What began as a simple shopping trip unexpectedly turned into a small lesson in Italian language and culture. After our little wanderings, we returned home and did our main weekly shop at Penny Market, specifically at the branch in Pian di Coreglia, near Coreglia Antelminelli. We are actually rather fortunate, because we have two branches within easy reach of us: one at Borgo a Mozzano and another at Pian di Coreglia.
Like many Italian supermarkets, Penny Market runs a points collection scheme. Customers can collect points and exchange them in several different ways. Some people choose free food items — tins of tuna, biscuits, and similar products. Others use the points for shopping discounts, such as three euros off with 250 points or five euros off with 500 points.
But the most interesting option for us was something quite different: Italian kitchenware.
Suddenly, what seemed at first to be an ordinary supermarket promotion became an unexpected vocabulary lesson. The cookware on offer introduced us to the wonderfully specific Italian names for different kinds of pans and pots — words that do not always translate neatly into English.

The padella is a frying pan or skillet, used for quick cooking and frying.
The tegame is deeper than a frying pan and ideal for slower cooking, risottos, stews, and sauces — something between a braising pan and a shallow casserole.
The casseruola resembles a saucepan or casserole pot, useful for soups, sauces, and more delicate cooking.
And finally there is the pentola, the general Italian word for a cooking pot, especially one used for boiling pasta, making soups, or cooking with larger quantities of liquid.
The promotion also included a wok — interestingly one of those culinary words that remains almost identical in both English and Italian because of its association with Chinese cooking. Everyone already has a fairly clear idea of what a wok is used for: quick high-heat cooking, stir-frying vegetables, noodles, meat, and rice dishes.
Another item on offer was the pentola a pressione — the Italian term for a pressure cooker. This was clearly the premium item in the Penny Market collection, requiring 2,500 points plus an additional payment of 24.99 euros. Since we already own a pressure cooker we did not feel the need to collect points for that particular item, but it was still interesting to see how prominently it featured in the promotion.
What made the whole experience unexpectedly charming was that this vocabulary did not come from a classroom or textbook, but from ordinary daily life — from supermarket shelves, reward catalogues, and practical household shopping. In Italy, language learning often happens exactly this way: through food, cooking, and the details of domestic culture.
So in the end, the Penny Market promotion gave us more than special offers. It gave us a deeper appreciation not only of Italian kitchenware, but also of the richness, precision, and everyday practicality of the Italian language itself.

I still remember the first time we ate at Circolo dei Forestieri in Bagni di Lucca. It was one of those unforgettable meals: aristocratic surroundings, old-world elegance, attentive service, and food that seemed to belong to another age. We enjoyed ourselves immensely, and at the end of the meal I naturally left a tip. It may have been ten percent or thereabouts, but whatever the amount, it seemed entirely obvious to me that one should reward such service. Only later did I realise that I had not merely tipped a waiter, but one of the proprietors themselves. In those days the establishment was run by two owners who later disappeared from the scene amid a certain uncertainty surrounding the business, but at that moment they were still there, serving their guests personally and accepting tips with old-fashioned courtesy.
Yet as time went on, and as I came to know Italy more deeply, I realised something rather curious: Italians rarely tip at all. In fact, we ourselves almost never tip in Italy. One pays the bill and, at most, pays the coperto, the cover charge. The coperto is an old institution, covering bread, table linen, cutlery, washing up and general table service. In other words, the service itself is already included in the culture of the meal. The waiter is paid by the establishment, not by the uncertain generosity of the customer. If one leaves a few coins behind, it is merely a small gesture of appreciation, not a moral obligation.
The same has generally been true in England. There may once have been occasions where one tipped a hairdresser or rounded up the fare in a taxi, but even there it was occasional rather than essential. Nowadays we scarcely even think about tipping. Here in Lucca, when we go to our Chinese hairdressers near Viale Giannotti, we simply pay the amount requested and leave perfectly satisfied, as do they. Nobody appears offended, deprived, or disappointed. The transaction is complete in itself.
And indeed, travelling across Europe, I have never encountered the kind of psychological pressure surrounding tipping that one experiences in America. Last year we travelled through Slovakia, Hungary, Germany, and Poland, and nowhere did we feel obliged to calculate percentages, evaluate service levels, or worry whether someone’s livelihood depended upon our generosity. We paid the bill, thanked the staff, and departed. The social contract was straightforward and complete.

