There are various etiquette gurus around these days who are always telling us the correct way to do things. How to eat a banana, for example. I’m not actually particularly interested in the correct way to eat a banana. I’m much more interested in the correct way to act in an Italian restaurant, which is where we happen to be at the moment.

And there are three things which, although perfectly acceptable today, were not always quite so acceptable in the past.

The first is something known in Italian as fare la scarpetta, which literally means something like ‘making a little shoe’. What it means in practice is that, when you’ve finished your plate of food and there is still some delicious sauce left on it, you take a piece of bread and use it to mop up the remains.

Italian bread is particularly well suited to this activity, being wonderfully absorbent, and I have to say that, for me, it is often the most delicious part of the entire meal. There’s something immensely satisfying about getting every last bit of that sauce, rather than leaving it stranded on the plate.

Why is it called fare la scarpetta? I have no idea, although I rather like the theory that the piece of bread resembles a little shoe scraping up whatever is left behind. There are other explanations, no doubt, but whatever its origins, the practice is widespread in Italy and is perfectly acceptable. Indeed, refusing to mop up a particularly good sauce seems to me almost a waste of the cook’s efforts.

Of course, there may be situations in which one should exercise a little discretion. But in an ordinary Italian trattoria, provided you’re not flinging bread around or licking the plate, I see no reason why one shouldn’t enjoy oneself.

The second thing is the doggy bag. The expression sounds rather strange in Italian, where you might ask for una vaschetta per portare via or simply ask whether you can take the leftovers home. The idea is straightforward enough.

Sometimes Italian restaurant portions are simply too large for one person to finish. This is particularly true when you have ordered several courses, as one is sometimes encouraged to do. You may have enjoyed your antipasto, your primo and your secondo, but by the time the last of these arrives, there is only so much room left.

What is the point of leaving perfectly good food behind? It is wasteful, environmentally as well as economically, and it seems to me a pity to throw away something which somebody has taken time and trouble to prepare.

I would go further. Asking to take the leftovers home can be a compliment to the restaurant. It means that the food is good enough to enjoy a second time. You may not have the capacity to finish it all there and then, but you certainly don’t want to waste it.

Sandra and I have been asking for containers to take our leftovers home for years. We frequently find that we cannot manage the portions served to us, and so the following day we have another little meal waiting for us. It is economical, sensible and, provided the food is stored and reheated properly, perfectly practical.

And this applies to almost everything on the menu. Well, perhaps not quite everything. There is one category of food for which we seldom need to ask for a container: sweets. Somehow, we always seem to find room for those.

The third point is about tipping.

In Italy, you are not expected to tip in the way that you might be in the United States, where tips can form a substantial part of a restaurant worker’s income. Italian restaurant staff are not generally dependent on customers providing tips in the same way.

There is also the coperto, which is a charge that may appear on your bill for the place setting and the associated service. Depending on the restaurant, this may cover such things as the tablecloth, cutlery and bread. It is worth remembering, though, that coperto is not itself a service charge, and that the precise arrangements vary from one establishment to another. Some restaurants charge it; others do not.

So there is certainly no need to feel obliged to add a tip on top of the bill. If you have enjoyed the meal, a sincere grazie mille, a compliment to the cook or a promise to return will usually be warmly received. Naturally, if you particularly want to leave a little extra for good service, that is your choice, but it is not an obligation.

My only concern is that customs imported from elsewhere can gradually become expectations. If everybody begins tipping as a matter of course, it may eventually be assumed that customers ought to do so. I would rather we kept the pleasure of eating out separate from the anxiety of working out how much extra we are supposed to pay.

So there we are: three simple things to remember when eating in an Italian restaurant.

First, don’t be afraid to fare la scarpetta and mop up that delicious sauce with a piece of bread.

Second, if you cannot finish your meal, ask to take the leftovers home. There is no virtue in wasting perfectly good food.

And third, don’t feel obliged to leave a tip. A heartfelt thank you, a compliment and the promise of another visit can be worth a great deal.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some sauce left on my plate.

It is quite remarkable that a little village like Monti di Villa, perched in the hills above Bagni di Lucca, has its own theatre, the Circolo Teatro, and manages to put on such interesting events. Sunday evening was a particularly good example, bringing together art, music, chestnuts and, above all, a very friendly gathering of local people.

The occasion featured the work of Tyler Moorehead, an American-born artist who has settled in the Bagni di Lucca area. A graduate of London’s Royal College of Art, Tyler works with sculpture and installation, often exploring folklore, identity and the stories contained in everyday materials. Her striking installation, a tall construction of dark timber, gilded shapes, woven materials and a bright blue stone, provided an intriguing centrepiece, a kind of primaeval guardianship shrine.. We were encouraged to get close and explore its different textures by touch.

The music was equally unconventional. Alessia Anastassopulos on violin, Eugenio Sanna on guitar and Giuliano Tremea adding vocals created what I would call a kind of aleatoric improvisation. Rather than a conventional concert, it was a spontaneous sound conversation, with violin, guitar and voice weaving in and out of one another.

And then, of course, there were the chestnuts. With the autumn harvest in full swing, we heard a little about their importance to the history and traditions of these mountains and were treated to samples of some really excellent castagnaccia and even a little chestnut soup. Both were delicious.

What made the evening particularly enjoyable, though, was the atmosphere. It was as much a social occasion as an artistic one, with neighbours and friends chatting over an aperitivo, enjoying the music, discussing the artwork and sampling the local food.

It is wonderful that a small village like Monti di Villa can sustain its own theatre and use it to bring people together for events of this kind. A little art, a little experimental music, some excellent chestnut cooking and a great deal of good company. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday evening in the hills!

It is quite easy to sit in one’s place in the woods of the Apennines, switch off the radio and hear nothing about what is happening in the world. The trees stand there, the birds get on with their business, and the rest of humanity can be safely ignored for a while. It is an attractive proposition.

The trouble is that, sooner or later, one switches the radio on again and discovers that the world has not been standing still.

Italy, and particularly its younger generation, is angry. There are plenty of reasons for this, but I suspect that many of them boil down to one simple problem: the cost of living.

This is hardly a new subject. We have all complained about it at one time or another. Every generation has had its own version of the argument, usually accompanied by the observation that things were cheaper when we were young. This is undoubtedly true, although our memories of the past conveniently forget the things we could not afford then either.

But there comes a point when the cost of living ceases to be an ordinary complaint and becomes a source of real social tension. It is the point at which working hard is no longer enough to provide the things that previous generations regarded as the normal rewards of adult life.

You cannot afford to buy a house. Worse still, you cannot afford to rent one without sacrificing an unreasonable proportion of your income. You may have a job, qualifications and ambitions, but the prospect of establishing an independent life becomes increasingly remote.

This is happening in Britain as well as Italy. It is hardly surprising that young people begin to question a system which seems to promise opportunity while making basic necessities increasingly inaccessible.

Nor is it simply a question of prices. There is the disparity between the wages of the richest and the poorest, the enormous differences in wealth, and the feeling that the rewards of economic growth have not been distributed generously to those who need them most.

