A Small Place in Italy - Hardcover

Newby, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002158663 ISBN 13: 9780002158664

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1994

Synopsis

Since first setting eyes on Italy at the age of 22 through the periscope of a submarine, Eric Newby has come to feel it is the country he knows and understands best. In 1967, he and his wife bought "Il Castagni", otherwise "The Chestnuts", a small and ruinous farmhouse in the foothills of the Apuan Alps on the borders of Liguria and northern Tuscany. They were the first foreigners to live in this particular area, and the only ones. The house came complete with, among other indigenous wildlife, a large colony of cockroaches, a band of predatory mice the size of small cats and, unknown to them when they bought the house, a sitting tenant, Attilio, an extremely eccentric and ancient man who had once built an aeroplane and crashed it. In this book, Eric Newby describes how he and his wife pulled the house back from collapse and tells of their friendship with the neighbouring "contadini", country people, which endured for 25 years, and a way of life now changed almost beyond recognition.

About this title

About the Author

Eric Newby was born in London in 1919. During World War II, he served in the Special Boat Section and was captured. He married the girl who helped him to escape, and for the next 50 years she was at his side on many adventures.

After the war, he worked in the fashion business and book publishing but travelled on a grand scale, sometimes as the Travel Editor for the Observer. He was made CBE and awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers. He died in 2006.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002158663
• ISBN 13: 9780002158664
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 211