, so there was no question of staying for the evening performance. Nevertheless, what a coincidence to have stumbled upon Marostica on this particular day!
The whole town was buzzing with anticipation. Yet, remarkably, it wasn’t unpleasantly crowded. Instead, there was a wonderful sense of excitement everywhere we went, with local people preparing for the evening and visitors wandering around taking everything in.
The first thing that struck us was the extraordinary medieval town wall. It surrounds the historic centre and climbs dramatically linking the two castles that dominate Marostica: the lower castle in the town’s heart and the upper castle high on the hill above it.

There are also a handful of lovely little churches tucked away among the streets and squares. But on this particular afternoon, everything seemed to lead back to the chessboard. The preparations were everywhere.
I wandered around for a while and even tried to visit the chess museum in the old castle, but it was clearly not the right day. The entire place was being geared up for the great event that evening.

And, of course, this isn’t simply a conventional chess tournament. Nobody could predict how long an ordinary chess game might last! Instead, the famous event is a spectacular historical re-enactment, based on a legendary story from Marostica’s past, in which a chess match is played out as a living pageant, with the players and pieces represented by people in elaborate costumes.

We eventually had to leave and continue our journey, but we left Marostica thoroughly enchanted. What impressed us most wasn’t simply the famous chessboard or the pageant itself, but the atmosphere of the town — the friendliness of the local people, their obvious pride in their traditions and the excitement that was building for the evening ahead.
And then there were those magnificent walls, so beautifully preserved, linking the town with its two castles — one in the town and the other perched dramatically above it.
Who knows? Perhaps one day we’ll actually return with tickets and see the famous game of living chess for ourselves.
But what an extraordinary coincidence that, without knowing it, we had arrived in Marostica on the very day when, once every two years, the town comes alive and turns its great square into a gigantic chessboard.
Sometimes the best discoveries on a journey through Italy are the ones you never planned to make.

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There is something happening in Britain at the moment which seems to me to illustrate a much deeper change in the country. It concerns the government’s increasingly extensive use of former army camps to accommodate asylum seekers, but the issue goes far beyond the camps themselves. It raises questions about immigration, integration, culture, and, ultimately, what we mean when we talk about England.
The government has been looking for ways of reducing the enormous cost of accommodating asylum seekers in hotels, and one solution has been to use army camps in various parts of the country. Many of these camps are not urban military establishments but training grounds situated beside large expanses of countryside, often close to small villages.
This has produced some remarkable situations. Communities with perhaps only 200 or 300 inhabitants have suddenly found themselves living close to facilities containing more than a thousand predominantly young, single men. Inevitably, this can produce anxiety and resentment, particularly in communities which have had very little previous experience of large-scale immigration.

It is important, however, to distinguish between understandable concern about the impact of such a sudden demographic change and the assumption that every individual involved represents a threat. People whose asylum applications are being processed are not automatically “illegal immigrants”, even when they have entered Britain irregularly. The legal position of an asylum seeker is considerably more complicated than that. Some people in these camps may also be there under different immigration arrangements, including detention or removal procedures.
Nevertheless, there is an undeniable pressure on the system. The asylum backlog has become enormous, and if applications cannot be processed quickly enough, accommodation becomes a continuing requirement. At the same time, the government’s attempts to reduce the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats have so far not prevented the continuing arrival of large numbers of migrants.
The camps themselves are sometimes described in inflammatory terms, but they are certainly not concentration camps in the historical sense of that word. People housed there are generally able to leave and return, subject to the rules of the particular accommodation. I have visited places such as Auschwitz, and there is obviously no meaningful comparison between a modern accommodation centre and a concentration camp.
But there have been incidents and complaints around some of these accommodation centres, and even relatively minor incidents can have a disproportionate effect in a very small community. A village accustomed to knowing virtually everybody who lives there can react very differently to the sudden presence of hundreds or thousands of unfamiliar people.
This brings me to what I have begun to think of as the two Englands.
The phrase immediately reminds me of Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil, or The Two Nations. Disraeli was writing about Victorian Britain and the enormous gulf between rich and poor — two nations living alongside one another but experiencing completely different realities.
My “two Englands” are different.
One England is metropolitan, particularly London: enormously diverse, multicultural and accustomed to people of different races, religions, languages and backgrounds living alongside one another. The other England is the England of many smaller towns and villages, particularly outside the great metropolitan centres. It is an England which, until comparatively recently, could still look and feel much like the England I knew as a child.