America, however, is an entirely different world.
The first time I truly understood this was many years ago, in the 1970s, when, as a student, I found work as a waiter in a hotel somewhere in the hills and mountains above New York, in that great region stretching towards New England. It was one of those old American resort hotels where guests stayed for entire periods and took all their meals in the dining room. I arrived expecting to earn wages from the hotel itself. Instead, I suddenly realised that most of my actual income would come not from wages but from tips.
That discovery astonished me.
The guests did not merely tip at the end of their stay. They tipped after every meal. Breakfast, lunch, dinner — each encounter carried the possibility of reward or disappointment. I quickly realised that my survival depended not simply on doing my job but on performing it in a way that pleased the customers sufficiently for them to reward me personally. My income depended directly on charm, efficiency, memory, friendliness, and speed. One became not merely a waiter but, in a sense, an actor.
I will also say this: waiting tables remains one of the most exhausting jobs I have ever had to do in my life. The hours were relentless, the physical labour immense, and the emotional strain considerable because every interaction potentially affected one’s income. One was constantly “on stage”, constantly aware that one’s livelihood depended upon satisfying complete strangers.
There was one particular table whose occupants almost prided themselves on not tipping. They seemed philosophically opposed to the whole practice. For us waiters this became a source of dread because serving them meant working for virtually nothing. Eventually our frustration became so great that we placed little handwritten notices on their table asking them, politely but desperately, to tip us because we needed to survive. Looking back on it now, I realise how extraordinary that situation really was. We were not appealing for a bonus or a token of appreciation. We were appealing for part of our livelihood.
That experience revealed something fundamental about America: tipping there is not an optional courtesy but an integral part of the wage system itself.
Historically, this developed in a peculiar way. After the American Civil War, many service industries — hotels, railways, restaurants — adopted tipping as a substitute for proper wages. Employers discovered that if customers could be persuaded to pay service workers directly, businesses themselves could keep wages extremely low. In some cases, formerly enslaved Black workers were employed under exactly such arrangements: nominal pay from the employer and dependence upon gratuities from customers. Over time this practice became normalised and eventually embedded in American labour law.
To this day, many American states permit what is called a “tipped minimum wage”, meaning employers may legally pay restaurant servers far less than the normal minimum wage because tips are expected to make up the difference. Thus the customer effectively becomes part-employer. This is why Americans often regard failing to tip not merely as rudeness but almost as withholding somebody’s wages.
For Europeans, this feels deeply strange. We assume that the employer pays the employee and that the customer pays the establishment. In America, however, the boundaries blur. Every restaurant meal becomes a small moral drama. Was the service good enough for fifteen percent? Twenty percent? Twenty-five percent? Was the waiter attentive enough? Friendly enough? Fast enough? One is no longer simply purchasing a meal but participating in the economic survival of another human being.
And this extends everywhere. Sit down for a coffee, have a drink in a bar, take a taxi, eat in a diner — and at the end comes the moment of calculation. Modern card readers in America often confront one directly with suggested percentages before payment can even be completed. Fifteen percent, twenty percent, twenty-five percent. One feels almost guilty selecting too low a number, even when the prices and taxes are already high enough.
What makes this especially paradoxical is that America is also one of the richest countries in the world. The wealthiest corporations, the richest businessmen, the grandest displays of prosperity — all exist there. Yet at the same time millions of ordinary workers in the service industries rely upon what Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams’ play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire” famously called “the kindness of strangers.” In a sense, America transformed that line into an economic system.
Of course, defenders of tipping argue that it rewards excellence. A particularly attentive waiter can earn more money than he might under a fixed salary. Customers can directly reward good service, and restaurants can keep menu prices lower. Some waiters in expensive American establishments earn remarkable incomes through tips alone.
Yet the system also creates insecurity and emotional exhaustion. Workers must constantly perform friendliness because their wages depend upon the moods and generosity of strangers. Customers, meanwhile, feel pressure and guilt where none should naturally exist. Instead of simply enjoying a meal, one becomes aware of participating in another person’s economic survival.

In Europe, by contrast, service remains part of the profession itself. The waiter may be warm and charming or formal and distant, but either way he is understood to be properly employed. A tip remains what it originally was meant to be: a spontaneous sign of appreciation rather than an essential wage subsidy.
Looking back now, I realise that my time travelling through America — from New York to the Deep South, from New Orleans to Carlsbad Caverns, from the Grand Canyon to San Francisco — were financed in no small measure by tips. The generosity of strangers enabled me to buy Greyhound tickets and see a vast continent in all its contradictions and magnificence. For that I remain grateful.
But I also came away understanding something else: America is not merely a country where people tip. It is a country where tipping became woven into the structure of everyday life itself, to such an extent that service workers often depend upon it not as a reward, but as a necessity for staying alive.

Another uncertain day in London — one of those days when the city seems wrapped in cloud, the light diffused into a grey softness that never quite becomes rain. It threatened showers all day, yet somehow held back, and so we decided to make the most of what felt like the last truly leisurely Saturday outing before ordinary routines resumed again.
Our destination was Ham House, reached from Richmond after a bus journey through one of the most attractive corners of the capital. Richmond remains exactly what a London suburb ought to be: lively without vulgarity, historic without self-consciousness, and full of variety and charm. Few places balance urban life and riverside calm so successfully.
From Richmond we travelled onward towards Ham House, one of the great noble houses built along the banks of the River Thames. In the seventeenth century the Thames was not merely scenic decoration but the great highway of England itself — infinitely preferable to the dreadful roads of the age. To build beside the river was to place oneself at the centre of movement, politics, commerce, and influence.
Part of the pleasure of visiting Ham House lies in approaching it. It does not suddenly emerge beside a bus stop or car park. Instead, one walks gradually towards it through long avenues bordered by trees, the house slowly revealing itself with a sense of ceremony. The approach prepares the visitor for another world.

This visit carried an additional layer of memory for us, since we had last been there in 2017. I remembered then describing it as “one of the metropolis’ most beautiful riverside palaces,” and the phrase still seemed perfectly accurate. Built in 1610 for Prince Henry Frederick, the gifted eldest son of James VI and I, Ham House remains a noble brick mansion set among leafy surroundings. On that earlier visit I had been reminded of Charlton House, another Jacobean survivor in London, later realising that it had been built for Sir Adam Newton, Prince Henry’s tutor.

