Death of an elephant…
Mar 20, 2019
This post is a day late. 19th March was the bicentenary of a lesser-known event in Venetian history, the shooting of an elephant in the church of Sant’Antonin, Castello. ‘Lesser-known’ is, of course, a relative term; the elephanticide (a term used at the time by at...
Conversation with a poet
The poet John Francis Phillimore (who writes under the name Philip Morre) will be talking to me about my books (and other things, I imagine) at the Scoletta San Giovanni in Bragora (next to the church) on Saturday 8th December at 6pm. The conversation will be in...
Splendid guidebook series to the Greek Islands
Having spent a holiday on Kythera this summer, which served as an off-stage location in The Four Horsemen (Isabella Querini is from the island), and having used Nigel McGilchrist's guidebook to the island, I felt impelled to splash out and buy the complete series:...
Acqua alta is not a tsunami
As I said in my earlier blog post, "acqua alta is a big nuisance". It could become something much worse if the circumstances of November 1966 were to be repeated. However, so far that hasn't happened. Monday's acqua alta was bad, caused a certain amount of damage and...
Acqua alta is a big nuisance
The title may seem a little flippant. And it’s true that I live on the top floor of an apartment block in S. Elena, a part of the city that has never been flooded, not even in 1966, so I’m certainly not affected in any direct way; for this latest flood I even got two...
Updates on the “leoncini” (little lions) and Spiderman…
Just two photos to show that the ravages wreaked by Spiderman (or his enemies - or just the bored film-crew) on Campo Santa Maria Formosa last week have all been miraculously repaired. The square looks cleaner than ever. The rather more serious (because real) damage...
Scenes of devastation in Campo Santa Maria Formosa
You occasionally hear people saying that walking around Venice is like being in a film. It's usually meant as high praise for the unreal beauty of the city. But all too often it is the literal truth. Venice doesn't only host an annual international film festival; it...
The Crime of the Little Red Lions
While the rest of the world had its eyes on the US Senate, as it probed into a crime allegedly committed 36 years ago, the citizens of Venice had all their attention on a crime perpetrated in the small hours of 29th September. Certainly less serious in its...
Venice officially becomes a theme-park/museum
The first day of Venice officially as a museum/theme-park. Just a year ago the left-hand photo was an April Fool's hoax. Today the other photo is reality: the turnstiles introduced just outside the station, to redirect tourist-flows. A temporary measure for the long...
Crime Reads on the best of Venetian Crime
Extremely grateful for this article, which appreciates the Alvise Marangon mysteries: "In my opinion, among the best of the ancient Venice thrillers are Gregory Dowling’s two Alvise Marangon Mysteries."
Hitchcock on the Riva
There seems to be little sympathy for the South-American tourist who was robbed in broad daylight by a Venetian resident, as reported in La Nuova Venezia: The sequence of events was caught with great clarity by a professional photographer, Maurizio Torresan, and...
Story of a blurb
“An unputdownable thriller” These are the words blazoned across the top of Philip Gwynne Jones’s novel, The Venetian Game, published last year by Constable and chosen this month as Waterstones Thriller of the Month. They appear with my name beneath them, now on stacks...