I will pray for Gaddafi on All Souls’ Day
Thank goodness that Gaddafi has now been buried, and thank goodness the shameful and awful spectacle of his corpse on public display in a meat storage plant is now over. It went on too long, five days...
View ArticleAt last, Berlusconi is to resign. But it’s a mystery he lasted so long
At last, Silvio Berlusconi is to resign! No doubt Italians everywhere are taking down their dancing shoes and buying in the spumante against the day the old rascal finally goes. E J Thribb, the famous...
View ArticleItaly, a land of beauty and overpowering ugliness
I have just written an article for the print version of the paper – which will appear on Friday – and in the course of it thought it would be a good idea to pass on a few recommendations of books about...
View ArticleDo we have a duty to have children?
Ed West had an interesting and thought-provoking article in the print edition of the Catholic Herald, which you can read here. In it he tells us that Lucy Worsley, the television presenter and...
View ArticleWhy do Italians still have a soft spot for Mussolini?
I have just been reading Nicholas Farrell’s Mussolini, A New Life, a book which I have been meaning to catch up with for a very long time. There is a to my mind very fair review of it in the Guardian...
View ArticleHappy 98th birthday, Fr Charles-Roux
This week saw the ninety-eighth birthday of Fr Jean-Marie Charles-Roux, who is, in every sense, a survivor from a distant and in many ways more pleasant age. Fr Charles-Roux used to be well known in...
View ArticleWill the ‘Hitler’s pope’ slur be put to rest?
Some good news at last for the Catholic Church in the pages of yesterday’s Observer, no less, reporting on the forthcoming publication of a book by Gordon Thomas, entitled The Pope’s Jews, which will,...
View ArticleNow we owe even more to the Italians
Over the centuries, Italy’s image has fluctuated in northern Europe. Italians have been associated with dancing masters, fencing tutors, glass makers, opera divas and tenors – and the provenance of the...
View ArticleThe cycling legend and devout Catholic who risked his life to protect Jews
If Chris Froome triumphs this Sunday in the final stage of the Tour de France, he will have more than confirmed his place among the greats. But there is one record that he won’t have broken: for the...
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