Prince Henry’s death from typhoid fever at the age of only eighteen remains one of those tantalising turning points of history. Had he lived, and not his younger brother Charles I succeeded to the throne, how differently might English history have unfolded?
Yet Ham House achieved its greatest importance somewhat later, during the Restoration. Elizabeth Tollemache, daughter of the house’s owners, married John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale and became an influential figure at the court of Charles II. Remarkably for a woman of her age, she exercised genuine political influence and became part of the king’s inner advisory circle. Even before her marriage she had risked her life carrying secret dispatches for the royalist resistance movement known as the Sealed Knot during the years of Cromwell’s rule. Peter Lely’s portrait of Elizabeth Tollemache, Duchess of Lauderdale, at Ham house capures her beauty and intelligence in equal measure.

At the end of a very long leafy avenue we finally came face to face with this glorious house.

One aim of our journey was to see a special exhibition of cabinets, strong boxes, and private writing desks — objects ordinarily closed to the public and opened only twice a year. What a remarkable collection it proved to be. There were cabinets fashioned from rich woods, decorated with ivory and intricate craftsmanship, each one as much an artwork as a practical possession.
Yet these were not merely pieces of furniture. They were symbols of prestige, intellect, and power. More intriguingly still, they were instruments of secrecy. Hidden drawers and concealed compartments safeguarded private correspondence, confidential documents, and political messages. Looking at them, one could not help thinking how little human nature changes. The secret chambers of these cabinets were, in effect, the seventeenth century’s equivalent of passwords and encrypted files — methods by which people protected their most intimate information from unwelcome eyes.

The exhibition gave the house a particularly vivid atmosphere, as though one were suddenly allowed into the private world of its former inhabitants. The excellent staff, many of them volunteers, added enormously to the experience, enthusiastically pointing out details and helping visitors recreate the extraordinary past of the house.
Ham itself remains wonderfully preserved, saved for the nation in 1950 and largely unchanged for more than three centuries. Its interiors move between grandeur and intimacy. There are tapestries, portraits, miniatures, fine furniture, and richly decorated rooms that seem to hold echoes of vanished conversations.

Architecturally, too, the house rewards lingering attention. An especially charming feature is the way the first floor above the entrance hall opens into an elongated octagon, creating an elegant interior balcony.

The grand staircase, meanwhile, remains one of the most impressive in any English country house.

Like many historic houses, Ham has also lived several lives through cinema and television. It has appeared in productions including The Young Victoria and Never Let Me Go, meaning many people have probably seen its interiors without ever realising where they were.
And then, after all the history and hidden compartments, came a thoroughly civilised reward. Some time ago, after writing something for the National Trust I had been sent a cream tea voucher for two in thanks. We decided this was the perfect opportunity to use it.

So we sat in the gardens with tea and scones beneath the heavy sky that still stubbornly refused to rain. Around us stretched the calm beauty of the grounds, touched with that gentle melancholy peculiar to England when signs of summer hesitate once more to show themselves.

The walks around Ham House were as delightful as ever, especially at this time of year. The long avenues, the riverside atmosphere, the sense of retreat from the city — all combined to create one of those rare London days that feel both historical and deeply personal.
It was, altogether, a wonderful outing: part history, part reflection, part simple pleasure. And perhaps that is the enduring magic of Ham House. It reminds us that history is not only made in battles and parliaments, but also in hidden letters, quiet gardens, riverside walks, and conversations carried softly through oak-panelled rooms beside the Thames.

While business brought me once again across London, I decided to combine necessity with one of life’s greatest luxuries: wandering.
My destination was Lesnes Abbey, one of my favourite places in London and, curiously enough, one of its least celebrated treasures. The ruined abbey lies close to the southern reaches of the Elizabeth line at Abbey Wood, where modern trains now glide with astonishing speed through landscapes once inhabited by monks, pilgrims, herbalists, and, long before them, sharks swimming in prehistoric seas.

The day itself could not quite decide what season it wished to belong to. Clouds alternated between grim, threatening grey and sudden generous sunshine. Yet the rain, mercifully, never truly arrived. Instead, the dampness left the woods rich with scent and colour, and the intermittent sunlight illuminated the landscape with theatrical brilliance.
After spending some time among the abbey ruins themselves, I set off toward another place I have long loved: the internationally important geological exposures known as the Blackheath Beds. These Eocene deposits, remnants of an ancient tropical environment that once covered this part of England, have yielded fossil sharks’ teeth and traces of early mammalian life. Reaching them requires a walk through the beautiful woods of Abbey Wood itself, and the journey there is half the pleasure.
What always astonishes me about these woods is how little known they remain. They possess nearly everything people seek in far more fashionable London green spaces: mature woodland, shifting contours, hidden valleys, changing textures of light, and a remarkable sense of escape … except the crowds! For almost two hours I wandered through this vast stretch of London woodland almost entirely alone. It was extraordinary — one of those increasingly rare moments when a great city seems to disappear altogether.
Perhaps the uncertain weather kept people away. If so, I was grateful for it.
The fossil beds themselves were damp and not especially easy to search, but persistence was rewarded. Among the pebbles and clay I managed to find a fine fossil shark’s tooth, blackened and polished by immense stretches of time. Holding such an object in one’s hand produces a strange sensation: the sudden collapse of millions of years into a single tangible fragment. One stands in suburban southeast London and yet touches a vanished ocean.

