My grandfather’s hats

It’s a strange privilege to have had a grandfather who was, as he once put it, ‘world famous to five … More

For Pete’s sake!

In 1983 or 1984, I had a good look around Charles Jencks’s Thematic House, then recently completed. It is now … More

At the age of eighteen I was a dope-smoking, layabout, benefit-scrounging squatter. During this phase of my life I was … More

Eight kilometres to the north, and many lifetimes away from Noto, lie the remains of its corpse. Here was journey’s … More

Noto, like other cities in the southeast of Sicily, is a near perfect encapsulation of the Sicilian Baroque, built on … More

At the approximate heart of the island of Sicily there is a site which it is hard not to regard … More

The Cattedrale di Palermo is a chimaera of architectural styles and periods. If someone had drawn it from their imagination, … More

‘Palazzo’ is a term that is bandied about quite casually in Italy, and although it is technically cognate with ‘palace’, … More

At the age of fourteen I was lucky enough to spend a few hours, one afternoon in Los Angeles, with … More

Like the gardens of the Orto Botanico, the formal beds and pathways through which one approaches the facade of the … More

A melancholy sense of lost hegemony and deteriorated grandeur was brought to Britain from southern Europe by the Grand Tourists … More

We were advised by our Airbnb host that the Chiesa del Gesù is one of Palermo’s most beautiful baroque churches … More

Facing across a busy Palermo street narrow enough to deny its facade any commanding sightlines, the Palazzo Riso-Belmonte is also … More

Apparently I’ve been to Anglesey Abbey before, according to everyone else in my family who I am claimed to have … More