There are some people you meet in the Lucca area who seem to have a particular talent for making things happen, and Giacomo Brunini is certainly one of them.

I have known Giacomo for some time. He is a brilliant guitarist and also the director of the Scuola Civica di Musica “Marco Salotti” in Borgo a Mozzano, the comune just next door to us.

But there is something else about Giacomo’s concerts which makes them rather special. He has a wonderful way of finding places in which you would never necessarily expect to hear a classical concert.

Over the years I have been to concerts of his in lonely little chapels up in the hills, in buildings with fascinating histories and including a power station. There was even one in a planetarium. So when Giacomo announces a concert, the first question is sometimes not “What are they playing?” but “Where on earth are they playing it?”

And that is very much the idea behind his Incontri Musicali – i luoghi del bello e della cultura. The concerts take place in different parts of the territory, bringing good music together with places which are themselves worth discovering.

The 2026 season has just begun, and there are six concerts.

It started on 12 September at the Biblioteca di Cune, with Dall’Opera alla danza, performed by the guitar quartet Le Consonanze, with Dario Atzori, Marta Marchetti, Alessandro Nobili and Giacomo Brunini. The programme ranges from Rossini and Bizet to Boccherini, Torroba, Bellinati and Dyens.

On Sunday 20 September the series moves to the Biblioteca San Giovanni Leonardi in Diecimo for El Canto del Sur, with Giulia Giannetti on flute and Giacomo on guitar. The programme is devoted to South American music, including Villa-Lobos, Piazzolla, Jobim, Gnattali, Machado and Blázquez. There will also be guitars made by the local luthier Raffaele Guidugli on display, with some of them actually being used in the concert.

Then on 27 September there is Dialoghi at the Church of Santa Maria Assunta in Rocca, with the guitar duo Roberto Masini and Simona Costantino. Their programme includes Granados, Puccini, Brahms, Morricone, Piazzolla, Marchelie and Gangi.

On 11 October we return to Borgo a Mozzano, to the Sala Consiliare in the Palazzo Comunale, for Bassorilievi a due Viole da gamba, with Francesco Tomei and Gustavo Cardamone Carloni playing viola da gamba. Their programme takes us back through Couperin, Boismortier, Jenkins, White, Schenck and Schaffrath.

On 18 October there is Il pianoforte romantico at the Church of the Convent of San Francesco in Borgo a Mozzano, with Alberto Lodoletti playing Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt.

And finally, on 25 October, the series ends at the Biblioteca Comunale in Borgo a Mozzano with Ahi vista! Ahi conoscenza!, an unusual programme of Renaissance music, reciting voice and Renaissance flute based around Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, performed by Elisa Cozzini and Giuseppe Nitti.

All the concerts begin at 5 pm, with a chance to visit and discover the location beforehand, and admission is free, with a voluntary contribution.

What I particularly like about these concerts is that the music never seems to be treated as something separate from the place. Giacomo has an instinct for finding buildings, chapels and other corners of the territory which make you look at the area around us in a different way.

And, of course, the music itself is the most important thing. There is no point finding a wonderful chapel, a power station or a planetarium if the concert isn’t any good. Fortunately, that is not a problem with Giacomo and the musicians he brings together. The playing is consistently excellent.

So a Giacomo Brunini concert is rather more than going to hear some music. You may discover a place you have never seen before, meet some very good musicians and hear some excellent playing — and occasionally find yourself wondering how on earth Giacomo managed to persuade everybody to put a concert there in the first place.

That, I think, is part of the fun.

If you live around Lucca, Borgo a Mozzano or the Garfagnana, or happen to be visiting the area, keep an eye open for the next Giacomo Brunini concert.

You won’t be disappointed.

