Italy is misunderstood

‘A man who has not been in Italy,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘is always conscious of an inferiority.’ With a twelve-year-old daughter living there, I myself have avoided this fate. Yet, for all the trips back and forth to see her, I know little of the country, beyond noticing that the romance of Cinema Paradiso or the clowning of Roberto Benigni are, though one side of it, also highly misleading. There is a melancholy here, and a seriousness too. Recently I’ve been delving into books on Italy,

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