One can argue about the virtues and failings of capitalism, but the system certainly tends to reward those who already possess wealth. Competition is supposed to produce efficiency and prosperity, but it can also become a free-for-all in which those who begin with the greatest advantages are best placed to win. The old Protestant work ethic, perhaps, gone rather wild: work hard, be industrious, and you will succeed. Except that, for an increasing number of people, the promised success seems to have been mislaid somewhere along the way.

And this loss of confidence is not merely economic. It is also historical and cultural.

After the Second World War, Italy was devastated. Yet, within a relatively short period, it became one of the most admired industrial and cultural nations in Europe. Entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, film-makers and countless ordinary workers helped to transform it.

Think of the Agnelli family and Fiat, of Adriano Olivetti and the typewriters that became internationally recognised symbols of Italian design and ingenuity. Think of the fashion houses, the cars shaped by the Farina tradition of automotive styling, the films of Fellini and Antonioni, and the extraordinary reputation that Italian food, wine and olive oil acquired throughout the world.

Italy was not merely recovering. It was creating something new.

Its cars, clothes, furniture, films and industrial products gave the country a prestige that seemed almost miraculous considering where it had started. It was a place that could look towards the future with confidence, and that confidence was infectious.

Meanwhile, Britain, at least in my recollection of the post-war years, could appear distinctly drab. There were gabardine raincoats, sensible shoes and a rather grey atmosphere. Italy seemed to be racing ahead in its own fashion, with elegant clothes, stylish cars and an extraordinary sense of visual flair. Those winkle-pickers were certainly more exciting than most of what we were wearing in England.

Of course, Britain had its own cultural revolution, particularly in music, and eventually British popular music became one of its great international exports. Italy had music of its own, as well as opera, cinema and a long artistic tradition. Cultural achievements cannot simply be transferred from one country to another, and each has its own character.

Nevertheless, there was a time when Italy seemed to possess an almost boundless capacity to invent, create and prosper.

What has happened to that confidence?

Italy remains a country of immense cultural, industrial and creative achievement. It would be absurd to suggest otherwise.

But many younger Italians face an uncertain future, with insecure employment, modest wages in many sectors, high housing costs in desirable areas and the prospect of leaving the country to find better opportunities elsewhere.

The problem is not that Italy has ceased to be a wonderful place. It is that being wonderful does not automatically provide its younger inhabitants with a secure future.

The pressures behind this uncertainty are not only economic. I have been discussing these matters with various people, including some of my cousins. One cousin in Italy, who has been closely involved in education, offered an interesting perspective. I asked her about the present unrest and compared it with 1968, when students and workers challenged established institutions throughout Europe.

Yes, she said, there are similarities, but things are different now.

I think she is right. There are several important differences.

First, there is the extraordinary expansion of mass and social media, and the speed with which opinions, grievances and political passions can spread. People can find themselves caught up in events taking place hundreds of miles away, sometimes before they have had much opportunity to establish what has happened. The same technology that allows people to communicate and organise also makes it remarkably easy for anger to intensify and become detached from its original cause.

Second, Italy has changed demographically. There are growing numbers of Italians whose parents were born abroad, many of whom were themselves born and educated in Italy. They are part of Italian society, yet questions of identity, discrimination, opportunity and belonging can remain painfully complicated. If people feel that they are treated differently from their contemporaries, resentment can develop. Understanding that resentment does not require us to approve of every political expression of it, still less of violence.

These wider changes become especially visible when we look at housing, migration and the movement of people across Europe.

And this brings me to Bagni di Lucca.

What, one might reasonably ask, is all this to do with our little corner of the Apennines? This is not Milan, Rome or Turin. It is a small community whose most prosperous days, some might argue, are already behind it.

Well, I have been here long enough to notice the disappearance of familiar establishments. Even the bars tell a story. Places that were once important meeting points have closed, and with them has gone something more than the opportunity to have a coffee or an aperitivo. Such establishments are part of a community’s social life. They are where people meet, exchange news and maintain the relationships that hold a town together.

Of course, a bar does not close for one reason alone. There are questions of costs, changing habits, population decline and the difficulties of running a small business. But when familiar establishments disappear, it is difficult not to wonder what kind of future the community has.

What, then, is keeping Bagni di Lucca going?

Part of the answer is tourism, and part is the presence of people from abroad who have bought houses in the area. Among them are many British people who have discovered that a property in rural Tuscany can offer something that has become prohibitively expensive in parts of Britain.

The English cottage in the Cotswolds or the bungalow by the coast , once perhaps dream of a comfortable retirement, is now beyond the reach of many people who might once have aspired to own one. Property prices have been driven upwards in some places by international demand and the purchasing power of wealthier buyers. For some British people, Italy offers an alternative: a stone house, a garden, a view of the mountains and a way of life that seems increasingly difficult to obtain at home.

I understand the attraction. I live here myself, and I know why people fall in love with this part of Tuscany.

Foreign residents can also make a genuine contribution. They pay taxes, employ builders, electricians, plumbers, gardeners and other local tradespeople. They shop in local markets, use local services and help support businesses that might otherwise struggle. In villages whose populations have declined as younger generations have moved to the cities, incomers can bring houses back into use and restore some life to places that might otherwise be left to decay.

Without them, parts of the local economy would undoubtedly be poorer.

But there is another side to the story.

Some incomers seem to create a little Britain of their own, living almost entirely within an English-speaking social circle. They may have lived in Italy for years without acquiring more than a handful of Italian words. They can enjoy the houses, scenery, food and sunshine while remaining detached from the people whose community they have joined.

What irritates me is not that they are British, nor that they have money or have found a better life here than the one they could afford at home. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those things.

It is the attitude that sometimes accompanies them: the assumption that their customs and opinions are superior, that the local community exists to provide the services they require, and that learning the language or understanding their neighbours’ problems is optional.

There is a particularly uncomfortable contradiction when people praise Italian life, its traditions and its supposedly simpler values while making little effort to understand the actual lives of Italians. They admire the village but remain indifferent to the villagers.

I find the hypocrisy difficult to stomach. One can enjoy living in another country without pretending to be an expert on it, and without treating the people who have lived there all their lives as if they were merely part of the scenery.

And yet, here is the uncomfortable part: these same incomers help to keep the local economy moving. Their houses need maintenance, their gardens need tending, and their purchases support shops and businesses. They create work for local people.

But is that the kind of prosperity that Italians themselves want?

I suspect many would prefer an economy in which their children could find secure employment, afford a home, take a holiday and start a family without depending on the spending power of wealthier foreigners. They would like the opportunity to shape their own future rather than simply provide services for other people’s dreams.

There is a difference between a community that prospers because its inhabitants have good opportunities and one that survives partly because outsiders can afford what locals cannot.

The two situations are not mutually exclusive. Foreign investment and tourism can bring real benefits. The question is whether those benefits are shared widely enough, and whether the people who live in a place can still afford to belong to it.

This is not simply a question of Italian nationalism. Britain has experienced much the same problem.