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One of the highlights of our stay in Verona was, of course, Aida at the Arena. That was the main event, and quite an event it was.
But there was another discovery which, in its own rather different way, was just as memorable: San Zeno.
We had wanted to see the Basilica of San Zeno for years. And, rather embarrassingly, we had never actually got round to it. The reason is partly that it isn’t right in the centre of Verona. It is a little way out, and somehow, on previous visits, it had always been one of those places that we would get round to seeing “next time”.
Well, this time we finally did.
And I have to say, we were absolutely bowled over.
San Zeno is the patron saint of Verona, and his basilica is quite simply one of the great Romanesque buildings of Italy. In fact, I would put it among the most beautiful buildings we have seen anywhere in the country. It has that wonderful quality that some medieval buildings possess: enormous solidity, but at the same time an extraordinary elegance and sense of proportion.
And then there is the rose window — the famous Wheel of Fortune, dating from the 12th century. It is a wonderful thing, both artistically and symbolically, because the whole idea is that fortune is continually turning: one moment you’re on top, the next you’re at the bottom. Rather appropriate, really, for human life.

But what really stopped me in my tracks were the bronze doors.
They are made up of dozens of individual bronze panels, put together almost like a gigantic medieval comic book — except that this is one of the world’s great works of medieval art. They tell the stories of the Bible and the Scriptures through pictures, at a time when most people couldn’t read.

You can get very close to them. Almost ridiculously close. You can practically touch them.
Of course, you shouldn’t touch them. But you could.
And I couldn’t help thinking: Good heavens, surely these things are worth protecting a little better than this? They are priceless works of art, and yet you can stand there with your nose almost against them. Perhaps I’m being unnecessarily alarmist, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be the person who accidentally fell against one of them!
Inside, the basilica is magnificent. Great columns, enormous arches, pinky marble stone everywhere, and that slightly mysterious darkness which seems to belong to Romanesque churches. It has a tremendous sense of weight and age without being gloomy.

And then, of course, comes Mantegna.
His magnificent triptych, painted around 1457–1459, is one of the great masterpieces of the early Renaissance. The Madonna and Child sit in the centre, surrounded by saints, with Mantegna creating this extraordinary architectural space around them. You can almost see Renaissance painting taking off before your eyes.

And underneath all this is the crypt.
It is glorious in its own right — and it contains the remains of San Zeno himself. So you have, in effect, the whole history of the place underneath your feet: the saint, the medieval church, the Romanesque basilica and then the Renaissance masterpiece above.

The Basilica of San Zeno also has a very beautiful cloister. I loved the olive tree in one corner

Dante spent time in Verona during his exile, and San Zeno was part of the medieval city that he would have known. You suddenly become aware that this isn’t merely an old church that happens to contain some wonderful works of art. This is a place that has been part of Verona’s life for something like 1,500 years.
Rather stupidly, we discovered that there was something else we should have seen.
The Ponte di Castelvecchio, the wonderful fortified bridge over the Adige, is not far away.
By this stage we were absolutely exhausted. The heat had finally caught up with us. There comes a moment on a sightseeing trip when another magnificent monument is no longer a cultural opportunity but simply another bloody thing to walk to.
So we missed the bridge.
But perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing.
It means we have to come back.
And, frankly, Verona is hardly somewhere you need an excuse to revisit. I think it must be one of the most beautiful cities in Italy. It has the Arena, the Adige, the medieval centre, the Scaligeri, Shakespeare, Dante — and now, for us, San Zeno.
It is also the city where one of my favourite English writers on Italy, Tim Parks, lives.
So that was San Zeno.
We finally got there after all these years, and it turned out to be every bit as wonderful as we had hoped.
We just forgot to visit the bridge.
Which, I suppose, is Verona’s way of telling us that we haven’t finished with the place yet.

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A Wine Barrel Rolling Competition?
Well, that’s what we enjoyed on Saturday at Serravalle, and it’s all part of a national wine barrel-rolling competition which has both old and modern roots.
It’s old because, in the old days, wine was stored in wooden barrels — and these were 500-litre wine barrels. And it’s modern because, now that these enormous barrels are no longer normally used for storing wine, the barrels themselves have been turned into the competitors.
The national competition began in 2006, and the idea actually originated here in Vittorio Veneto. Since then it has developed into a proper national competition, with teams from wine-producing parts of Italy competing at different stages before the grand finale.
Anyway, we went along to Serravalle to see what it was all about, and it was great fun — although quite exhausting even to watch.
In the main square there was a sort of slalom competition. In other words, the competitors had to roll their wine barrels between a series of poles, rather like a skiing competition. Each barrel was controlled by two people, and there was also a relay race in which the first two competitors were women and then handed over to two men.

