I look forward to reading it.

Ciao

MoR, you are too, too kind, as always.

Yes, Rai 3. It looks more like BBC2/Channel 4 and therefore worth looking at. Maybe soon, as I think my understanding of Italian is improving much faster now that I’m with F and am more often in situations where Italian is spoken.

I suppose it’s different for us. The Empire was for such a long time, from the Golden Age of Elizabeth I (our love affair with the Tudor kings and queens never sated) through to the early 1900s (and for a lot of British, until the 1950s) so we always felt superior, even if, certainly in the last 60 years, it is without any real foundation. And, anyway, we cannot continue to live through the past – certainly not in the way that we do, thinking that the past, somehow, makes us more like Gods than mortals and that everything we do is right. I enjoyed your list. You should not be ashamed since in every culture and every nation there are evil-doers (take Germany and the Nazis – it does not make all Germans the same, of course and, in my opinion, Germans should not hang their head in shame because of a small number amongst them).

Your invitation is very welcome, MoR (even the one for the marriage hahahahaha – but, as you know, I am very happily ensconced in my new relationship ) and I thank both you and your wife. For certain, next time I am in Rome, I would be most delighted to spend some time with you discussing the finer points of our cultures and, maybe, the finer side of a bottle of good wine

Until the next time. Ciao

Don’t know if this is from your perfidious side …
but who the hell cares, it is adorable, plus yes, it definitely was worth the wait Andy.

I watch very little TV myself. Not only is it in Italian but the type of programme I used to like, I rarely find here and, even if I did, the Italian would be a significant barrier to my understanding.

Leave our TV alone since after Berlusca it is just garbage. If you care to understand to where your man belongs, and the GOOD we still may have inside, listen to our last citadel, the Rai 3 radio program, Italian culture still at its best – lots of excellent spoken stuff plus some music, it might be hard at first, but pls try, it might help you in believing in a better world. I get a alot of consolation there, but I’, confident, we’ll survive and Berlusca is not eternal.

just like most of our continental cousins, we rely heavily on the past (in our case the British Empire; in your case the Greek and Roman Empires

Pls be so fair to recognize we are not just ancient Rome. Let me make a pride’s list lol: we are the centre of a powerful world religion, with humanism and Renaissance we did shape Europe one more time from 1200 until 1550, and until the entire 1700 we were still influential in many things – take Canova or neo-Palladian architecture in the Anglo-saxon world, or music, that we totally dominated from its beginnings until the Germans arrived in 1800 (also technologically: we have invented the piano, and in Parma the Stradivari is unrivalled). Unfortunately good genes insert in the list also evil deeds, which makes me a bit ashamed, but what an achievement our illiterate south peasants attained, they being considered like animals at Ellis Island in a few years they totally outsmarted the US underworld and government (and out ‘nordic’ Italy too) until a few years ago. And yes, in this case, it’s the closest we can get to the ancient Greco-Romans.

We remain British and in spite of our travels abroad, such as we have done for centuries, we seem to have learnt nothing from seeing and meeting all those peoples who could surely teach us something!

Ah ah ah, you really made me laugh! Well, if I were gay which I am not I would MARRY YOUNOW just for this sentence Andy.

My wife read this conversation too and she liked it a lot. We’d be very pleased to have you visiting us next time you come to Rome, alone or in company.

Ciao, it is getting late.

Now I have a few moments, I will reply to your comment above.

I think, being British is possibly the same for any Italian, as Italians are for us – i.e. from some far-flung galaxy. I mean we all look the same in appearance (more or less) but our characteristics, as I have learnt in the time I have been here, are so very different. You Italians seem to admire us British in much the same way as we British admire you Italians – albeit with the underlying thought that we would hate to actually be the other

I watch very little TV myself. Not only is it in Italian but the type of programme I used to like, I rarely find here and, even if I did, the Italian would be a significant barrier to my understanding. Of course, I should watch the trash TV just to improve my Italian, I suppose. I just can’t bring myself to do it. However, F watches some, just before sleeping and so I find myself watching a little more (and, perhaps, understanding more Italian).

I loved the story about your old friend and the fact that he was stunned by the beauty and papist grandeur (and, especially, your reaction to that).

And (with the exception of your comment about how the British politicians are not ridiculous – which, to us, they all are – although by no means in the same way as we think, say, Berlusconi is) you are correct. We may not be overtly narcissistic but, like any nation’s peoples we are, justly in our view, greater and more worthy than any of you continentals or, in fact, anyone else – as can be seen should you be unfortunate enough to read such rags as the Daily Mail. Of course we are great. We have Great as part of one of our names for our Island so how can we not be? And, just like most of our continental cousins, we rely heavily on the past (in our case the British Empire; in your case the Greek and Roman Empires and, in both cases, what we thought we brought to the world and why the world should be forever grateful) to justify why we are so.