In Cornwall, local people have protested against the purchase of second homes by wealthy English people, particularly those coming from London and the Home Counties. The argument is familiar: property prices rise, houses that might otherwise have been available to local families become holiday homes, and younger people find themselves unable to live in the communities where they grew up.

Wales has experienced similar tensions, particularly in Welsh-speaking communities where second-home ownership has raised concerns about the survival of the local language and culture. In the past, extreme Welsh nationalist groups even burnt down holiday homes as a form of protest. It was deplorable, but it illustrates how deeply housing can become entangled with identity, belonging and the future of a community.

So we should be careful before dismissing the concerns of Italians who see wealthy foreigners buying property in their villages. The same arguments have been made in Britain, for much the same reasons.

A Cornish family struggling to find an affordable home may feel little differently from an Italian family facing the same problem. Both may look at a house bought as a second home and wonder why they cannot afford to live in the place they call home.

But I would not want this to become a straightforward diatribe against foreigners, or a form of Italian nationalism that regards anyone from England or Northern Europe as an intruder. That would be unfair and economically short-sighted.

The question is not whether foreigners should be welcomed or rejected. It is whether the benefits they bring can be reconciled with the needs of those who already live there.

This becomes even more interesting when we look at the movement of people across Europe.

Consider the contrast between older people from Northern Europe who retire to Italy, Spain or Portugal, and younger Italians who move in the opposite direction to find work.

The older northerner may arrive with a pension, savings and the proceeds of a lifetime of employment. The money may go considerably further in rural Tuscany than it would in Britain, allowing a comfortable retirement in a beautiful house surrounded by olive trees and mountains.

Meanwhile, a young Italian may find that the only way to earn a salary sufficient to establish an independent life is to leave Italy for Britain, Germany, the Netherlands or another northern European country.

It is almost a reversal of expectations. One person moves south because life is more affordable there; another moves north because opportunities at home seem insufficient.

Of course, the picture is not quite so simple. Northern European countries have expensive housing too, and a higher salary does not necessarily mean a better standard of living once rent, transport and other costs have been paid. Nor does everyone who moves north find the opportunities they hoped for.

But the underlying imbalance is difficult to ignore.

What makes it particularly poignant is that Italy is not a country without talent. Far from it.

Look at the number of Italians who have found their way into important positions in British cultural institutions, including galleries, opera houses and other parts of the arts world. Look, too, at the many who have made careers in British restaurants, hotels and other businesses. They bring professional skills, imagination, experience and a cultural inheritance that enriches the country in which they work.

The same is true of people from other parts of Southern Europe.

Britain has benefited enormously from their contribution. Yet one cannot help wondering why so many talented people feel that they have better prospects abroad than at home.

They may find that their abilities are better rewarded, career progression is more attainable, or their work offers a salary with which they can build a more secure life.

This is the sad thing. Italy has produced extraordinary designers, engineers, musicians, chefs, architects and entrepreneurs. Yet some of its younger people feel compelled to take their talents elsewhere because the financial rewards and opportunities at home are insufficient.

It is not that Italians do not love Italy. They may love it passionately. But affection for one’s country does not pay the rent!

It would be easy to turn this into a dispute between Italians and foreigners, or between North and South. But I do not think that would get us very far. The British pensioner who buys a house here is not necessarily responsible for the economic difficulties faced by a young Italian family. Equally, the young Italian who leaves for London is not abandoning Italy through a lack of affection for his country.

Both are responding to their circumstances.

These pressures help explain why economic frustration eventually reaches the streets.

I have no sympathy for the destruction of beautiful buildings, the smashing of shops or the wrecking of industries on which people depend for their livelihoods as we have seen these days several Italian cities. Anger does not justify violence, and destroying public property does not create jobs or make housing more affordable.

Nor should we assume that everyone taking part in a demonstration shares the same grievances, political ideas or intentions. Some may be protesting peacefully about genuine economic difficulties; others may be exploiting the occasion for entirely different purposes.

I also find it difficult to accept the idea that the frustrations of second-generation Italians can be reduced to a single explanation. Questions of discrimination and unequal treatment deserve serious attention, but so do questions of responsibility, integration and the obligations that come with living together in a society. Fairness should not depend on a person’s family origins, and neither should respect for the law.

Some people suggest that Italians lack the tradition of street confrontation associated with the French. France certainly has a long history of barricades, revolutions and dramatic political protest, immortalised in paintings such as Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. But Italy has its own substantial history of demonstrations, strikes and political movements. It would be a mistake to imagine that peaceful protest is foreign to the Italian character.

And what of the government? Giorgia Meloni’s response to unrest will inevitably be judged differently by people with different political sympathies. I understand the desire for public order, but putting one’s foot down is not, in itself, a solution to the economic problems that have brought people onto the streets. A government can insist on respect for the law while still having to answer why so many people feel that the system is failing them.

I find myself in an awkward position. I am unhappy about what is happening, yet I cannot say that I entirely understand it. I can, however, understand something of the frustration behind it.

I can understand the anger of young Italians who look at house prices and wonder how they will ever own a home. I can understand the resentment of people whose wages do not keep pace with the cost of living. And I can understand why someone who has grown up in a place might feel bitter when wealthier newcomers can purchase houses that have become inaccessible to those born there.

I think of British incomers who arrive from the Home Counties, perhaps with a comfortable pension or the proceeds of a house sale, and find that they can afford a beautiful home in Tuscany. I can hardly blame them for taking the opportunity. But I do wish that some would occasionally look beyond their own good fortune and ask what life is like for the Italians around them.

And that brings me back to the woods of the Apennines. It is lovely to sit here and listen to the silence. But the silence does not mean that everything is well. Beyond the trees, people are worrying about their jobs, homes, children and future. Communities are trying to preserve their identity while adapting to enormous economic and demographic changes.

I would hate to see the Italian dream reduced to a collection of picturesque houses for wealthy foreigners while younger Italians struggle to find somewhere affordable to live.

Nor would I want the answer sought in hostility towards people from abroad. The British people who have settled here are not all the same, any more than Italians are. Many make genuine efforts to learn the language, support local businesses and become part of the community. They should not be blamed for every economic problem facing Italy.

But neither should local concerns be brushed aside simply because tourism and foreign investment bring money into the area.

Perhaps that is the real issue. Not whether foreigners should come to Italy, whether demonstrations should take place, or even whether capitalism is the villain of the piece. It is whether Italy can once again offer its own people a convincing reason to believe in the future.

All I can do is look around me, think about what I have seen in Britain and Italy, and recognise a pattern that is both fascinating and depressing.

Somewhere between the silent woods and the noise of the streets, there must be a way of making prosperity work for the people who actually live in these places.

The radio can be switched off. The woods can be silent. But the questions remain.

I was only able to attend the final concert in Giacomo Brunini’s brilliant series, which has graced cultural activities in the Lucchesia for several years now.

The concert consisted of two parts.

