There is no finer feast
Perhaps unusually for a Londoner, I can trace my family back to the 16th century. For about 500 years, my ancestors lived in the same northern Italian village with a quiet existence of hill farming, foraging and market hunting. Their life was mostly outdoor, simple and frugal.
My childhood growing up in suburbia was a polar opposite. My immigrant parents worked hard and were aspirational, cherishing formal schooling, cricket matches and professional development as a suitable way upwards for a young man in a new country.
My father was particularly keen to impress upon my young and ungrateful mind how blessed I was to have the opportunities of modern education. His childhood, in contrast, seem to consist of climbing trees barefoot for wild honey, breeding doves to sell to the infirm, and roaming the Apennines for wild hares with his doting hound. Call me spoilt, but I always felt a pinch of envy when he would regale me with tales of his