I had hoped, too, to find bluebells. Earlier in the season it had been too soon for them; now, perhaps, it was already too late. Not a single bluebell remained. Nature keeps her own calendar and does not adjust it for our convenience.

Yet what the woods withheld in one form they offered abundantly in another. Emerging from the trees, I encountered a magnificent display of rhododendrons whose colours rivalled anything one might find in the more celebrated parks of London.

Then, beyond them, came an even greater surprise: an arboretum containing dozens upon dozens of tree species, many of them rare and exotic. Among these trees several particularly captured my imagination. There was the Himalayan cedar, noble and fragrant; the tulip tree, named for the elegant shape of its leaves; and then perhaps the most remarkable of them all — the ancient Ginkgo biloba.

The ginkgo is often called a “living fossil,” and rightly so. Its lineage reaches back unimaginably far into geological history, long before human beings existed and even before the dinosaurs ruled the earth. Entire worlds vanished while the ancestors of this tree endured. Seeing one here, after searching the fossil beds below, felt strangely appropriate — as though the whole landscape were quietly reminding the visitor of time’s immense continuity.
I know the ginkgo well from Lucca, where beautiful specimens grow in the botanical gardens and near the city walls, turning brilliant gold in autumn sunlight. To encounter one again here, in southeast London, created one of those small but moving bridges between places and memories.
Eventually I returned to the abbey precinct itself and spent some time in the recreated monks’ garden. The garden is modest, but lovingly conceived, offering at least a glimpse into the world once inhabited by the Cistercian monks who lived there before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537.

It is impossible to stand in such a place without reflecting on what was swept away during that upheaval. The destruction of the monasteries under Henry VIII was not merely architectural or political. It represented the dismantling of an entire ecosystem of belief, ritual, learning, hospitality, and care.
The monks were not simply men who prayed. Many served as physicians and herbalists. They cultivated medicinal herbs — the old “simples” — prepared remedies, copied manuscripts, sheltered travellers, and cared for the sick. The very word “hospital” preserves something of this older world. It shares its roots with “hospitality,” with the offering of shelter and care to strangers, pilgrims, and the vulnerable.
That idea now feels curiously distant in our own hurried age.
Of course, history is never simple. One cannot romanticise the medieval world entirely, nor deny the changes and institutions that later centuries brought. Yet there remains something profoundly moving about these ruined places, something that speaks not merely of destruction but of continuity — of human beings endlessly attempting to create meaning, beauty, refuge, and order against the passage of time.
Perhaps that is why places like Lesnes Abbey affect me so deeply. The ruins themselves are evocative, yes, but they also exist within layers of memory: prehistoric oceans, medieval devotion, Victorian botanical enthusiasm, suburban London, and now the swift electric trains of the twenty-first century passing nearby.
And so the day ended in the best possible way. I met my wife and together we went to one of our favourite places in London, The Golden Chippy in Greenwich, where, in our opinion at least, one can still find some of the finest fish and chips in the capital. After fossils, monasteries, woods, ancient trees, and meditations on history, there was something wonderfully reassuring about good food served warmly and generously.
Hospitality again.

By the time we finally made our way home, the day had acquired that rare satisfying fullness produced only by a mixture of discovery, reflection, companionship, and wandering — business and pleasure intertwined, exactly as life perhaps ought to be.

For some years now, one of the great pleasures of our lives in London has been attending the lunchtime organ recitals given in the churches of the City. If one finds oneself wondering what to do during a lunch hour in London — apart from merely finding somewhere to eat — there can be few better answers than stepping into one of these beautiful churches and listening to an organ recital.
Over the years we have regularly attended concerts at the Temple Church, at St Michael Cornhill, and at St Margaret Lothbury, each with its own atmosphere and musical character. Last Thursday we once again went to St Margaret Lothbury, where we heard a magnificent recital given by a brilliant Swiss organist.Marc Fitze.

The programme included works by Dieterich Buxtehude and Handel including Passacaglias and Chaconnes. These were beautifully performed on the church’s wonderful George England organ, which the recitalist handled with extraordinary imagination. At moments, particularly in Handel, the instrument sounded almost like a small chamber organ; elsewhere it expanded into something symphonic and monumental.
Of all the organs in the City of London, this remains one of my favourites. There is a remarkable clarity to its tone, and it fits perfectly within the lovely intimate interior of the church, with its decorative woodwork and excellent acoustics.

During the interval, Richard Townend — the church’s titular organist and a distinguished educationalist — gave one of his characteristically informative and amusing talks. He explained the difference between a chaconne and a passacaglia, something I had never fully understood before. I had always assumed that a passacaglia was simply another name for a chaconne, but apparently the distinction lies partly in structure: the chaconne is based around a four-bar sequence, whereas the passacaglia generally develops over an eight-bar sequence. Both are usually in triple time, something that suddenly made complete musical sense once explained.
The second part of the recital introduced me more fully to the music of Jehan Alain, and I realised what an extraordinary genius he was — and what a tragedy it was that he died at only twenty-nine during the German invasion of France in 1940. Alain had joined the French army as a motorcycle dispatch rider. In a remarkable and heroic episode, he encountered advancing German troops and, rather than surrender, fought alone with a carbine from a garden near a railway bridge before finally being killed himself. He was later awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery. In this sense, Alain joins that long line of artists and composers whose lives were cut short by war. In Britain we have our own equivalent in George Butterworth, another extraordinary composer lost young in conflict.
Two of Alain’s works were performed: Litanies and Le Jardin suspendu. There is something utterly distinctive about Alain’s music. Even for those who are not organ aficionados, it has an immediate emotional and spiritual force. His music feels haunting — almost like a voice interrupted in mid-sentence by the catastrophe of war.
Alain drew influence from Gregorian chant, Eastern philosophy and music, the French Impressionists, dance rhythms, and darker, almost primal musical forms. The result is music that can sound hypnotic, ecstatic, savage, mystical, and deeply modern all at once.
Litanies in particular was overwhelming. The work builds with obsessive intensity until it becomes almost volcanic in its power.