The first showed off the prodigiousness of the students who attend the music school in Borgo a Mozzano, the Scuola di Musica Salotti, of which Giacomo is director. They performed on flute, keyboard and guitar and were all very, very good, and remarkably self-possessed: very proper little future recitalists!

The second part was an amazing recital for flute and speaker, based on the story of Tancredi and Clorinda, as recounted in Torquato Tasso’s brilliant and enormous epic, La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) of which the Borgo a Mozzano’s library where the concert took place possesses a rare original copy.

The flute, played by Elisa Cozzini, accompanied a dramatic recitation by the actor Giuseppe Nitti. The music included some wonderfully evocative passages, which complemented the text beautifully. The whole thing was very well done, and genuinely touching.

Of course, you really needed to know your Italian — and not just everyday Italian, but the literary Italian of Tasso’s period, which can be difficult even for me, I will admit. Nevertheless, the performance was so beautifully delivered that one could appreciate its emotional power even when some of the words escaped you.

If you don’t know the story of Tancredi and Clorinda, it is basically the ultimate apotheosis of love and war. Two warriors on opposing sides, belonging to different religions, fight to the death without recognising one another. Tancredi, a Christian knight, is besotted with Clorinda, a Saracen warrior. Only after mortally wounding her does he discover that the person he has killed is the very woman he loves.

What a story! As she lies dying, Clorinda asks Tancredi to baptise her. He does so, and she dies peacefully, having embraced Christianity. Tancredi is left to contemplate the terrible irony of having killed the woman he adores.

Tasso’s story is extraordinary, and the combination of flute and spoken word brought it vividly to life.

The artistic director of the Incontri Musicali, Giacomo Brunini, deserves everybody’s praise. He has once again given us a brilliant series of musical events, and I felt privileged to have been able to attend the final one.

It is certainly becoming a Mozart opera year so far. And we are not talking about just any opera, but specifically the ones Mozart wrote with Da Ponte. We had seen The Marriage of Figaro in Da Ponte’s hometown of Ceneda earlier in the autumn, and this time we found ourselves in London, at the Garden, for Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Don Giovanni is an opera we have seen several times. We saw it in Monte Carlo in 2015 for , in that mythical Luca Ronconi production which set so many things in motion for so many of the singers involved. And now here we were again, back at the Garden, with Mozart’s dramma giocoso.

I really do think it is perhaps the best thing Mozart ever wrote for the stage. It has everything. And this time, the production had everything too, at least as far as the singing was concerned. The two donne, Donna Elvira and Donna Anna, were particularly outstanding. And Don Giovanni was second to none. Leporello was equally impressive, as was Don Ottavio, the tenor who has those two beautiful arias. Everything was sung with impeccable style.

There is simply so much in Don Giovanni that is wonderful, and so much that has inspired people to write extraordinary essays about it. I am thinking, of course, of Kierkegaard and his famous essay on the opera. It is one of those works that seems to invite endless reflection, however many times you see it or hear it. No wonder that another great operatic composer Verdi always had a copy of it by his piano.

Anyway, it really was amazing. And the audience clearly thought so too. There were some very lively young people sitting behind us who cheered ecstatically when the cast came out to take their bows. It was a pleasure to hear such enthusiasm, especially from a younger generation.

I liked the production itself. I liked the way the sets suggested a series of little rooms, almost like rooms in a toy house, with strange and sometimes unexpected applications of light to pick out particular scenes. There was something slightly unreal about it all, which seemed entirely appropriate for an opera that moves so effortlessly between comedy, tenderness, violence and the supernatural.

And then there was the ending. I thought that finishing in the blackness of Don Giovanni, without the final moral ensemble, was actually the most effective way of bringing the opera to a close. It left us with the darkness of the man himself, rather than with the reassuring moral conclusion that usually follows his descent into hell. It was the opposite conclusion to the one we witnessed at Montecarlo when to the accompaniment of the final ‘moral’ chorus the Don was shown enjoying in a pleasure palace in hell surrounded by lascivious women and attending a scrumptious banquet.

After all, Don Giovanni is a man who, by any modern understanding of the term, would in several respects be a sex offender. We cannot simply brush that aside. The sexual predator was already there in the eighteenth century, if indeed he had not always been there. Mozart and Da Ponte were not writing about some harmless old libertine who happened to have a weakness for women. They were presenting a man whose behaviour has consequences for the people around him, and whose charm does not excuse what he does.

The subtitle, Il dissoluto punito, means precisely that: the dissolute man punished. Yet the opera is so much more complicated than a simple tale of wickedness receiving its just deserts. And perhaps that is one reason why it continues to fascinate us.

For Mozart to have written such an extraordinary work is astonishing. It contains the most tender arias, the most dramatic music, the funniest episodes and some of the darkest moments of anything he ever wrote for the stage. It is difficult to think of another opera that brings all these things together with such extraordinary ease.

And one cannot help wondering what he might have written had he lived longer. What other operas might he have given us? What other worlds might he have opened up? Who knows? Who knows?

We should simply be grateful that he gave us this one.

And we should be grateful, too, that Mozart met Da Ponte, and that the two of them were able to produce this extraordinary sequence of operas together. We had, as I said, encountered Da Ponte again in his own hometown when we went to see The Marriage of Figaro. And now, in a sense, he had accompanied us to London for Don Giovanni.

What an evening! What a wonderful evening.

The singers:

Don Giovanni — Gordon Bintner

Leporello — Roberto Tagliavini

Donna Anna — Rachel Willis-Sørensen

Don Ottavio — Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono

Donna Elvira — Georgia Mae Ellis

Zerlina — Chelsea Zurflüh

Masetto — Dingle Yandell

The Commendatore — Andreas Bauer Kanabas

Conductor — Stefano Montanari

***

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Regarding the first part of this post which I published earlier this month there is another dimension to all this which concerns me perhaps more than anything else, because I have always had a profound love of English history and heritage.
What happens to that heritage when the population of a country changes rapidly? And, more importantly, what happens to the memory of that heritage?
I am not simply talking about buildings. England possesses an extraordinary inheritance of cathedrals, churches, country houses, castles, gardens, monuments and historic towns. But buildings are only part of heritage. Heritage also consists of memory — the stories we tell about the people who built these things, the institutions that developed around them and the traditions which have been handed down from one generation to another.