This is not to say that the second England has never contained immigrants or minorities. Of course it has. I myself am a product of two cultures, with an English father and an Italian mother. But there is a difference between individual diversity and the extraordinarily rapid demographic and cultural transformation which some parts of Britain are experiencing today.
For many people living in small villages, there has never been anything remotely resembling the multicultural experience of London. They have not spent their lives travelling on the Underground surrounded by people from every corner of the world. They have not grown accustomed to hearing dozens of languages in the course of an ordinary day. Their local community may still be overwhelmingly English in its origins, language and customs.
And then, suddenly, they find that the world has come to them.
Until recently, one of the things I particularly enjoyed about England was the ability to move between these two worlds. I could experience the extraordinary multiculturalism of London and then get on a train or drive for an hour or two and find myself in a completely different England.
I could arrive in a cathedral city and find the England I remembered from childhood: the cathedral, the cricket pitch, the tea shop, the local shops, the English pub, familiar accents and, above all, a feeling that the social world around me was recognisably English.
That distinction is becoming much less clear.
Even in some of the traditional cathedral cities and tourist towns, one notices changes. There is, for example, what I jokingly think of as the “Turkish barber syndrome” — the appearance of businesses and services which would once have been highly unusual in a small English town but are now becoming commonplace.
None of this means that such businesses or the people who run them are unwelcome. Change is inevitable, and Britain has always changed. The question is one of pace, scale and cultural continuity.
And this brings me to another change which I have noticed in institutions concerned with English heritage.
The National Trust, for example, has spent generations preserving the houses, gardens, landscapes and historic buildings which form an enormous part of Britain’s cultural inheritance. Increasingly, it is also trying to encourage a much more diverse public to visit and participate in these places.
I remember being genuinely surprised when I visited a National Trust property and saw a group of girls who, at first glance, looked almost like a group of nuns because of the way they were dressed. They were, of course, schoolgirls from a very different cultural and religious background, visiting as part of an educational outing.
My immediate reaction was one of astonishment.
I remembered the schoolgirls of my childhood in England: tunics, gym shoes, hockey, straw hats and school ties. I remembered a world of uniforms, school rules and school meals — institutions which, whatever one’s family background, required you to enter into a common culture.
This is particularly significant to me because I was not entirely English by background. I had an Italian mother and an English father. Yet when I went to an English school, I did not arrive wearing an Italian straw hat and expect the school to accommodate my Italian identity. I wore the school uniform. I followed the school rules. I ate the school meals. I learned the customs and conventions of the institution.
And when I went to hear an orchestra, I did not suddenly pick up a mandolin simply because I had an Italian mother!
I was being acculturated.
That is the word which seems increasingly important to me.
Integration does not necessarily mean abandoning one’s original culture. I did not cease being partly Italian because I was educated in England. But I was expected to become part of a common English institutional culture. There were rules, expectations, traditions and conventions which applied to everybody.
Perhaps the great question facing Britain today is whether that principle of acculturation still operates.
The issue is not whether people of different origins can become English. Of course they can. Britain has demonstrated that repeatedly throughout its history.
The issue is whether England still expects newcomers to become part of a common culture — or whether, in the name of diversity, the traditional culture increasingly has to adapt itself to accommodate every new arrival.
That is a very different question.
And it is why the army camps, the small villages, the changing cathedral towns, London, the National Trust and even my memories of the school uniform are all connected.
They are different manifestations of the same phenomenon: the gradual disappearance of the clear boundary between the two Englands that, until quite recently, I felt I could move between so easily.
Perhaps what we are witnessing is not simply the end of one England and the arrival of another.
Perhaps we are witnessing the creation of an England in which the old distinctions between metropolitan and provincial, traditional and multicultural, newcomer and established population are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
And that raises a much bigger question: what exactly does it mean to be English in the twenty-first century?
That is the question I want to explore.

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I would rate the Bagni di Lucca Games as one of the major things that have happened here in recent years. In fact, I would put them up there with the great art festival that ran between 2013 and 2015. That was another extraordinary period for Bagni di Lucca, when there was a tremendous amount going on and people seemed to be coming from everywhere.
But the Games are different. They are not really about art, and they are not really about sport either. What they are about is people.
And that, I think, is enormously important.
They are about people getting together, talking to one another, exchanging ideas, making friends, cooperating, cheering each other on and, above all, developing that rather old-fashioned thing called a sense of community.
And we need that.
We particularly need it now because, in some respects, we are still suffering from the aftermath of that ghastly COVID plague. COVID did an enormous amount of damage to the way people communicate with one another. Suddenly, you couldn’t meet people, you couldn’t have parties, you couldn’t simply wander into a bar and start talking to somebody. Everybody became rather suspicious of everybody else.
And although that was several years ago now, I think some of the effects are still there.
So anything which gets people out of their houses and actually meeting other people has to be a good thing.
Because there has to be a sense of community here. It is rather pointless coming to Italy and then spending your entire existence sitting in a lonely farmhouse in the middle of the woods, surrounded by wolves and wild boar. If you do that for long enough, you eventually become a boar yourself.
Anyway, the Games have demonstrated just how productive this sort of community spirit can be.
The Games originated with an idea from Priscilla Valentino, the daughter of our local doctor, who is himself a very proactive and community-minded person. Priscilla was inspired partly by similar events in Barga and, more generally, by the Italian tradition of festivals and sporting competitions, particularly the Palio.
The most famous example, of course, is the Palio di Siena, where Siena is divided into its contrade, each with its own identity and traditions, and they compete against one another for the famous Palio.
Obviously, we haven’t got horses charging around Bagni di Lucca.
Well, not yet, anyway.
But we do have our own teams.
This year there were four of them: the Trote from Controneria, the Alci from Fornaci, the Vipere from Bagni di Lucca and the Granchi from Monti di Villa.
And, I have to say, with some considerable satisfaction, our Granchi won!