After the concert we were, as customary, invited into the vestry for tea and biscuits in a convivial setting.
We are profoundly grateful for these lunchtime concerts in the City of London. They enrich our lives immeasurably, and one learns something new at every recital — not only about music, but about history, architecture, spirituality, and human imagination itself. They are among the great glories and quiet joys of living in London.

Every year a luogo del cuore (place of the heart) campaign is launched by FAI, the Italian conservation body, in which people vote for a building or place worthy of protection from the ravages of time.
A friend – Rita Gualtieri – has been campaigning hard to save Bagni di Lucca’s magnificent Villa Ada in the old part of the town on the hill. Now her campaign to save the villa from total neglect has finally produced remarkable results: On Saturday 30th May, at 10.30 am, there will be the official inauguration of the restored ground floor of the villa. For those of us who visited the villa years ago when it stood neglected, vandalised and slowly collapsing into ruin, this moment carries particular emotional significance.
What once seemed destined to disappear into decay and oblivion is now beginning to find an assured future.

Originally a late Renaissance structure owned by the De Nobili Lucchese family, Villa Ada was completely renovated in the nineteenth century by Sir MacBean, British Consul at Livorno, when the two tall hexagonal towers were built connecting the villa’s separate blocks and giving it its present characteristic appearance. The building is surrounded by a large English-style park enriched by artificial limestone caves, wrought-iron railings shaped like intertwined branches, and other elements of garden ornamentation typical of the period.
A path starting from the terrace near the villa leads to a pergola and continues towards an artificial grotto hidden amongst the greenery.

The villa, purchased in 1975 by the Municipality of Bagni di Lucca, was later used as a spa treatment establishment. Unti recently the villa stood abandoned, with obvious structural problems caused by years of poor maintenance and neglect.
The citizens of Bagni di Lucca, through lack of wider interest and mobilisation, had been unable to muster the number of votes required for the building to qualify for preservation funding and restoration assistance.
On a beautifully serene winter afternoon some years ago, blessed with the crystalline light that Bagni di Lucca so often enjoys in winter, I decided with two friends to investigate the interior of Villa Ada in the spirit of urban exploration.
What we encountered was a scene of profound dilapidation and melancholy abandonment — a place of fading grandeur succumbing rapidly to decay. In some rooms, parts of the ceilings had already begun to collapse.

We also saw the places where two fine eighteenth-century marble fireplaces had once stood before being brutally removed, no doubt disappearing into the sordid international black market in stolen architectural treasures. The following photos show the before and after of the fireplace theft.

Yet amidst the decay there remained traces of astonishing beauty. We were relieved to discover that the magnificently carved wooden balustrade of the grand staircase spanning three floors was still largely intact, despite the loss or damage of several finials and decorative details.

We were also thankful that many of the sumptuous marble floors remained preserved and that the herringbone terracotta floor of one of the grand salons survived complete and remarkably beautiful beneath the dust of abandonment.

What struck me most during our exploration of the forlorn majesty of Villa Ada was not merely its size, but the sheer impressiveness of its state rooms, even stripped bare of decoration and furnishings. One could still sense the echoes of another age.

What stately occasions must once have taken place in Villa Ada’s belle-époque heyday! What elegance of powdered and perfumed ladies descending the monumental staircase in silk and chiffon. What waltzes, quadrilles and polkas danced to the mellifluous sounds of a salon orchestra. What grand banquets, what glittering receptions, what delicate canapés and fine wines. What gossip, flirtations, intrigues, whispered declarations of love or betrayal, ambitions realised and hopes destroyed within these now silent walls.

For years it seemed possible that Villa Ada would simply continue its slow descent into oblivion — another beautiful fragment of European history lost to neglect, weather and fading memory. And yet, remarkably, the story has begun to change. At long last, that long-awaited awakening of Villa Ada has begun.

On Saturday 30th May, at 10.30 in the morning, there’s the official inauguration of the restored ground floor of the villa and its surrounding park, followed by a reception attended by the Mayor and other local dignitaries.
Importantly, this restoration is not intended as a mere cosmetic gesture or isolated intervention. It marks the beginning of a much wider project. Villa Ada is planned to become a centre for local associations, cultural activities and community life — a living building once again, rather than a silent monument to abandonment. It’s now part of the Progetto PINquA, an innovative national programme concentrating on the quality of local living and environment created in order to utilize the funds made available by the European Union following the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Much still remains to be done, but this is a profoundly encouraging beginning. The great staircase, the noble salons, the terraces and gardens that once echoed only with melancholy now have reason to hope again.
After years of uncertainty, Villa Ada has at last begun its journey back towards life and contribute to Bagni di Lucca’s community.