I sometimes wonder whether future generations will still feel that little tinge of sentiment when they encounter English history.
Will a young English person standing inside a medieval cathedral feel that this is somehow their heritage, even if they are not religious? Will they want to know who built it, why it was built, what happened there and what it has meant to generations before them?
I hope so.This attutude particularly affects churches and other religious buildi groups in Britain since none of them depend on any secure state funding. Indeed during our visit to Peterborough cathedral we were advised that the cathedral could close down indefinitely because of lack of funds.
Sadly I don’t think we should assume that everybody automatically feels this way towards the national heritage. There have always been people who would rather spend their time in nightclubs or on cheap holidays to Ibiza than visit a cathedral or an old country house. That is nothing new.
Education, however, can make an enormous difference. And today we have something previous generations never possessed: an almost unlimited access to information. The internet, documentaries, digital archives and online education can open up the extraordinary history of England to anybody who wants to explore it.
The tragedy would be if we ceased to teach that history properly — or if we became so anxious about offending people that we began to present our own history apologetically, selectively or without any sense of continuity.
There is a difference between teaching history honestly, including its darker aspects, and effectively teaching children that their own heritage is something for which they should feel embarrassed.
I worry about that distinction.
And I worry terribly about the physical heritage. Only last week for example a grade two listed church was demolished in Manchester simply because no-one came up with ideas for its future use.
England’s cathedrals are among the greatest monuments of European civilisation. Who will maintain them in another hundred or two hundred years? Who will pay for them? Who will feel sufficiently attached to them to make sacrifices for their preservation?
One can imagine almost anything happening in history. Hagia Sophia in Istanbul is a striking reminder of that. It began as an Eastern Roman Christian cathedral, became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, later became a museum and has again functioned as a mosque since 2020.
I am not suggesting that an English cathedral is about to become a mosque. That would be an entirely different historical and political situation. But Hagia Sophia does demonstrate something important: buildings do not preserve themselves. Their meaning depends upon the societies which inherit them.
And that is what concerns me.

I am worried not only about the English people who are experiencing this rapid change but also about the people arriving in Britain themselves.
Imagine being a young man arriving in a completely unfamiliar country, perhaps having travelled through people-smuggling networks, perhaps having been given very little understanding of what life in Britain is actually like. You arrive with expectations of Britain as a kind of land of milk and honey.
Then you discover something very different.
You discover an extraordinarily individualistic society. You discover that people have enormous personal freedom. You discover that religion plays a very different role in public life. You discover different attitudes towards women, relationships, alcohol, sexuality, authority and personal responsibility.
And then you find yourself living for months, perhaps years, in temporary accommodation while your future is uncertain.
That situation must itself be enormously difficult.
Young men are young men. They have ordinary human needs, frustrations and sexual impulses. Giving somebody a bed, food and a roof does not automatically solve the psychological and social problems created by uncertainty, isolation and cultural dislocation.
Some will adapt. Some will learn English, find work, make friends and gradually become part of British society. Others may struggle considerably more.
I worry about that too.
I am also worried about the government.
The government seems to be caught between two opposing forces. On one side are those who believe that Britain has a moral duty to accommodate almost everybody who reaches its shores. On the other are people who believe that immigration has already gone far beyond what the country can reasonably absorb, and at the extreme end there are people whose views become openly hostile towards immigrants and minorities.
Between these positions there ought to be a large area of sensible, moderate discussion.
But increasingly it seems difficult to occupy that territory.
The government does one thing and is accused of racism. It does the opposite and is accused of being weak. It tries to enforce immigration law and is attacked by one side; it tries to accommodate people humanely and is attacked by the other.
The same applies to the people who actually have to administer the system.
The executive authorities — the police, immigration officials, local authorities, civil servants and other public servants — are placed under enormous pressure. Whatever they do can become politically controversial.
And this is dangerous.
A society cannot function indefinitely if the people responsible for enforcing its laws become frightened that every decision they make will result in accusations of racism, cruelty, incompetence or political bias.
What we seem to be living through is a kind of maelstrom of conflicting opinions.
Everybody is shouting.
Everybody believes that the other side is either stupid, wicked or both.
And meanwhile the underlying problems continue.
That is why I keep coming back to the idea of the two Englands.
There is the England of London and the great multicultural cities, where diversity has become an ordinary fact of life. And there is another England — the England of small towns, villages, cathedral cities and rural communities — where people may suddenly find themselves confronted with changes which they never expected and for which they feel completely unprepared.

Neither England should simply be dismissed.
The metropolitan population should not be told that its experience is somehow illegitimate. But neither should people living in small rural communities be told that their fears and concerns are simply the product of prejudice.
There has to be a way of talking about these things honestly.
Because time is not standing still.
The pace of change is extraordinarily rapid, and we have to find sensible answers before social tensions become something much harder to reverse.
And there is an even bigger issue hanging over all of this.
While Britain argues about immigration, asylum seekers, army camps, multiculturalism and identity, the planet itself continues to change.
This summer has reminded us, yet again, of the scale of the climate problem. Climate change is not going away while we argue among ourselves. It is one of the fundamental challenges facing humanity, and it deserves enormous attention, resources and international cooperation.
So I find myself asking whether we have our priorities right.
We spend vast amounts of money dealing with the consequences of a dysfunctional asylum and immigration system. We provide accommodation, administration and support. Charities become involved. Even relatively small things, such as providing mobile phones or SIM cards to people who have arrived in Britain, become part of the political argument.
And yet there are enormous problems facing the whole of humanity which require us to cooperate rather than fight among ourselves.
Above all, we must avoid social anomie — the breakdown of the bonds which hold a society together.
Because that, ultimately, is what worries me most.
Not immigration by itself.
Not diversity by itself.
Not even cultural change by itself.
What worries me is the possibility that we could reach a point where different sections of society no longer feel that they belong to the same society.
Where one group feels that its history has been taken away from it.
Another feels that it is permanently regarded as an outsider.
Another feels that the government has lost control.
And yet another feels that the institutions responsible for maintaining order and administering justice can no longer act with confidence.
That is the real danger.

I am almost eighty years old, and I won’t be here to see what England looks like in another fifty or sixty years.
But I care very deeply about what it will look like.
I hope that future generations will be more sensible than we sometimes appear to be today. I hope they will understand that you can preserve your history without hating somebody else’s history. You can welcome newcomers without abandoning your own traditions. You can acknowledge the crimes and failures of your ancestors without despising everything they created. And you can build a diverse society without destroying the sense that there is still a society.
Perhaps that is the real challenge.
We need to find a way of preserving memory while accepting change; maintaining order while remaining humane; protecting national heritage while opening ourselves to the wider world.
And perhaps, ultimately, we need to move towards something much bigger than the arguments which currently divide us.
A world in which people can retain their histories and traditions while recognising the humanity of others.
A more comprehensive world.
A more sensible world.
And, if we are fortunate, a world in which we can eventually learn to see one another not as competing tribes, but as brothers and sisters.

***

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What I find particularly striking about Italy, having lived here for so many years and having actually taught in Italian schools, is the difference between the Italian and English approaches to education. The more I have experienced the Italian system from inside, the more I have come to appreciate aspects of it which are rather easily overlooked in Britain.

I have been involved as a teacher in Italian schools at practically every level: from the alberghiera to the technical college, evening classes and other secondary schools. That has given me the opportunity not simply to observe the system but to experience it in the classroom, with Italian pupils of different ages and backgrounds, and to see at first hand how they respond to teaching, discipline and academic expectations.

One of the things that has struck me most in my own classrooms is the importance given to discipline. There is generally a much clearer expectation that pupils will listen, concentrate and allow the lesson to proceed without constant interruption. That doesn’t mean that Italian classrooms are silent or that Italian pupils are somehow naturally better behaved. They can be lively, argumentative and occasionally difficult, like pupils anywhere else. But there is a stronger understanding that there is a time for discussion and a time for listening and working.