What I found particularly interesting about the Games was what they revealed about the people who live here.
I have always thought that everybody has what I would call a community factor.
Some people have an extremely high community factor. They are social beings. They like joining in. If there is something happening, they want to know about it. If somebody needs help, they are there. If there is a party, they go to it. If there is a competition, they enter it.
Then, at the other end of the scale, you have the hermits.
They are perfectly happy in their own little world and don’t particularly want anybody else interfering with it.
And then, of course, there is everybody else in between.
The Games brought out this community factor rather beautifully. Some people became absolutely absorbed in them. They seemed to spend half their lives on WhatsApp, following the latest developments, discussing the teams, finding out who had won what and who was going to compete in the next event.
Others didn’t participate at all. Indeed, there were probably people who didn’t even know what was going on.
Although, to be fair, by the time the Games really got going, it was becoming increasingly difficult not to know.
The opening procession certainly saw to that.
I thought it was absolutely wonderful. There were bands, standard-bearers and all that smoke—particularly the red smoke—which suddenly appeared and filled the streets.
You couldn’t exactly miss it.
It was Bagni di Lucca saying, in effect:
The Games have arrived!
And I suspect that next year even more people will want to be involved.
One of the things I particularly liked this year was the increased number of activities for children. That is very important.
We have people here from all sorts of different countries, and if they have children, then events like this give those children an opportunity to become part of the place in which they live. They don’t simply become people who happen to live in a house in Bagni di Lucca. They become part of Bagni di Lucca.
And that is precisely what a community is supposed to do.
There was something for almost everybody: hay-baling, tug-of-war, sack races, frisbee, darts, quizzes,football tennis, activities for persons of all abities – and disabilities- and goodness knows what else.
And there were women everywhere.
I thought that was particularly good. Women were not simply standing around watching the men do things. They were actually doing things themselves, and doing them extremely well.
Sandra, for example, was hoping to be part of the darts team.
Unfortunately, there were eliminations, and a very strong team including women was eventually selected.
And, as it turned out, they actually won the competition.
So Sandra was very pleased.
And I was very pleased.
Although, in my case, I was mainly involved in cheering.
Then there was Trivial Pursuit.
This was obviously my moment.
I have spent most of my life accumulating completely useless information, and suddenly I discovered that it might actually be useful.
In fact, I have been doing this sort of thing since 1966, when, way back in the dark ages, I was a member of the sixth-form challenge team appearing on ITV.
So perhaps I have always had this rather strange ability to remember things which nobody in their right mind would ever need to know.
And that, really, is the wonderful thing about the Games.
They aren’t ultimately about winning the tug-of-war or throwing a frisbee further than somebody else. They are about discovering that the people who live around you are actually people.
People you can talk to.
People you can laugh with.
People you can compete against.
People you can cheer for.
And, perhaps most importantly, people you can get to know.
There was a wonderful atmosphere throughout the whole occasion. People were praised, people were cheered, people encouraged one another, and there was a genuine feeling that everybody was contributing something.
And there was something else which I think is important: self-confidence.
Not just individual self-confidence, but confidence in Bagni di Lucca itself.
We need to feel that this is a worthwhile place.
That we can actually organise things.
That we can create something ourselves.
That people who live here—whether they are Italian, British, German, Dutch, French or whatever—can actually get together and make something happen.
And the Games have demonstrated that we can.
Of course, there will always be people who prefer to keep themselves to themselves. That’s life. Some people are simply not interested in community activities, and that’s perfectly legitimate.
But I do sometimes wonder what people are doing here if they have absolutely no interest whatsoever in what happens around them.
Perhaps they are perfectly happy sitting in their farmhouse in the woods.
Perhaps they are even happier if there are no other people within ten kilometres.
Who knows?
But for the rest of us, the Games have provided something extremely valuable: a reason to come together.
And the important thing is not simply to win.
It is to participate.
Having said that, I was not entirely surprised—but I was certainly very, very chuffed—when I heard that the Granchi had won.
They had put in an enormous amount of effort, and people such as Lui Rondina did a tremendous job of getting everybody fired up and keeping the whole thing going.
So, yes, I’m proud of the Granchi.

But I am even more pleased about the Games themselves.
Next year there will presumably be even more events, more competitors, more children, more spectators and, hopefully, more people who discover what they have been missing.
And I think that is the great thing.
Every year will be different. New events will appear. Different people will get involved. New friendships will be made. People who didn’t participate this year might decide to participate next year.
And perhaps even some of the hermits will come out of their caves.
Although I wouldn’t count on it.
So, ultimately, the great achievement of the Bagni di Lucca Games is not that the Granchi won.
Although, naturally, that was extremely important.
The great achievement is that Bagni di Lucca came together.
And frankly, I couldn’t have wished for anything better for the place many of us call home.

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As an opera lover for much of my life, it had always been a dream of mine to attend the Arena di Verona. I had heard glowing reports from friends who had been there, and for years I had thought, We’ve got to do this. We really have.
So, as part of our little excursion through north-eastern Italy, we decided that the time had finally come to book an opera. And I thought to myself: if you’re going to see an opera in a huge Roman arena, and Sandra loves Egypt, what could possibly be better than Aida?
And not just any Aida, but Franco Zeffirelli’s spectacular production.
There was another very personal reason for choosing it. Sandra had met Zeffirelli several times when she was living at the Italian Institute and he would visit there. So there was something rather special about sitting in the Arena watching one of his productions. It wasn’t simply an evening at the opera; there was a little piece of Sandra’s own history attached to it.
I booked our seats, and because we were travelling all the way from Lucca, I decided that we shouldn’t simply rush in for the opera and rush out again. We would stay for two nights, have a proper look at Verona, enjoy ourselves, and then go to the opera in the evening.
And what a good decision that turned out to be.
Our little apartment, booked through Booking.com, was absolutely brilliant. It was on the other side of the river, but wonderfully close to everything. We had a bedroom, a very decent kitchen and dining area, a balcony overlooking the river, and the whole thing was tucked away in one of those lovely old Verona streets that seem to belong to another age.

