My father did not bring much back from his six years of war. He would have had his demob suit of course, and I remember a leather jerkin that he wore into the 1960s. Then, in common with millions of other military personnel and civilians, there was the case of what we now call PTSD. There was also his War…
Update: 15 October 2020 I’ve heard from Lyn who is the Project Lead for ‘Away from the Western Front’. ‘No Parades’ was commissioned by them as part of their First World War centenary project. The project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund in the UK and accordingly, they were able to commission Chris Hoban to compose this song for…
“I hate poetry and all its fucking ambitious son-of-a-bitches who call me a showman because I act myself”. Gregory Corso letter to Lawrence Ferlingetti, September 6th 1957. My poor life is so fucked up, what’s the meaning of it all? I don’t yet know, when I do find out i fear it will be too late.” Gregory Corso, letter to Allen…
There’s a cat sanctuary in the grounds of the Pyramid in Rome. This rather incongruous Egyptian style pyramid was built in 30 BC as a tomb. It was later incorporated into the section of the Aurelian Walls that now border a cemetery designated by one guidebook as being for “non-Catholic cults’. The graveyard is also known as the Protestant.cemetery or the English cemetery although…
Caravaggio is one of the bad boys in the history of art with a biography so outlandish it reads like fiction. When he arrived in Sicily in 1608 he was wanted for murder in Rome and had brawled his way across the Mediterranean. There a story of his entering a church in Messina where he was offered a bowl of…
The Palatine Chapel is one of those must-see places if ever you have the chance. It was commissioned by the enlightened Norman King Roger II (Ruggero) and was consecrated on Palm Sunday 1140. It was designated a UNESCO World heritage site in 2015. It’s inside the palace of the Norman kings of Sicily that now serves as Sicily’s seat of the regional…
It rarely snows in Palermo but I was pleased to see the universal winter snowflakes on the windows of the elementary school. Our apartment is near the Piazza Marina in the center of which is the Giardino Garibaldi where enormous fig trees create what must be welcome shade in the summer. The largest tree in Europe was planted here in…