As a teacher, I found that this made a real difference. When a classroom is properly ordered, you can actually teach. You can get further into a subject, expect pupils to concentrate for longer and introduce material which requires sustained thought. The discipline is not simply discipline for its own sake; it creates the conditions in which learning can take place.

I have also found the academic expectations considerably more demanding in many respects. Pupils are expected to learn a substantial amount of material and to demonstrate that knowledge through fairly rigorous examinations. This can be a shock to English pupils who enter the Italian system. I have seen examples of English children who simply found the standards too demanding and whose parents eventually decided to return them to English schools.

But I have also seen the opposite. Some children have struggled initially with the different expectations, adapted to them and eventually succeeded very well. Once they had understood what was expected, they were able to work through the system and emerge with a strong academic foundation. That experience has convinced me that what initially appears to be excessive difficulty can sometimes be exactly what encourages a pupil to develop academically.

The curriculum itself has also impressed me in certain respects. Philosophy is an obvious example. The study of philosophy and the history of thought has a recognised place in Italian education. I have always found it remarkable that philosophy has such a limited place in ordinary English schooling by comparison. In Italy, pupils are expected to encounter major ideas, arguments and thinkers and to engage with questions about knowledge, morality and society.

From my experience in classrooms, this isn’t simply an academic exercise. It encourages pupils to think about why they believe something, to understand an argument before accepting or rejecting it, and to put their own ideas into a coherent form. I think there is real value in that kind of intellectual training.

Another thing I have appreciated is the civic dimension of Italian education. Pupils learn about the Italian Constitution, citizenship, rights and responsibilities. There is a conscious element of educating people not simply to pass examinations but to understand the society of which they are going to become adult members. Again, that seems to me an important part of education which is sometimes less explicit in England.

These experiences also give me some understanding of why English families who have sent their children to Italian schools often notice such a marked difference. They have been able to compare the two systems through their own children’s experiences. They see the greater discipline, the academic demands and the different curriculum, rather than simply hearing someone describe them.

None of this means that Italian schools are perfect. Far from it. One of the great paradoxes I have encountered is that the academic expectations can be high while the material resources are sometimes surprisingly poor. Books, buildings and equipment can be inadequate, and Italian schools were for a long time behind England in digital technology.

I have also seen how much the local community can do to compensate for this. Local companies and private individuals have sometimes provided computers and other equipment where schools have lacked sufficient resources. Companies such as Ge.S.A.M. in the Lucca area have contributed in this way. It is encouraging to see businesses and members of the community supporting their local schools simply because they want children to have better facilities.

Nor should anyone imagine that the Italian system is identical throughout the country. The north–south divide is still very real, and there are substantial differences between regions and individual schools. My experience cannot be taken as a description of every school in Italy. But having taught in different settings and at different levels, I do have the impression that the educational expectations are generally more rigorous than those I have encountered in England.

There is another fundamental difference which I noticed very early on: the position of the state school itself. In Italy it is the normal, mainstream and respected choice for families across the social spectrum. Private schools exist, of course, but they do not generally have the prestige that private schools have in England. In many cases they are not even considered as good as state schools.

England has a very different tradition. Alongside the state system there is a highly developed private sector, with schools such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester occupying a particular position in British society. They are not simply alternative schools; they have long been associated with wealth, privilege and influential social networks.

That makes education one of the places where Britain’s class structure remains particularly visible. The majority of families depend upon the state system, while families with sufficient resources can choose a completely different educational route. Government decisions about education can therefore affect enormous numbers of people, while the wealthiest families may have more opportunity to avoid or mitigate the consequences.

Faith schools add another distinction. England has a well-established system of schools organised around religious affiliation, especially islamic, whereas Italian children are overwhelmingly educated within ordinary state schools. English education can therefore divide children along both class and religious lines in ways that are much less characteristic of Italy.

This is why I think education can actually increase the difference between the two societies. In England, the combination of a largely state-educated population and a prestigious private sector available to those who can afford it can reinforce existing class divisions. In Italy, the common role of the state school, together with its academic and civic traditions, provides a stronger shared experience across society.

I don’t pretend that Italian schools are without serious shortcomings. I have seen those shortcomings myself, just as I have seen the strengths. But having stood in Italian classrooms and taught Italian pupils, rather than simply reading about the system, I have come away with a genuine respect for what the Italian educational tradition is trying to achieve.

For me, the most important point is that education should do more than sort children into social categories or prepare them for examinations. It should give them knowledge, discipline, the ability to argue and think, and an understanding of their responsibilities as citizens. In my experience, Italian schools have often done those things remarkably well, despite having considerably fewer resources than one might expect.

***

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My mother was born in Milan and married an English soldier during the last war. She always used to complain about what she called the hypocrisy of the English people.
As a child, I didn’t really notice it. I didn’t particularly care about it. My definition of hypocrisy was fairly simple: people who didn’t practise what they preached. And I thought that quite a lot of people fell into that category—priests, politicians principally, of course, and the rest of the damn lot. Philosophers too, some of them at least.

But recent events in Britain have forced me to think again about what actually defines British hypocrisy, and what its worst manifestations might be.
I’m thinking particularly about the controversy that has recently set the country alight: the removal of asylum seekers from expensive hotels and their transfer to former army camps.
Now, in itself, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. Why shouldn’t disused army camps be used? Many of them haven’t been occupied by the military for years. It seems perfectly sensible to make use of buildings that already exist.
But there is a difference between these camps and the hotels in which the asylum seekers have previously been housed.
The hotels are generally in towns and cities.
The army camps are generally in the countryside.
And that, I think, is where we begin to see something rather revealing about England.

There are, in a sense, two Englands.
There is the England of the cities: multicultural, varied, noisy, crowded, and populated by people of different religions, languages, colours and backgrounds.

And then there is the England of the countryside: the pub, the National Trust, country walks, Ordnance Survey maps, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, picturesque villages and the sense of an ancient, settled way of life.
This second England is still, to a large extent, a white, English and culturally homogeneous environment.
And suddenly there is a problem.