Once we had settled in, we set about exploring the city.
Verona is simply splendid. We wandered through Piazza delle Erbe, visited its magnificent churches and generally allowed ourselves to get lost in the extraordinary mixture of Roman, medieval and Renaissance Verona.
One of the highlights was the Museo Maffei, which I would regard as almost essential for anyone interested in art. It contains an extraordinary collection, with particularly strong holdings of modern art, including works associated with artists such as Modigliani and Duchamp.

And then there is the building itself. When you climb to the upper terrace, you are rewarded with an extraordinary panorama of the city spread out below you — the Verona of Romeo and Juliet, of course, but also the real, living city surrounding it.

We even took a local bus to simply see where it would go to.. In Verona that proved particularly interesting because you suddenly realise just how close the city is to the hills. We went up into them and discovered another side of Verona altogether with wonderful views too.
Then, eventually, came the evening.
The opera was due to begin at nine, so we made sure we were properly rested. Fortunately, our apartment was so conveniently situated that we could simply walk to the Arena. Fifteen minutes, perhaps even less, and we were there.
And then we saw it.
I had seen photographs of the Arena. I had read about it. I knew perfectly well what it was. But nothing prepares you for actually standing in front of it.
The scale is extraordinary.
This enormous Roman amphitheatre, built roughly two thousand years ago, rises above you in layer upon layer of ancient stone and steps. And even then, astonishingly, what you see today is only part of what once existed. There was originally a larger outer section, most of which disappeared through earthquakes and the passage of time.
I just stood there thinking: What an incredible thing.
Our first challenge, however, was somewhat less philosophical.
We had to find our seats.
Finding them was only half the problem. Having found roughly where they were, we then had to work out how on earth we were going to get there. We were sitting about four rows from the very top, which meant climbing what seemed like an endless succession of enormous steps.
And this was where something rather lovely happened.
People were incredibly helpful. Complete strangers were helping one another find their seats, squeezing past each other, pointing people in the right direction — and, in our case, helping us actually get up there. There was a real sense of good humour and camaraderie.
Fortunately, we had brought our cushions.
Sandra had insisted that this was a very good idea, and she was absolutely right. Sitting on ancient stone for almost four hours is not something to be undertaken without some preparation. Even with the cushions, however, by the end we had developed what might politely be called slightly sore bottoms.

But then the lights went down.
And Verdi began.
Everyone knows Aida for the grand spectacle: the triumphal procession, the trumpets, the elephants, the pageantry, the great Egyptian setting. And certainly, in Zeffirelli’s production, the spectacle is magnificent.
But what struck me most strongly was something rather different.
Aida is actually an incredibly intimate opera.
Behind all the pomp and circumstance is a story of love, jealousy, loyalty, duty and sacrifice. The relationships between Aida, Radamès and Amneris have all the emotional intensity that we find in La traviata. The great public scenes are almost a framework around a very private human drama.
And, strangely enough, it was not the famous triumphal scenes that moved me most.
It was the music towards the end.
There was something almost unbearably beautiful about it. Sitting there under the Verona sky, listening to Verdi’s music echo across that enormous Roman space, I found myself completely absorbed. It was one of those moments when you stop thinking about the production, the scenery, the history or even the people around you and simply listen.

The singers were first-rate, of course, but what amazed me almost as much were the acoustics.
I could follow virtually every Italian word.
That really surprised me. This is a gigantic open-air Roman amphitheatre, and yet the sound carried with astonishing clarity. I have been to other open-air opera venues, including Torre del Lago, and although the experience there is wonderful, I thought the acoustics at Verona were even better.
And there was something else that made the evening special.
The audience.
There was none of the stuffiness that one can sometimes associate with opera. People were cheerful, relaxed and extraordinarily helpful. Everybody seemed to be there for the same reason: simply to enjoy themselves and to share in what I still regard as the highest form of artistic expression — opera.
It felt less like attending a performance and more like being part of a great communal gathering.
Eventually, of course, we had to confront the fact that we were sitting almost at the top of the Arena.
The climb had been considerable, but the reward was an extraordinary view. From up there, the Arena seemed even more enormous. You could see the whole sweep of the amphitheatre and, beyond it, the lights of Verona.
So, would we do it again?
I’m not entirely sure.
It was not the most comfortable opera experience of our lives, and next time we might well decide to spend a little more and sit down on the Arena floor.
But comfortable?
No.
Memorable?
Absolutely.
And then came another little miracle of Verona. Getting down was considerably easier than getting up. We emerged from the Arena and simply walked back through the streets to our little apartment. Twenty minutes later, we were home.
And I couldn’t help comparing it with our old experiences at Covent Garden.
I remember Sandra jumping on the back of my Transalp motorbike and the two of us riding up to London, parking the bike and going into the Royal Opera House. That was a wonderful experience in its own way — the great Victorian theatre, its history, its traditions, its associations with generations of opera lovers.
But Verona was something completely different.
Covent Garden is the nineteenth century.
The Arena is the ancient world.
At Covent Garden you enter a theatre.
At Verona, you enter history itself.
And so, looking back on the evening, I find there are an awful lot of people to thank.
The singers, naturally. The orchestra. The conductor. The wonderful production. Franco Zeffirelli. The people of Verona and the authorities who somehow manage to put on these extraordinary performances at remarkably reasonable prices.
Above all, Giuseppe Verdi, for writing the music.
And perhaps, most unexpectedly of all, we should thank the ancient Romans.
Because without them, none of this would have been possible.
I did wonder, as we walked home, whether one of those Romans might somehow have returned after two thousand years and taken his place in the audience.
He might have looked around rather bewildered and said:
“Where are the gladiators?”
“Where are the wild animals?”
And then, after watching Aida for four hours, perhaps he would have scratched his head and thought:
“Well… this is rather more peaceful.”
What an extraordinary journey that Roman amphitheatre has made — from gladiators and wild beasts to Verdi, Zeffirelli and Aida.
And what an extraordinary privilege it was to be sitting there, two thousand years later, listening to it.

