Italy today
By Larry Montague
25 March 1960
Two thousand years ago Julius Caesar said that all roads led to Rome, and down those roads the consuls and the Roman legions tramped, bringing law and order and progress in their train. In August this year, the hundredth year since Giuseppe Garibaldi and The Thousand set out, all roads will lead once more to Rome for the celebration of the 17th Olympic Games of the modern age.
It is most fitting that in such a great Italian year Liverpool should be holding an Italian Fortnight which in fact will last from today until 28 April though the official part lasts only for two weeks from Monday. Here many from all parts of the north of England will be able to see something of Italian industry and culture and perhaps realise that Italy has, like other countries, many more virtues than they expected.
Italy is not just the sun, spaghetti, ice-cream, opera, Chianti, and Gina Lollobrigida. Each of these plays a part, just as fogs, roast beef, football, cricket, brass bands, and beer are each a part of English life. But there is also an Italy of the worker, a quiet and sober Italy, a cultural Italy, an Italy that belongs to history, an Italy where ideas are born.
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A meticulous approach to eating
By Elizabeth David
25 March 1960
Italian cooks are very meticulous about their raw materials. They like everything they buy to be of good quality and very fresh. They are quite happy to go marketing at least twice a day. The tin, the packet, the deep freeze impinge but little on their lives. They are lavish with butter and olive oil, eggs, and cheese. Their dislike of making a soup or stock out of leftovers appals the thrifty French. The English idea of jumbling everything together, meat and spaghetti, tomato sauce, green vegetables, and potatoes, appals the Italians. And, indeed, the invasion of our kitchens and restaurants by Italian products and Italian dishes, welcome though it most certainly is, would be of more lasting value if we were to acquire greater understanding of the raw materials with which we are dealing, a sounder grasp of how these things are used to their country of origin.
Take pasta as the most obvious example. A great variety of Italian manufactured pasta products are now to be bought in this country. But what a fuss people make about cooking them. Ninety per cent of the recipes one sees for spaghetti would send a Neapolitan or a Roman flying for sanctuary. All you need essentially for a sauce with a plate of good pasta is butter and cheese, or olive oil and tomatoes. You then have a complete dish as a first course, and all you want afterwards is a small quantity of plainly cooked meat or fish. And if a rich meat sauce has been mixed with the pasta, many Italians would consider a salad and fresh fruit to follow plenty to make a sustaining meal.
This is where they score. However much or however little they are spending on their food they know how to produce it to the best advantage. Under no circumstances would they belittle their materials by serving fried, grilled, or roast meat or vegetables with their pasta.
The idea is that each dish is savoured for its own sake; it is more satisfying in this way, and easier to digest. So although we may hopefully fry up a few onions and some meat and serve it upon a mattress of spaghetti with tomato sauce and frozen peas and call it Venetian Veal or Bologna Beef, to any inhabitant of the Italian peninsula it will be just another typically English dish.
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The aesthetic approach to driving
By Riccardo Aragno
25 March 1960
I write in defence of the Italian way of driving. Many of the thousands of motorists who have visited Italy share, no doubt, the first impression that some of my friends have summarised with the words “sheer lunacy.” But I hope that a few at least have stayed long enough to share another opinion I have also frequently heard expressed: “It is not as mad as it seems at first, after all.”
Essentially the Italian way of driving is based on the identification of the driver and his vehicle. (The same idea applied to horses some 25 centuries ago gave birth to the Centaurs.) It is exactly the opposite of the detached style of sweet white-haired ladies one meets so often driving black old saloons along English country lanes. It aims at achieving a perfect balance between what the car can do, the road will tolerate, the traffic will allow, and the driver can control. The maximum identification of driver and vehicle is reached when the whole power of the engine is used to the limits of metal and tyre fatigue by a fully concentrated driver. This is indeed a rare and thrilling moment – such as used to be provided to drivers and discerning spectators by the Mille Miglia.
The Gallery of the Masters of this school includes Campari, Varzi, Nuvolari, Farina, Ascari, and of course a certain number of “Anonymous, XXth Century.” But on the roads of Italy at any time of day or night you will find a fair number of exponents of this school of driving.
It is not an easy technique by any means. It requires mutual trust between the man and his machine, based on confident knowledge of what the engine, the gear box, the steering, and the brakes can do, cultivated in togetherness devoid of complexes. The driver himself must be perfectly tuned to mechanical, road, and traffic sense. The musical ear of an opera-lover is not quite enough: what is required is the ear of a piano tuner. At its very best this produces a “drive” that is a complete expression of one’s personality.
The ideal Italian car represents speed related to the roads and expresses a constant desire to overtake. Even when this is not directly suggested by the utility shape of a modest family saloon the driver will make known – through the exhaust and his position on the road – his unequivocal ambition. On 24 February a man was murdered in Milan – with three pistol shots – during a street brawl about overtaking.
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