Last night at Covent Garden’s Royal Opera we saw one of the great spectacles of nineteenth-century French opera: Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns. It was magnificent.

The cast was superb, but Delilah herself was extraordinary, especially in that great aria, Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix, sung with such warmth, seduction and fullness of tone by Aigul Akhmetshina that one suddenly understood why Samson could not resist her. The role demands not only beauty of voice but emotional intelligence for Delilah must persuade both Samson and the audience at the same time. Akhmetshina, a Bashkir mezzo-soprano of Tartar origin from Russia, is widely regarded as one of the leading young voices in international opera today. Born in 1996 in a village in Bashkortostan (near the Ural Mountains) she grew up in a modest rural family with strong musical traditions.

The tragic hero Samson was very expressively sung by SeokJong Baek, a South Korean tenor and a member of the Royal Opera House’s young artist development programme..

And then there was the famous Bacchanale towards the end of the opera — one of the most intoxicating orchestral passages in all French music. Saint-Saëns fills it with imagined Eastern colour: exotic rhythms, sensual orchestration, winding melodies suggesting Egypt, the Levant, ritual, intoxication and danger. One feels completely overwhelmed by the sheer theatrical splendour of it.

This opera belongs among the great orientalist works of nineteenth-century European music. One thinks immediately of Delibes’ Lakmé, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, and later Puccini operas such as Madama Butterfly and Turandot. Europe in that period was fascinated by imagined Eastern worlds — places of mystery, sensuality, cruelty, ritual and danger. But Samson et Dalila is darker than many of these works because beneath all the spectacle lies a brutal biblical story about betrayal, occupation, masculinity, humiliation, religion and revenge.

The story itself remains astonishingly powerful. Samson’s strength lies secretly in his hair. A woman discovers the secret by pretending to love him. He is betrayed, captured and blinded. Yet in the end he takes revenge by pulling down the columns of the Philistine temple, destroying not only his enemies but himself and the woman he loved.

It is one of the oldest tragic structures imaginable: victory and annihilation arriving together. It is a theme which constantly returns as in Anthony and Cleopatra, Macbeth and his Lady, Mata Hari and her lovers.

And yet, sitting there in the theatre, another thought intruded unexpectedly. At one point my wife quietly remarked to me: Samson was blinded — “eyeless in Gaza.” Suddenly the word “Gaza” itself seemed terribly resonant.

For centuries, the phrase “Eyeless in Gaza” has belonged to literature, especially through Milton’s Samson Agonistes:

“Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves…”

Once, those words sounded remote and biblical, almost ceremonial. Today they cannot help carrying modern associations. The ancient setting suddenly acquires echoes of the present world.

Of course, the historical Philistines of the Hebrew Bible are not simply identical with modern Palestinians, and history should not be crudely collapsed into modern politics. Yet the emotional resonance of names survives across centuries. Hearing “Gaza” in a theatre now inevitably awakens contemporary thoughts and anxieties.

And still the audience did not turn the evening into a political demonstration. Instead, we surrendered to the spectacle, the beauty, the ritual, the voices, the orchestral colour. Opera creates a strange suspended world in which audiences contemplate violence, revenge, holy war and destruction through music of overwhelming beauty.

Perhaps that is precisely why the opera remains so disturbing.

Saint-Saëns wrote other operas, of course, but this is surely his theatrical masterpiece. The work combines French elegance with biblical grandeur and psychological intensity in a way few operas manage.

So we left the theatre exhilarated, chastened, entertained, puzzled and emotionally unsettled all at once. And afterwards we travelled home through an unexpectedly cold May evening in London, carrying with us the strange aftertaste of the opera: beauty mixed with cruelty, antiquity colliding with the present, and the haunting sound of that single word — Gaza.

***

Postscript:
We’ve had, in a sense, personal experiences with both Saint-Saëns and Samson himself—across very different musical settings and moments in time.
The first came many years ago with Handel’s great oratorio Samson, based on the biblical story from the Book of Judges. We performed it with the Plumstead Choral Society, singing as members of the chorus. It remains a substantial and powerful work, both dramatic and musical, and it was a memorable experience to be part of its unfolding narrative in performance.
More recently, we returned to Saint-Saëns in a very different spirit, singing his Christmas Oratorio at the Borgo a Mozzano festival. This was a much earlier work of his, written when he was still a young man, and it has a lighter, more lyrical and charming character. The performance took place in the Friary church of San Francesco which provided a fitting and atmospheric setting for the music. It was, again, a thoroughly rewarding experience, but of a very different mood and scale from the Handel.
Taken together, these two performances form an interesting pair: one rooted in the grandeur and drama of a biblical epic, the other in the gentle warmth of sacred music for Christmas but both described as oratorios.