***

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Up to 1967, my experience of religion had been almost entirely within the Christian world. I had encountered various forms of Christianity—Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Nonconformism and even Mormonism—but Christianity, in all its different manifestations, was essentially the religious landscape I knew.
That changed dramatically in 1967, when I took a formative journey to the East with a friend from school. We travelled through a succession of countries with religious traditions very different from those in which I had grown up. For me, this was not simply a journey through different countries; it was my first real journey through different religious worlds.
Our first stop was Turkey. Although I did not become particularly involved in Turkish religious life, I entered my first mosque, Hagia Sophia, which was an extraordinary experience. Originally built as a Christian church under the Emperor Justinian, it was by then a mosque, and it gave me my first real sense of the extraordinary historical layers through which religions can pass.

We continued through Syria, to Lebanon which was still predominantly Christian, although we inevitably encountered mosques and heard the call to prayer.
Then came Iran. Here experience of Islam was rather different. We visited Qom, one of the great religious centres of Shia Islam, and attempted to enter a mosque. We were told to leave, and quite firmly. We were warned that if we stayed we might get into trouble, or even be attacked. It was an uncomfortable introduction to a very different religious atmosphere.

Afghanistan, however, was quite the opposite. The Afghan Muslims we encountered were extraordinarily friendly. We visited the great mosques of Herat, as well as those in Kandahar and Kabul, without difficulty. Indeed, we were sometimes invited into the mosques. The contrast with our experience in Qom was striking and taught me something which became increasingly important to me: religions are not simply abstract systems of belief. They are lived by different peoples in very different ways.
Then we reached India, and for me the journey became something else altogether.
We had entered the heartland of Hinduism. We stayed at the main Birla Temple in Delhi and encountered a religious universe completely different from the Christianity I had known. There were temples, rituals, gods and goddesses in bewildering profusion. We read books about Annie Besant and Theosophy, and discovered ideas such as reincarnation and samsara. All of this was completely new to me, and I loved it.
Someone might say, of course, that these ideas could be encountered in England. Today they certainly can. But this was 1967, and England was still overwhelmingly Christian in its everyday appearance. If you walked down an English high street or through an English suburb, Christianity was the religion you actually encountered. To arrive in India and suddenly find oneself immersed in an entirely different religious civilisation was therefore an extraordinary experience.
We continued to Varanasi, or Banaras, and witnessed scenes that were almost overwhelming in their intensity. We even plunged ourselves into the Ganges, with remarkably little concern for our health. We emerged, as far as we were concerned, fully sanctified and ready for further spiritual exploration.

At Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha is traditionally believed to have attained enlightenment, we encountered something very different again. The atmosphere was peaceful and contemplative. The Deer Park and the Buddhist surroundings offered a contrast to the extraordinary religious spectacle of Varanasi.

Then came Kathmandu, with its magnificent pagoda-style temples and Buddhist monuments, including the great stupa outside the city. The whole experience was exotic beyond anything I had previously imagined. These places seemed untouched by the machinery of modern civilisation—no motorways, bypasses, high-rise buildings or all the other apparatus of the modern world. Everything seemed ancient, mysterious and somehow still alive.