Now, you might think that all you’ve got to do is roll a wine barrel along. But it’s not quite as simple as that. A wine barrel isn’t just spherical: it has a particular shape, and you have to be remarkably skilful about the pressure you apply at either end. Push it in the wrong place and the thing can suddenly head off in almost any direction.
There were penalties, too: two seconds were added whenever a competitor knocked down one of the poles.
There were teams from all over Italy, including Tuscany, the Marche and other wine-producing areas, and the atmosphere was tremendous.
They also had a competition involving carrying the wine barrel on a sledge, which was pretty amazing in itself.
These are all part of the various stages of the national championship. The different competitions around Italy award points, and the best-performing teams eventually qualify for the national final.
And there is still one more qualifying round to come after Vittorio Veneto: Santa Venerina in Sicily on 27 September. Then the whole thing moves south for the grand finale.
The Finalissima will take place in Bianco, in Calabria, in the province of Reggio Calabria, on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October. Ten teams will eventually contest the national final — the eight cities qualifying on points, together with the defending champions and the host city, according to the competition rules.
And the final really does mean pushing these enormous 500-litre wine barrels around a course through the town, going up and down the streets and round the bends. And believe me, these are not lightweight objects.
It was one of those wonderfully Italian events which you go along to thinking you’ll have a quick look — and end up staying because it’s so much fun.

Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, competitors and spectators alike.
It was brilliant.
And I’ll never look at a wine barrel in quite the same way again.

Acknowledgement to Sandra for many of the pictures.

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There it was. Suddenly, as we turned a bend in the road, this extraordinary structure appeared before us. It looked like a castle — and, as it turned out, it was a castle.

It doesn’t matter how carefully you plan a journey. There are always things that suddenly appear and tempt you to abandon the predetermined route – in our case the route from Modena to Verona. And that is one of the great pleasures of travelling: allowing yourself to be distracted.
So we took the turn and went in search of the castle.
At first, the approach was through the rather nondescript little town of Montecuccolo. But then, quite suddenly, everything changed. The road ascended, the surroundings became increasingly picturesque, and we found ourselves climbing through beautiful woodland until, almost unexpectedly, we arrived at the castle itself.

The castle was built by the Montecuccolo family, and inside we discovered a fascinating history. The family produced one of the great military commanders of the seventeenth century: Raimondo Montecuccoli.
Montecuccoli became a commander in the service of the Habsburg Empire and played a significant role in the wars against the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman armies had pushed deep into Central Europe and, most dramatically, had reached the gates of Vienna. Montecuccoli’s military skill and tactics contributed to the Habsburg victory over the Turks, helping to halt their expansion into Central Europe. The eventual defeat of the Ottoman forces allowed territories such as Hungary to be gradually recovered by the Habsburgs.

Standing in the very castle from which this remarkable family emerged, it was fascinating to discover just how important a role one of its members had played in European history.
And the castle itself is a delight. From the top there are the most extraordinary views across the surrounding countryside and mountains.

But it isn’t simply a historical monument. Inside, there iare a delightful collection of Presepi – Christmas cribs –

a surprisingly impressive collection of modern art, with works by artists who lived or worked in the area,

alongside a beautifully presented natural-history section and an archaeological collection.

We thoroughly enjoyed exploring it all.
And, naturally, no successful excursion is complete without refreshments. After our visit to the castle, we settled down in the little bar-restaurant within the complex and enjoyed coffee — iced coffee this time, which seemed particularly appropriate after our climb.
It was one of those completely unplanned diversions that makes a journey memorable.
You can plan a route from A to B down to the last detail, but sometimes the best things happen when you abandon the plan. You see something intriguing, take a turning, and simply follow the road.
In our case, that little detour to Montecuccolo and its remarkable castle was well worth it indeed.

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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 kocal 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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