Ian Thomson's Blog

The travel writer Norman Lewis, the son of a Welsh psychic medium, died in Essex in 2003 at the age of 94. In his darkly comic autobiography, Jackdaw Cake, he relates how, in 1937, his mother built a spiritualist church in the north London suburb of Enfield as a sort of Taj Mahal memorial to …

A restless adventurer with a passion for broken-down places Read More »

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Naples is “certainly the most disgusting place in Europe”, judged John Ruskin. The boisterous yelling in the corridor-like streets and beetling humanity filled the Victorian sage with loathing. (“See Naples and die” became for Ruskin “See Naples and run away”.) In the city’s obscure exuberance of life Ruskin could see only a great sleaze. Naples …

Starving street urchins sell their sisters in the chaos of Naples, 1944 Read More »

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My sister died last summer, before her time, at 58. Her death has left me shaken with sorrow and remorse: we did not always get on. The other day I accompanied her daughters and husband to scatter her ashes on the Thames at Greenwich in south London where she and I had grown up. The …

MY SISTER CLARE: THE DEEP SORROW OF LOSING A SIBLING Read More »

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Sicily is far removed from the gracious suavities of Tuscany. With the souk-like atmosphere of its markets and obscure exuberance of life in the old Cosa Nostra towns, the Mediterranean island is halfway to Muslim Tunisia. The British Tuscanites who descend on the hills around Florence during the summer holidays as part of their ‘Toujours Tuscany’ …

NOTES ON SICILY Read More »

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            John Keats, the greatest poet-physician in the English language, descended on Georgian London like a meteor, flaring brightly before burning out. By his early twenties the “cockney” poet (Keats was born to a Moorfields livery stables manager) had written some of the most sublimely beautiful Romantic lyrics. Yet his career was cut short at …

The Soft-Dying Day Read More »

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            Albanians are descended from the most ancient of European peoples, the Illyrians. The country came into existence only after 1912 with the demise of Ottoman power in Europe. Its first ruler, the glorified Muslim chieftain King Zog, was hounded out by Mussolini when Fascist Italy invaded in 1939. (Zog was put up in London …

NOTES ON ALBANIA Read More »

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“A wide-ranging portrait of the Sicilian writer and his work. Sciascia did not live to see this interview-conversation published, but in private he often spoke of that ‘serious Englishman’ who took the time and trouble to visit him in Palermo.”Il Sole 24 Ore “Ian Thomson is very good at creating atmosphere and knows how to …

Ian Thomson: Una conversazione a Palermo con Leonardo Sciascia Read More »

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The definitive biography of Primo Levi to mark the centenary of his birth, with a new introduction by the author. Reviews “Pacy, straight-down-the-line… coolly authoritative.”Blake Morrison “Clearly written with love, and unlikely to be surpassed.”Sunday Telegraph Introduction PRIMO LEVI Preface to the 1919-2019 centenary edition             On 11 April 1987, a day of bright spring …

Primo Levi: The Elements of a Life Read More »

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In January 1804 the West Indian island of Saint-Domingue became the world’s first black republic after the slaves toiling on the sugar fields rose up against their French masters and, at the end of a thirteen-year insurgency, proclaimed independence. Saint-Domingue was renamed Haiti (an aboriginal Taino-Arawak Indian word meaning “mountainous land”) and the Haitian flag …

Black Crown: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean’s Forgotten Kingdom Read More »

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            Not all Germans were swayed by Hitler, but the majority were. Karl Braun, the fugitive Nazi doctor at the heart of Emeric Pressburger’s 1966 novel The Glass Pearls, was devoted to the furtherance of so-called “science” under the Führer. In the interests of research he cut up the brains of a number of Nazi …

The invisible man: The Glass Pearls, by Emeric Pressburger Read More »

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