Having recently returned from New York, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about cities and how they hold together such intense diversity. I’ve also been revisiting films that capture different aspects of the city — Woody Allen’s Manhattan for its atmosphere, Moonstruck for its Italian-American world, and other works that reflect the layered cultural identity of New York. What stands out is how many different communities have shaped the city over time — Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Chinese, African American, South Asian, Russian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and many others — each leaving visible traces in neighbourhoods, food, language, and everyday life.
Within that wider mosaic, I am aware of the strong historical and cultural presence of Jewish life in New York, particularly in the arts, music, comedy, intellectual culture, and food traditions. Figures like Leonard Bernstein, alongside the wider legacy of New York theatre, film, and comedy, sit alongside everyday cultural forms such as delis, bakeries, bagels, pastrami, cheesecake, and other foods that have become part of the city’s broader identity. In places like the Upper West Side or Brooklyn, and even in the cultural memory of the city through film and literature, there is a sense of how deeply these influences are woven into urban life.
At the same time, one of our most ordinary but memorable experiences was going for breakfast at Breads Bakery. It had a strong tradition of Jewish baking, but what stayed with me most was not any sense of entering a defined cultural space, but rather how natural and open it felt. People were simply there — working, eating, talking — and we were warmly welcomed without any sense of separation or boundary. In fact, we didn’t approach it as “a Jewish place” at all in any conscious way; it simply felt like part of the everyday fabric of the city, where different traditions exist in a shared space without needing to be emphasised.

What New York suggests to me overall is not a neutral city, but one where many identities have accumulated and interacted over time to form something layered and continually evolving — more like a living mosaic than a single culture. It feels like a place where difference is constantly present, but also routinely absorbed into everyday life. That raises for me a broader question about whether other cities, or even the world more generally, could sustain a stronger sense of shared civic life across such diversity, where coexistence is normal rather than exceptional.
This is part of why I find myself thinking more anxiously about London. I feel concerned about any situation where communities begin to feel unsafe or under threat in the places they live. It seems to me fundamental that no group should feel frightened simply because of who they are, and that a city depends on a baseline assumption of safety and belonging for all its residents. I am particularly troubled by antisemitism wherever it appears, and by any form of prejudice that turns political tensions into hostility towards entire communities.
At the same time, I wonder how fear and insecurity are experienced differently across groups, and how cities can better manage political disagreement and public expression without allowing it to spill into hostility or prejudice. Whatever one’s views on global or political issues, it feels essential to maintain a clear distinction between political conflict and discrimination against people because of their identity.
Ultimately, what stays with me from New York is not the absence of tension, but the possibility — however imperfect — of coexistence at scale: a city where many histories are present at once, and where identity is layered, ordinary, and continuously shared in everyday life.

British politics is at a point where ambiguity is no longer enough. Brexit is not a settled historical episode—it is an ongoing economic and social condition. It continues to create friction in trade, reduce mobility, and limit opportunities in education, research, and business. These effects are structural, not temporary.
That is why Labour must now speak with clarity and force about Europe.
A government led by Keir Starmer should not treat Europe as a secondary issue or a background policy concern. It should define its European position as central to its political identity, to its own bread and butter .. or fish n chips if you like.

The message should be unambiguous:
Vote Labour, vote for a return to Europe.
For many families, Labour has never been just a party but a political culture rooted in public service, trade unionism, and civic responsibility.
In my own family, that tradition is longstanding. My grandfather was a Labour councillor for the Borough of Lewisham and was considered for the mayoralty of the borough. My father was also a Labour supporter for most of his life.This reflects a wider pattern in British political life: allegiance is often inherited, but it is also reshaped by personal experience, work, and changing economic circumstances apart from its great traditional symbols.

The European question has never followed simple party lines.
Post-war thinking about European cooperation was influenced across political traditions, including figures associated with wartime leadership such as Winston Churchill, who supported forms of European unity as part of a wider peace settlement.

At the same time, Labour’s focus in the post-war period was primarily domestic: reconstruction, the welfare state, and urgent social reform. Europe was present, but not yet central.
Over time, however, Europe became one of the defining political divides in British public life—though never a perfectly consistent one. It has cut across parties, generations, and class backgrounds in ways that resist simple categorisation.
Labour is already moving in a more European direction. It recognises the need to improve relations with the EU, reduce unnecessary friction, and repair some of the practical damage caused by Brexit.

But this is still too cautious.
What is required now is not adjustment at the margins, but a clear political direction: Europe must be placed at the centre of Labour’s forward programme.
That means:
rebuilding economic alignment with Europe
restoring mobility for students, workers, and researchers
removing avoidable barriers to trade and cooperation
committing to deeper reintegration where democratic support exists
This is not about rhetorical symbolism. It is about political direction.
These questions are not abstract—they run through families and generations in inconsistent ways.
My aunt, who lived to nearly 100, was a lifelong Labour supporter and committed socialist, yet she voted for Brexit. For her generation, that position was not unusual or contradictory. Brexit was often understood as an issue of sovereignty and democratic control rather than party ideology.

In earlier interpretations, the European project was sometimes associated with post-war statesmanship and figures such as Churchill, rather than the later institutional reality of the European Union. As a result, political identities around Europe did not map neatly onto left or right positions.
This is why Brexit was not a uniform political shift. It cut across Labour and Conservative traditions alike, often reflecting generational outlooks more than party loyalty.
Rejoining the European Union would not be immediate. It would require negotiation, democratic consent, and time. It would be a staged process, not a single decision.
But politics is defined by direction, not just procedure.
And that direction must now be stated clearly and without hesitation.
Britain should move steadily back towards European integration, not continue dilly-dallying with it.
Labour is already recognising the importance of Europe. But recognition is not enough.
It must become conviction. It must become policy direction. It must become political identity.
The clearest expression of that position is also the simplest:
“Vote Labour, vote for a return to Europe”.
Not as sentiment. Not as nostalgia. But as a clear, forceful statement of Britain’s future direction. It might even help to save the PM’s position.