For years, people in these communities have been able to say: “Of course we have to be tolerant. These people need somewhere to live. We’re not racists. Britain must be welcoming.”
And perhaps they genuinely believed it.
But then the asylum seekers arrive—not necessarily in their own houses, of course, but in an army camp just down the road.
And suddenly the attitude changes.
“Not here.”
And that, to me, is one of the great definitions of English hypocrisy:
Everything is all right, so long as it isn’t in my backyard.
Now, I am not saying that every objection to these camps is racist. Clearly, if you put 150, 500 or even 1,000 predominantly young, military-aged illegally entered men from other continents into a village of perhaps only 200 inhabitants, with its own very english families and children, there can be serious practical problems. There are questions of policing, transport, accommodation, integration and sheer scale.
Those are legitimate questions.
But what interests me is the sudden discovery that something which was perfectly acceptable as an abstract principle becomes unacceptable when it affects one’s own community.
And this is where people begin to say, “No, no, it isn’t racism. We’re objecting to the location. We’re objecting to the disruption of our way of life.”
Perhaps.
But the timing is interesting.
And this leads me to something else: the movement of people within Britain itself.
There isn’t only migration into Britain from the rest of the world. There has also been a huge migration of English people out of the inner cities and into leafy suburbs and eventually the countryside.
I remember this from my own childhood.
I had an aunt who lived in Southall. I was about eight years old when I remember hearing that they were moving away.
“Oh no,” I was told, “we’re moving out of Southall. It’s got too bad. It’s got too much for us.”
I asked, “What’s wrong with Southall?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I was told.
Of course, I didn’t understand at the time. But I think I understand now.
What was happening was that Southall was becoming increasingly populated by people from Punjab, including Sikhs and other South Asian communities. The character of the place was changing.
But nobody actually said that.
They didn’t say, “We don’t want to live next door to Indians.”
They said, “It’s changed.”
“It’s gone downhill.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
And that is another form of hypocrisy: the ability to express a prejudice without ever quite admitting that you have expressed one.
There is another phrase that is frequently used in Britain: “We are a Christian country.”
But what exactly does that mean?
How many people actually go to church these days? How many regularly attend an Anglican church? Perhaps ten per cent, perhaps five per cent in some places, perhaps even fewer.
So once again there is a curious contradiction between what people claim Britain is and how they actually live.
But perhaps the greatest example of English hypocrisy is not found in England at all.
It is found abroad.
The Englishman abroad.
This is one of my favourite examples.
English people have migrated in enormous numbers to Spain, to the Costa del Sol, to Italy and to all sorts of other countries. They have left England because they want a better climate, a better quality of life, cheaper property, or simply a different way of living.
And yet some of these same people can be deeply resentful of immigrants coming to Britain.
They have migrated themselves.
But they don’t think of themselves as immigrants.
They are expatriates.
There is a subtle distinction there.
I remember one English couple of a certain age who invited me to Sunday lunch in Italy.
It was a wonderful English Sunday lunch: roast beef, two vegetables and apple pie.
It was absolutely delicious.
I said something about how wonderful it was to have such a traditional English meal.
“Oh, we always eat like this,” they said.
“You mean during the week as well?”
“Oh yes. We don’t touch any of that spaghetti rubbish.”
They were living in Italy.
And yet their whole life was a tiny transposition of south-east London.
It could have been Bexley. It could have been south-west London. It could have been Surbiton.
Somehow a little piece of suburban England had been lifted out of Britain and deposited in a hilltop Italian village. And naturally they had voted for brexit in 2016!
All around them were Italian church bells clanging, cafés, bars, markets and the whole Italian way of life.
But they had constructed their own little England.
If there had been an English tea room nearby, I suppose they would have gone there every afternoon.
They had emigrated without wishing to become immigrants.
They wanted Italy without Italians.
And behind this lies something deeper, which is the old English belief in the superiority of English civilisation.
You can see it beautifully in A Room with a View: the English abroad, surrounded by Italy, looking upon the Italians as charming, emotional, rather immature people rushing about while the English represent order, civilisation and good sense.
It is an attitude which has not entirely disappeared.
And this is, I think, a kind of racism.
It doesn’t necessarily look like the racism that we recognise today. The word may never be used. People may never have been taught to think in terms of racism.
But if you believe that your culture is inherently superior to somebody else’s, that your way of life is the civilised one and that other people are somehow less developed, less rational or less respectable, then there is a hierarchy there.
And that hierarchy can be racial as well as cultural.
“We are English.”
“We have the superior civilisation.”
“They are the foreigners.”
“They are charming, perhaps—but not quite like us.”
That is a form of racism, even if the person expressing it would be horrified to be called a racist.
And this brings me back to hypocrisy.
Some people might say that hypocrisy is not really a vice.
I disagree.
I think hypocrisy is a terrible vice.
It is not simply that you fail to live up to your ideals. All human beings do that from time to time.
The real problem is when you demand one standard for other people and another standard for yourself.
You preach tolerance, but only when the consequences don’t affect you.
You condemn immigration, while living abroad yourself.
You say that Britain is a multicultural society, but object when multiculturalism arrives in your village.
You say you are not racist, but quietly assume that your culture is superior to everybody else’s.
You claim to be a decent and tolerant person, while maintaining a private set of rules that applies only to you.
And worst of all, you pretend that you aren’t a hypocrite.
You pretend that you don’t have double standards.
You pretend that you aren’t racist.
You pretend that you are simply defending common sense.
But underneath all this there can be a profound disassociation between what you say and what you actually believe.
And perhaps that is the most interesting thing about hypocrisy: the hypocrite frequently deceives himself as much as he deceives everybody else.
Fortunately, there are many English people who have very little to do with this kind of mentality.
They have travelled. They have lived abroad. They have mixed with other cultures. They have learned languages. They have discovered that England is not the centre of the universe.
They have developed, if you like, a global attitude rather than a parochial one.
And I think that is the real dividing line.
Hypocrisy breeds in a parochial outlook on life.
Tolerance, curiosity and universality come from looking beyond the boundaries of one’s own village, one’s own country and one’s own culture.
The person with a global outlook understands that other people have exactly the same right to regard their culture as normal as we have to regard ours as normal.
Perhaps that is what my Milanese mother saw all those years ago.
She came from outside.
She married an Englishman and lived among the English.
And perhaps, because she was not English herself, she could see something that I, as a child, simply couldn’t see.
The English are not uniquely hypocritical, of course. Italians can be hypocritical. The French can be hypocritical. Americans can be hypocritical. Human beings are rather good at it.
But there is something particularly interesting about the English variety.
It is often wrapped in politeness.
It is wrapped in good manners.
It is wrapped in phrases such as “one wouldn’t normally…” or “people might think…” or “it’s not really the done thing.”
The hypocrisy is rarely shouted.
It is quietly understood.
And perhaps that is why it can be so difficult to recognise.
So there we are.
Hypocrisy: the great British virtue—or the great British vice?
My mother would probably have known the answer.
And after all these years, I am beginning to think she was right.

***

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Every so often, one goes to an art exhibition and comes away feeling considerably better than when one went in. That was certainly my experience of Renoir and Love at the National Gallery. I thought it was a wonderful exhibition, and I came away feeling very, very happy. It is difficult to ask much more of a couple of hours spent looking at paintings.

There are 45 works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in London’s National Gallery exhibition which runs until 31 January 2027. I had, of course, seen reproductions of some of his paintings before, but there is something quite different about seeing paintings in the flesh. Reproductions can give you an idea of the composition, but they cannot quite convey the quality of the colours, the subtleties of the light or the sheer pleasure of standing in front of the real thing.

And what colours! That was one of the things that struck me most. Renoir seems to have had an extraordinary ability to make a painting glow. There is warmth in the faces, richness in the dresses and an almost tangible softness to the light. The colours work together in a way that makes the pictures feel alive rather than simply painted. I found myself wanting to look for longer, partly because there was always something else to notice and partly because I was enjoying myself so much.