I am sure that if I returned today many of these places would appear much less exotic. Tourism, modernisation and globalisation have transformed much of the world. But in 1967 the experience was overwhelming.
I returned to England immensely enriched by the journey, but I did not return as a convert to anything. That distinction has remained important to me throughout my life. I had participated in religious experiences, but participation did not necessarily mean belief. I had discovered that one could enter into a religion, observe its ceremonies, appreciate its symbolism and even take part in its rituals without necessarily accepting its theology.
In a sense, I had become a participant observer.
I could therefore return to Christianity with a different perspective. I particularly enjoyed Anglican church music, which seemed to me much better performed than Catholic church music. There is something extraordinarily special about the Anglican musical tradition, from Thomas Tallis through to Herbert Howells and beyond. I could experience its spirituality without having to resolve the question of whether I believed its theology.
This attitude continued when I eventually came to live in Italy. When I first arrived, the Catholic influence was still extremely strong, and I sometimes actively participated in Catholic ceremonies and village festas. But once again I was a participant observer rather than a fervent believer. I enjoyed the ceremonies, the saints, the processions and the rituals. I became interested in the similarities between the Italian saints and the gods of the Himalayas—something I have written about elsewhere.
Living in Italy also brought me into contact with religious traditions from much further afield. We encountered Sri Lankan communities at Ponte a Moriano and their Buddhist traditions, as well as Tibetan Buddhism near Pisa. We re-discovered Hinduism too, including the remarkable rituals at Villa Brindavan outside Florence. For a time I even became involved with the Hare Krishna movement. But once again, I was participating rather than converting.
And this, I think, has become the central feature of my religious outlook. I have no desire to belong exclusively to one religious system. I find it much more interesting to appreciate the extraordinary variety of ways in which human beings have tried to understand existence, death, the sacred and the possibility of something beyond ordinary life.
Travel has reinforced this enormously. In Vietnam, for example, we encountered religious traditions unlike anything we had seen elsewhere, including the extraordinary Cao Dai religion and its remarkable temple. In Cambodia we encountered the great ancient temples, while in India we continued to find an almost inexhaustible variety of religious experience.
I think there is something wonderful about this universality of appreciation. Ideally, religions should be tolerant of one another. Each contains its own traditions, mysteries, music, art, rituals, saints, philosophers and ways of understanding the human condition. One does not necessarily have to believe in all of them to appreciate what they represent.
The one religious tradition towards which I have remained particularly wary is Islam. This is partly because of some of my own experiences, especially the rather intimidating experience in Qom, and partly because I find certain aspects of Islamic belief difficult to accept—the absolute monotheism, the emphasis on submission, the exclusivity that can sometimes accompany the conviction that one possesses the one true revelation, and attitudes towards women and religious rules which I find difficult.
At the same time, I would not want to dismiss Islam as a whole. I am very conscious of the great Sufi tradition and of the Muslim saints, philosophers and mystics of earlier centuries. There is an Islamic tradition there which seems to me profoundly different from the rigid and sometimes frightening forms of religion that I have encountered or read about in the modern world.
I have also noticed that, whereas I have often been warmly welcomed into Buddhist and Hindu temples, my experience of Muslim mosques has generally been different. The principal exception was the great mosque near Regent’s Park in London, where I did experience a much more open welcome.
But perhaps this is precisely why my religious journey has been so interesting. I began life surrounded by Christianity and gradually discovered that the religious world was vastly larger than I had imagined. I travelled from churches to mosques, from mosques to Hindu temples, from Hindu temples to Buddhist stupas, and eventually back again to the churches, music and rituals with which I had begun.
I never really became a believer in any one of them.
Instead, I became interested in religion itself—the extraordinary human capacity to create sacred worlds, to ritualise existence, to search for meaning and to imagine what lies beyond the limits of ordinary life.
And perhaps, after all these years, that is my religious position: not belief, but participation; not conversion, but exploration; not choosing one religion over another, but enjoying the extraordinary diversity of human attempts to understand the mystery of existence.

***

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A little over halfway across the Po Valley, travelling from Modena towards Verona, lies the small town of Mirandola. The name immediately reminded me of two very different things.
The first, of course, is Pico della Mirandola, the great Renaissance philosopher. I had studied him when attending classes at the School of Economic Science in London. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an extraordinary figure of the early Renaissance, born in 1463 and dying, astonishingly, at only thirty-one.
Together with other great Renaissance thinkers such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico helped create the intellectual background to Italian humanism. His vision placed enormous importance on mankind’s capacity for reason, intellect and self-development. His famous Oration on the Dignity of Man is perhaps the clearest expression of this remarkable faith in human potential. It is difficult not to be attracted to a man who, in so short a life, could formulate ideas of such breadth and ambition.

Pico belonged to the powerful Pico family, which ruled Mirandola for centuries and transformed it into a strongly fortified Renaissance town. Its castle and defensive walls made it something of a model of the fortified city. Much of the fortification has disappeared, but the remarkably regular grid of the historic centre remains. Walking through it reminded me of other planned fortified towns such as Palmanova and Sabbioneta.
The second thing that Mirandola brought to mind was much more recent and much more terrible: the earthquake of 2012.
It is easy to imagine that earthquakes belong principally to mountainous regions, but the Po Valley is a great alluvial plain. Beneath those apparently flat and tranquil fields, however, lies a much more complicated geological structure. The 2012 earthquakes were caused by shallow thrust faults associated with the buried northern Apennine structures beneath the Po Basin. The result was a devastating series of earthquakes, particularly in May 2012, which caused enormous damage in Mirandola and surrounding towns such as Finale Emilia.

What struck me, visiting Mirandola now, was how little obvious evidence remained of the disaster. The earthquake had caused terrible destruction, yet the town has been remarkably reconstructed. Here and there one can still see buildings held together by steel reinforcement or awaiting further restoration, but in general the historic centre has regained its character.
The great exception is the Pico Castle itself. This was the heart of the Pico family’s power, the place associated with the rulers of Mirandola and with the extraordinary history of the town. It is still undergoing restoration, and I shall have to return to Mirandola when the work is finally complete.
The cathedral, Santa Maria Maggiore, has also undergone extensive restoration. It was reopened to the public in 2019. Inside, its simplicity is rather moving. At the end of the left aisle is a striking modern Crucifixion fresco by the Italian painter Pietro Annigoni in memory of his father whose family came from this town. Annigoni was the same artist who famously painted Queen Elizabeth II, and his Crucifixion has an almost three-dimensional presence. It is an unexpected and memorablie work in such an old church.

