Part One: The Varieties of Italy In Italy, few winter vegetables command as much respect, or as much passion, as the carciofo. Known in Sicilian dialect as cacòcciula, a term that appears in documents as early as 1416, the artichoke is not merely an ingredient here; it is a way of life. It can be…
What is this Zeus’s Law? If you have recently seen Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, you will have picked up on the frequent references to Zeus’s Law. Having never heard it called as such, I was curious to find out what it was. It turns out it is Nolan’s own invented name for what the…
It was a region which I knew almost nothing about. My journey had been decided on a whim; a few weeks earlier I had been in Albania, staring in wonderment across the border to the Pindus mountains in Greece and feeling there must be something to discover. And so inevitably I hadn’t given myself enough…
One of the great differences between the Ancient Greek and Roman civilisations is that whilst the former were predominantly seafarers (the exception of course, was Alexander the Great), the Romans preferred to travel by land. The Ancient Greek civilisation was therefore largely confined to the Mediterranean, whilst Roman civilisation extended throughout Europe, Asia Minor, into…