But, here, as a guest in your country, I bite my tongue a LOT when I hear the Italians (my friends) talk of how great this or that is because it is Italian and, therefore, inherently better. I guess that the British do the same, certainly at home. But I am a guest and have become more aware of that as time goes on, trying hard to understand a people whose very roots make them impossible for me to understand. I am sure this would be same for any country I would live in in Europe. We are all so very different and I think it is this difference that makes it hard for us to be united as one in Europe (but that is for another conversation/topic).

In the meantime, the more I am here, the more I try to understand what it is that makes me British and why, in spite of our failings (and I do not mean the silly things that other peoples pin on us, which, in any event are a generalisation and, therefore, more than likely not really true or have an element of truth that has been lost in the ‘grandness’ of the thing being pinned upon us) we remain British and in spite of our travels abroad, such as we have done for centuries, we seem to have learnt nothing from seeing and meeting all those peoples who could surely teach us something!

And in these times, with the influx (as you are struggling with now, here) of a great number of ‘foreigners’, the need to more accurately define what it is to be British remains an agonising argument for us.

As for us being ‘perfidious-Albion people’ – well, of course we are! But we would NEVER let you know that until it was far too late, of course

However, MoR, you don’t make me angry nor upset me. What you say you have reason to say. If we were all perfect it would be a boring and uninteresting world.

Worse than anything, I’m unsure my response was worth the wait for you, for which I apologise.

You perfidious-Albion people, I know u well enough, what did you think …

*MoR being a bit relieved, but not that much …*

No, I felt that you deserve more than a quick. not-thought-through answer but events at work mean that I am rather busier than normal. I promise a decent response before the end of the weekend

Have a good weekend, of course.

It is always a pleasure for me too, no pain really. Said it simply, you being honest, deep and pensive, plus truly British – which, to a Roman, it is like saying another galaxy – you are like a punto di riferimento a bit, even though I am always away because of my research that I care for more than anything else, it taking me away from the present and from reality and plunging me deeper into orphism & the ancient philosophises, which is making me a bit lunatic and progressively isolated, to the extent it’s sort of getting dangerous for my inner equilibrium I’m afraid.

Thus being said, and not controlling my thoughts any more lol, I’ll reply-comment about two different ways of being narcissistic, and on the fact that every complex culture – such as ours are – thinks they are gods, and the rest …well, a bit, or a lot, inferior.

and people’s attention spans emulating that of a goldfish

Ah ah, well said, one of the reasons I less and less watch TV.

A proposito, Susan Boyle stunned me. I had never seen her and I don’t watch San Remo.

but, woe betide them should they then think that they are in any way deserving of the praise and the honours – for it is at that point that the press/media and the whole country turn against them

Well, this attitude of your people vs celebrities etc. is admirable (‘UK has got talent’ might be worth watching to get a feel of the common UK people on that) and, for some perverse trick of history, so similar to the classical Greek upper classes attitude of the V century BC (your words above are very much to the point!). We discussed this *here together* a long time ago.

Which brings me to this old Englishman from London who had affection for me though said of an Italian tenor who sung beautifully but went about a London stage with puffed chest: “You cannot do THIS in this country!”

At first hit by what he’d said, but then having character (and bad temper) no doubt, I thought (also because he btw had this subtler – not outspoken – way of being narcissistic, and his son too) with bits of repressed fury:

“Who THE HELL this man and this COUNTRY think they are, such a wet rainy cloudy periphery of the world with pale people and gray small creaky-staired houses shunned by Fortune and bestowed with immensely less beautiful cities & people and almost deprived of any art or music or anything pleasurable, to the extent that they being the least spoiled people of Europe they attained some success, also geography helping???”

This I thought and then of course I talked a lot with his son about it, which I loved too, and his wife, a gorgeous American blonde, and we ended up over many beers and laughter with them so much (I really miss them so much, the whole family, but I confess my debased satisfaction when this poor decent old man after all visited us in Rome for the first time and was literally stunned by a beauty and papist grandeur he had never imagined possible).

I mean, everybody admires the British for their virtues. But one could say – I would say in any case – that the Italian or the French narcissism – so overt and thence so silly, ridiculous: Berlusca, Sarko, even De Gaulle ARE ridiculous, while no British politician is ridiculous – is NOTHING compared to the aristocratic feeling of the Britons, which nothing is but a mix of greatness and narcissism in its total quintessence, since it is the self-indulging contemplation of such greatness.

As usual, my love-hate relationship with the UK, such a petty European thing, and this *wild rant on anger* (I was lecturing some innocent Indian teenagers) explains my point better than anything else (I link it not to promote my writings lol)

*MoR is now leaving … his point hopefully cleared a bit, his chest puffed with silly Latin pride ….*