And then there are the women. I must confess that I found some of Renoir’s women absolutely gorgeous. Not just attractive in a conventional artistic sense, but genuinely beautiful. There is something about their faces, their expressions and the way Renoir paints their skin that makes them extraordinarily appealing. Some have a softness and warmth that seem to bring them out of the canvas, while others have a particular charm in the way they look at the world around them.

(Renoir’s favourite model- and mistress – representing a water nymph).

The great attraction of the exhibition is Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, painted in 1876. It shows people dancing and socialising in Montmartre, with sunlight filtering through the trees and falling across the crowd.

It is a wonderfully busy painting. There are couples dancing, people talking, faces turned towards one another and groups gathered around tables. One’s eye keeps moving from one part of the picture to another. There is no single figure who tells the whole story, because the appeal lies in the whole scene: the movement, the light, the crowd and the sense that everyone is enjoying a pleasant afternoon.

What I particularly like about this sort of painting is that Renoir makes an ordinary social occasion seem worth preserving. Nobody is performing a heroic deed. Nobody is changing the course of history. They are simply out enjoying themselves, and yet the painting has an extraordinary vitality.

It also makes one think about the pleasures of being among other people. A dance, a conversation, a little flirtation, perhaps a drink or something to eat afterwards: these are not particularly complicated ingredients for a happy life. We sometimes seem to spend an enormous amount of time looking for happiness in places where it may not be found, when the simpler pleasures are often right in front of us.

Looking at the painting, I found it easy to understand why Renoir was so attracted to these scenes. He was not merely recording what people wore or how they spent their leisure time. He was trying to capture the feeling of being there nd that, I think, is what separates a merely competent picture from one that draws you into its world.

Other paintings in the exhibition explore similar themes. Dance at Bougival, for example, concentrates on a couple dancing together, while Lunch at Restaurant Fournaise shows people enjoying a meal in one another’s company.

What connects these works is Renoir’s interest in people and the relationships between them. He seems particularly attentive to the small things that make a social scene convincing: the way people sit together, the way they turn towards one another, and the sense that something is happening between them even when nothing particularly dramatic is going on.

I like paintings that give you room to look without insisting that you must immediately understand everything about them. You can notice the colours first, then the faces, then the way the figures fit into the composition. You can return to the same painting and find something else to appreciate. There is no need to turn every visit to a gallery into an examination.

Perhaps that is why I enjoyed this exhibition so much. I was not simply ticking off famous paintings or trying to remember dates. I was enjoying the pictures themselves.

Renoir changed considerably as an artist. The Umbrellas, which belongs to the National Gallery’s collection,⁷

and The Great Bathers, painted in the 1880s, demonstrate his movement towards a more structured and classical style.

These works help to place the lighter, more spontaneous paintings in the context of a longer artistic career.

That development is interesting, but I found the exhibition’s greatest appeal in the way the paintings made me feel. The light, the colours, the people and, yes, the beautiful women all contributed to an experience that was uplifting rather than demanding.

Sometimes a painting can simply make you stop, look and smile.

I know what I liked. I know how the exhibition made me feel. And I think a little more of that sort of happiness would do most of us no harm at all.when cafés, restaurants, dance halls and public gardens were becoming important settings for modern social life. His subjects may belong to another age, but the pleasures he depicted are still recognisable.

We may dress differently, and our social lives may involve rather more staring at mobile phones than Renoir would have anticipated, but the attraction of a good-looking person, a pleasant meal, a dance or a sunny afternoon has not disappeared.

I think there is something rather lovely about that continuity. The people in Renoir’s paintings have long since vanished, yet their expressions, their enjoyment and their company have been preserved. We can still look at them and recognise something of ourselves.

*

.Renoir and Love is at the National Gallery until 31 January 2027,

We always like to include a cathedral city in our visits, and this time we set our hearts upon visiting Chichester. However, one thing we did learn, or perhaps relearn, is that the worst time to tackle British Railways is at the weekend, when engineering works seem to take precedence over the convenience of passengers. Already we had the Piccadilly line disrupted in London, and mainline train services at Victoria were disrupted as well. However, we did manage to get to Chichester, passing some delightful pastoral countryside including enchanted views of Arudel castle, although it took a little longer than expected. It didn’t really matter, because we had the whole day to ourselves.

Having arrived in Chichester, the first thing was that we got really hungry, and we found a delightful little place called Bumble’s Cafe, where we both had really scrumptious full English breakfasts, complete with black pudding. It was really good, and we felt that this had set us up for the day.

Chichester is such a compact little town that it was a pleasure simply to walk around without getting in any way exhausted.

From the cafe we wandered towards the elegant medieval town cross, with its octagonal Gothic structure. From there we strolled around, looked at the shops, and went to see the Roman baths at the Novium Museum. But the museum has much more than the Roman baths. Its exhibitions illustrate the history of this delightful town through the lives of its people. Even those famous Chichester potted paste jars (Shippams) which I remembered in sandwiches were included in an exhibition. Anyway, the museum was all very well done, and gave us time to prepare ourselves for the big event – Evensong.

There was a visiting choir, rather than the cathedral’s own choir, but that hardly mattered. Once again, it was lovely to be part of this quintessential English institution. It is very relaxing, very spiritual, very much everything that one needs in this increasingly deprived world.

And the cathedral itself is so utterly beautiful, and so artistically charged. It is not simply a matter of its wonderful architecture, which takes us from the Romanesque to the late Gothic. There is also the continuing presence of artistic works, which makes the building something of a living gallery. We have John Piper’s tapestry, Hans Feibusch’s frescoes, and, above all, that gorgeous window by Marc Chagall. Isn’t that amazing?

And then there is the music. Thinking about it afterwards, I realised that I had come across music in two memorials during our visit, and that these had led me to make a rather wonderful connection. Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms was inspired by this place. Leonard Bernstein, the composer of West Side Story, and Chichester Cathedral! What a delightful conjunction!

And then I turned a corner of the transept in the cathedral itself and came across Gustav Holst. There was his memorial, bearing the words, so very appropriately for the composer of The Planets: “The Heavenly Spheres Make Music For Us.”

It was now time to get back to London. We had experienced problems getting there, but the return journey turned out to be rather different. We managed to catch a fast train, and this time Victoria Station was open. Of course, we still had to negotiate the Underground in a different way, but that was a relatively minor inconvenience after such a lovely day.

I think it is so important to include these beautiful towns like Chichester in our visits because they present us with the England we grew up with. I am sorry to say this, but I have to say that London is no longer the London that I knew. However, Chichester, which I remember from a very early age through visits and because we also had a Scout camp near it, still remains Chichester.

It remains English, and it still remains largely demographically unchallenged, largely, and that is a great sign of relief.

May we always have the England that we love before us, somewhere to escape to, as we did on this gorgeous, brisk, fresh, gloriously blue English day, with just a little tinge of autumn in the air.

(Several photos courtesy of Alexandra Cipriani).

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