Apart from the cathedral and the castle, there is the pleasant central square and the orderly streets of the old town. We stopped simply for an ice cream. It was a wonderfully restful alternative to stopping at a motorway service station, and it gave us time to look around and absorb the atmosphere of the place.

What stayed with me most was an impression of the extraordinary industriousness and resilience of this part of Emilia-Romagna. After the earthquake, the people of Mirandola set about rebuilding their town, and the results are impressive. There is something particularly satisfying in seeing a community not merely survive a catastrophe but recover its confidence and continue to thrive.
In that sense there is perhaps an unexpected connection between the two Mirandolas that had come into my mind: Pico della Mirandola’s extraordinary faith in the capacity of human beings to use their intelligence and creativity, and the very modern demonstration of that same human capacity in rebuilding the town after disaster.
Mirandola is not, perhaps, a place for which one would make a special journey from the other side of Italy. But travelling between Modena and Verona, it makes an excellent stop — a pleasant town, a fascinating historical connection, and a striking example of how a community can recover from one of the great disasters of modern times even to become one of Italy’s major centres for the bio-chemical industry. The obvious alternative would have been Mantova. But we had already visited Mantova for a friend’s wedding, and that is another matter altogether. Mantova deserves a day, two days, perhaps even three.
Mirandola needs only a few hours.
But those few hours are well spent.

***

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My discovery of other religions coincided with another great discovery of adolescence: girls, attraction, love and sexuality

Perhaps it was inevitable that these two journeys should happen together. I was not only questioning the religion into which I had been born; I was also leaving childhood behind and entering another world entirely.

There was a girl called Rita.

It is interesting that she had the same name as my grandmother, the deeply religious woman who had first introduced me to Catholicism in Italy, a woman who had converted her husband from an atheist anarchist to a mrmber of the Franciscan Third Order. Yet this Rita was not especially religious. She was simply a beautiful person, a beautiful presence in my life.

She lived in a house on Dulwich Common, and I became completely infatuated with her. Because she was Catholic, I even asked to go to church with her. I found myself returning to the Roman Catholic Church in East Dulwich, not because of theology, not because of obligation, but because Rita was there.

At that age, affection and spirituality became mixed together. The teenage parties of those days were innocent by modern standards. We were thrilled simply to hold hands, or to sit together, or perhaps to receive a kiss. These small moments seemed enormous. They carried all the excitement and mystery of growing up.

At one of these parties, with Rita sitting on my lap and holding hands with me, I began talking about philosophy and religion. I had been reading Plato, particularly The Symposium, and I started explaining my ideas about Christianity and Plato — the idea that perhaps Christian ideas had connections with ancient philosophy, with different aspects of humanity seeking unity.

Looking back, I must have been a rather unusual teenager, discussing Plato and theology while trying to impress a girl I adored.

Unfortunately, Rita’s parents heard about these conversations, and they clearly became concerned. When her birthday party came around, everybody was invited except me.

But I could not accept this. I thought: after everything, after the friendship we had, after the affection I felt, I had to go.

So I went to the house in Dulwich Common.

The door opened, and her parents told me to go away. They did not want me there.

But then something extraordinary happened. My friends who were already inside came to my defence.

“No, no,” they said. “We want Francis here. Let him come in.”

Eventually, Rita’s mother relented. Perhaps she realised that she had misunderstood me. I was allowed into the party.

That moment was incredibly important for me. At a very vulnerable time in my life, when I was moving from childhood into adolescence and searching for who I was, I received acceptance from my friends. I discovered that I had value. I discovered confidence.

It was not only about a party. It was about belonging.

Around the same period, another important event happened involving my stamp collecting.

Stamp collecting had always fascinated me. But my enthusiasm led me into trouble. After my earlier experiences with shoplifting, I found myself in a much more serious situation. This time it involved stamps — ordinary Commonwealth stamps from places like the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and India — but it was still stealing.

Eventually I was discovered.

I was not arrested, but I was taken back to the shop and faced the possibility of serious consequences. I had to return what I had taken and face the humiliation of what I had done.

In a strange way, this experience became another turning point. I was confronted with the consequences of my actions and was given another chance.

Then my search for religion took another unexpected direction.

Through my stamp collecting, I discovered the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Near to the stamp dealer there was a magnificent new building in Exhibition Road. It was built in white marble, a beautiful neoclassical structure full of light and grandeur. I was attracted by the building itself and entered out of curiosity.

Inside, I met two young American missionaries.

They greeted me with warmth and friendliness. Their American accents, their enthusiasm and their openness completely fascinated me. They welcomed me, they listened to me, and they talked with me about God, faith and the meaning of life.

For the first time, I felt that I was not simply being told what to believe. I felt I was being invited to discover something for myself.

They spoke about their faith, about Joseph Smith, about the Book of Mormon and about Moroni, the angel connected with their beliefs. It was a world completely different from the Catholic world I had known.

I was fascinated.

I went home and told my parents that I had discovered this wonderful religion.

My mother was horrified.

The following day she said: “Francis, you are coming with us to Our Lady of the Friars Church in Peckham”.

It was another beautiful church, a magnificent neo-Gothic building beyond the old Surrey Canal, which has now disappeared. But for me, the purpose of the visit was not simply to attend Mass.

I was told I had to confess to the priest what I had done.

I felt as though I had committed some terrible crime. But the crime was not stealing, not this time. The crime was theological. I felt I was being accused of betraying my Catholic heritage, of exploring other beliefs, of going towards what was regarded as heresy.

