The veteran journalist John Hooper has already tackled Italy's Meditterranean neighbour with perspicacity and insight in his book, The New Spaniards, first published way back in 1995 and brought up to speed with a second edition in 2006. In that illuminating work, the author took Spain’s story from the restoration of democracy in 1977 up through the various successes and complications, the King Juan Carlos years, as it were.
In the interim, Hooper has become the Italy correspondent for The Economist and has written for the Guardian and Observer. His 300-page work on the Italian character, now out in paperback is the result of 15 years immersion in all things Italian.
He has an engaging, quirky approach and begins with a quotation from Petrarch, always a good thing. Then he immediately intrigues the reader by writing something that seems endearingly self-deprecating. 'No one would choose to start a book at Porta Pia,' he writes.' It is one of the least attractive corners of central Rome, a place where architectural styles from different periods sit uncomfortably together like mutually suspicious in-laws.'
The journalist may describe it as an eclectic muddle, but the area around the gate known as Porta Pia serves his purposes well, as it encompasses within a few hundred square metres, strong allusions to the three facets of their history of which most Italians are proudest: the Roman Empire, the Renaissance and the Risorgimento.
Bluff, deception and the all-important element of so-called fantasia are all part of the Italian way of doing things, writes the author, but he points out how these characteristics can work adversely in the land of frustrating contradiction.The fictional character Pinocchio is ruefully recognisable to most Italians, he says, much as Don Quixote is familiar in all his foibles and vulnerabilities to Spaniards. Whenever Pinocchio is in a fix, he resorts to a convenient lie Hopper observes of the long-nosed one.
Loren's nude scene featured in the French version of Era Lui, si, si!
Everything you will want to read in a book about Italy is referenced here, from the much-vaunted fashion houses, whose names we all know, to Berlusconi and his exploits and the wider political scene. Hooper also traces the beginnings of the women’s movement which fascism put a stop to it, it seems. He also surveys how female status has evolved in Italian society, through exemplars like the film star Sophia Loren who created a stir by appearing in the nude in a 1951 film.
In conclusion, if you are unfamiliar with the wiles and warpaths of Italian football, Hooper's account of Italian football – a republic unto itself, with its own laws – will have you wide-eyed with disbelief as he walks you around the pitch.
Paddy Kehoe