On our last full day in New York, we were reminded of an important truth: it is impossible to do everything in this city in a single visit. There were still so many things left undone — Broadway shows, nightclubs, Coney Island, Governors Island, the Cloisters, the Frick Collection, Ellis Island, the Museum of Modern art, St Patrick’s cathedral.. New York leaves you with unfinished business, and perhaps that is part of its magic.
But there was one thing we absolutely could not miss: perhaps the greatest art museum in the world, the Metropolitan Museum of Art — “The Met.”
To reach it, we enjoyed a wonderful walk through Central Park. It is interesting to remember that Central Park was itself a great civic creation of the 19th century, designed when New York decided it deserved a grand urban park to rival those of London and Paris. Before its creation the land included Indian settlements such as Seneca Village, whose residents were displaced to make way for the project — a reminder that even beautiful things can emerge from complicated histories.
Whatever its origins, the park today is magnificent. I remembered visiting it back in 1970, when parts of it felt rather tired and neglected. Today it looks beautifully restored and alive with energy.

As we crossed it, we encountered musicians, performers, walkers, lots of dogs (with their owners) and New Yorkers of every kind, all contributing to that uniquely vibrant atmosphere. Near the museum entrance stands New York’s own “Cleopatra’s Needle,” the ancient Egyptian obelisk that seems somehow perfectly at home amid the trees and skyscrapers.

And then we entered the Met itself.
We began in the classical galleries, astonished by the quality of the Cycladic, Minoan, and Cretan figures. Yet our real destination was the magnificent Temple of Dendur, gifted by Egypt to the United States in gratitude for American assistance in saving ancient monuments threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. The temple stands inside an immense glass hall beside a reflecting pool suggestive of the Nile, and the effect is unforgettable.

The Met building itself is equally remarkable — vast, elegant, and wonderfully eclectic in style. But what struck us most was the sense of space. Unlike some museums where masterpieces feel crowded together, the Met allows works room to breathe. You can stand quietly before great art and properly absorb it.
The Egyptian collections were superb, but eventually we moved on to the European paintings. Of course, the museum contains infinitely more than one could possibly see in a day — armour, African art, American collections, decorative arts — but we realised we had to focus our attention.
And for me, that meant Vermeer.
America possesses an extraordinary number of paintings by Johannes Vermeer — nearly half of his surviving works — and five of them are in the Met itself.

It seems remarkable, but the explanation lies in history: during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European aristocratic families were often forced to sell treasures just as American wealth was rapidly expanding. At the same time, New York was determined to establish itself as one of the world’s great cultural capitals. The result was that masterpieces crossed the Atlantic in huge numbers.
The Vermeers were breathtaking. Yet it was not merely the range of the collection that impressed us, but the consistency of its quality. Again and again, room after room, we encountered masterpieces: Rembrandt, the Italian Renaissance masters, even fabulous Turners and Constables, French neoclassicism, and Rembrandt’s unforgettable Aristotle with a nust of Homer, glowing with depth and intelligence.

We wandered on into the Impressionists, where delight followed delight. One especially charming painting by Renoir showed a family of musical girls gathered around violin and piano — domestic happiness transformed into art and a masterpiece at that.

Eventually, however, reality intruded. We had to begin preparing for our journey home. We returned across the city and settled one last time into our favourite café, Bread’s Bakery, where we enjoyed excellent coffee, fine bagels, cheesecake, and pastries. We also sensibly bought provisions for our flight home with Icelandair, knowing that our budget economy tickets would provide coffee and water, but not much else in the way of food.
And as we sat there, preparing to leave, both Sandra and I reflected on what an extraordinary experience New York had been.

What struck us most was how completely the city shattered so many preconceptions. One grows up with images of New York as hard-edged, dangerous, perhaps even dominated by the gang mythology of films such as West Side Story. Certainly one must exercise common sense, as in any great city, but the reality we encountered was entirely different.
Again and again we found warmth.
People spoke to us naturally and openly. Conversations emerged in parks, on buses, in cafés, and on street corners. Whenever we looked lost, somebody stepped forward to help us. The city may be famous as the “city that never sleeps,” a place associated with business, ambition, and relentless movement, but beneath that surface we found enormous humanity.
We were also struck by the remarkable sense of integration. New York is a city of many ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds, yet we sensed a shared belonging, a feeling that people simply accepted one another as fellow New Yorkers. We found that deeply refreshing.
Even the bus drivers became memorable figures to us — commanding their vehicles with authority, firmly organising passengers, ensuring disabled travellers were accommodated properly, and somehow maintaining order amid the endless movement of the city.
There were still so many things we never managed to do. We never went to the top of Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center. In the end we decided we were quite happy to save the ninety dollars or so for the tickets. After all, we had already experienced magnificent views of New York from the Staten Island Ferry, from the Brooklyn Bridge, and finally from the air itself as we departed.
And perhaps that decision captured something essential about New York. It is undoubtedly a city built on money, industry, ambition, and towering commercial power. Its skyscrapers seem almost to stretch endlessly upward in pursuit of success. Yet despite all that, we felt that New York possessed something profoundly human — a genuine heart.
That is what we shall remember most.
New York was energetic, cultured, overwhelming, chaotic, ambitious, and astonishingly alive. But above all, it was kind.
And so we left it not feeling finished with the city, but longing to return…as I have done since that journey in much younger days……