I confessed everything.

But afterwards, something changed inside me.

I thought: enough.

I had searched. I had explored. I had tried to find my own way. But every religious journey seemed to end with guilt, arguments and conflict.

My parents wanted me to go to church, but they themselves did not regularly go. They expected me to carry out a duty on their behalf.

So I stopped.

And that is largely how it has remained throughout my life. I have attended churches for weddings, funerals and important occasions. I have always respected these places.

But my faith developed in another direction.

I came to believe that religion must be respected because, at its best, it represents humanity’s search for something beyond ourselves. Churches, temples and religious buildings are not simply places of doctrine; they are places of beauty, memory and spiritual feeling.

Cardinal Newman wrote about the relationship between beauty and faith, and I understand that idea deeply.

When I enter a beautiful religious building, I feel drawn towards it. I feel something like a plant turning towards the sun.

The greatest art, I believe, is spiritually inspired.

Bach was spiritually inspired. Handel was spiritually inspired. Mozart was spiritually inspired. Through their music, something reaches beyond ordinary human experience.

This, for me, is where spirituality lives.

Not in arguments about rituals, not in disputes about theology, not in questions of who possesses the truth.

It lives in the feeling of wonder.

It lives in beauty.

It lives in the extraordinary human desire to reach beyond ourselves and feel that we belong to something greater.

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Sadly, it is now well over a month since our beloved tomcat, Archie, went missing.
We still cannot believe how he could possibly have disappeared during those three hours when we were away. It was July, and we had gone to dinner with some friends. When we came back, Archie wasn’t there. We didn’t see him that evening, but we didn’t immediately worry. We simply thought, Well, he’ll turn up in the morning for breakfast.
But the following day Sandra suddenly said, “Gosh, where’s Archie?”
And he wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there at lunchtime. He wasn’t there in the evening. And then, as the hours passed, we began to realise that he really had gone.
We searched everywhere for him. We put up notices. We telephoned people. We asked around. We did everything we could think of.
But Archie had disappeared.

There is something particularly painful about losing a cat when you don’t know what has happened to him. When a beloved animal dies in your arms, however heartbreaking that may be, there is at least a kind of closure. You know what has happened. You can say goodbye.
But when an animal simply disappears, there is no goodbye. There is only the terrible uncertainty: Where is he? What happened to him? Is he still somewhere out there?
And in some ways, that is even harder.
Archie was a rescue cat. He had originally been found and taken in by our friend Anna Valencia, the writer of The Chestnut House. Eventually, because they already had a dog and other cats, Anna had to find him another home. And so Archie came into our lives.

It is rather wonderful to think that this little cat was also responsible, indirectly, for the beginning of a friendship.
Our friendship with Anna eventually led to my translation into Italian of her book and we have remained in touch ever since. We look forward to her next book, and it is always a great pleasure to see Anna and her family — particularly her children, who have grown from two little girls into two less little girls and a small boy, who by now probably isn’t so small anymore.
So Archie gave us more than his companionship. In his own small way, he helped create relationships and experiences that have remained with us.
He came into our lives in 2019; in Fornoli’s Bar Serra to be exact, and went with me then living in Longoio in a cat carrier securely tied on the back.of my scooter.

Just think about that year.
It was before COVID. Before the terrible war in Ukraine had started. Before so many of the things that have changed our world. It was also the year that Sandra’s mother died, and the year before my heart operation.
And, sadly, during the first months of Archie’s life with us, I wasn’t always there. I was in hospital, Florence’s Careggi.
Sandra told me that Archie was really affected by my absence. Perhaps that isn’t surprising, because I remember so clearly the moment when I first picked him up at the Fornoli bar. I
From that moment onwards, he became part of our lives.
And what a life he shared with us.
He accompanied us on our walks. He was there when we moved from the old house to our new house. He was part of our walks up to the little chapel in the snow. He was simply there — one of those small presences that gradually become so woven into everyday life that you hardly notice how important they have become.
And that is why I cannot accept the idea that someone could say, “It’s only a cat.”
No.
It isn’t “only a cat”.
It is what you invest in a relationship that matters.
If you invest nothing in another person, another animal, or another living being, then perhaps their disappearance means very little. But if you give them your affection, your time, your attention and your love, they become part of you.
The cats have shared our lives.
They have been there through good times and bad times, through changes, through illness, through moves, through ordinary days and extraordinary ones. They become part of the fabric of a home and, ultimately, part of the fabric of our lives.
And Archie was part of ours.
Perhaps that is why his disappearance hurts so much.
We don’t know where he is. We don’t know what happened. We don’t know whether we will ever see him again.
And there is nothing we can do except hope.
But perhaps there is also another way of looking at it.
As Shakespeare reminds us, we all have our time upon the stage. We enter, we play our part, and eventually we leave.
Archie had his time upon our stage.
And what a pleasure it was to have him there.
So, dear Archie, wherever you are, thank you.
Thank you for the pleasure you gave us.
Thank you for accompanying us on our walks.
Thank you for being there in our old house and then in our new one.
Thank you for the memories, for the companionship, and for becoming part of our family.
Thank you, too, for the friendships that came into our lives because of you.
We miss you terribly.
You may have disappeared from our sight, dear Archie, but you have certainly not disappeared from our lives.
You will be missed.
Ever missed.
And you will remain, always, in our hearts.
Dear Archie, thank you.

***

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