Antipodes

In a blog post of 9 August 2010 entitled Sophia's future companion at Gamone [ display ] , I explained that the elegant name Fitzroy , ...

Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (translated into English as The Leopard ) is one of the finest novels I've ever read. And the...

I started making this cake long ago at Gamone, and I'm still at it, particularly when the weather starts to cool down and I like to be r...

Every morning, one of the first things I do is to set off up the road with the dogs for Sophia 's morning "business", which al...

Here's an assortment of teapots that I've had for ages: My favorite is the glazed stoneware object on the right, created by th...

This distinguished Italian priest is named Gabriele Amorth , and for many years, he was the Vatican's chief exorcist. He has become...

Towards the end of my blog post of 12 June 2011 entitled Basic beverages [ display ] , I mentioned my discovery of a shop in Valence named ...

I shall never forget a balmy August 1986 evening in Venice, when Christine and I took the vaporetto across the Giudecca Canal for a concert...

The state of the donkeys' fur is like a natural barometer indicating that winter is not far away. In the following photo, Moshé ...

Several times a day, this is the view I have of Fitzroy : That's to say, he's settled on the floor beneath a corner of my desk,...

Christine and I were legally divorced on 22 November 1977. Subsequently, the numbers representing that date, 221177, stuck in my mind to su...

Ever since my student days in Australia, I've been fascinated by Under Milk Wood , the celebrated play for voices by the Welsh author Dy...

Three decades ago, when I first became interested in genealogy, one of my basic motivations was to shed light, if possible, upon my strangel...

The other day, when Louis Arquer and I were talking with Roland Cottin , the former proprietor of the castle at Rochechinard, I happened to...

The ruins of the medieval castle at Rochechinard (near the villages of St-Jean-en-Royans and St-Nazaire-en-Royans) are mysterious and romant...

I think back nostalgically to the homely yachting atmosphere of Fremantle back in 1987, which I knew so well. These days, the America's ...

  Fanette [on the left] has now been living at Gamone for over a year. I'm convinced that she likes the place, and feels comfortabl...

For years, the first person I would see at Gamone, early in the morning, was André Repellin , whom we all called "Dédé". He had t...

In the dark lounge room of the Walker house at Waterview, there was an upright piano. I had started to take weekly piano lessons from an old...

These days, people who hear of the Sarkozy couple would have normally imagined this duo: There's an offspring. The extreme right-wing p...