HOW THE WORLD WE LIVE IN WAS CREATED. The historian, novelist and TV presenter Simon Sebag Montefiore has been reading extensively during lockdown. He recommends some delightful books and offers his perspective on Trump's failed putsch. LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW HERE....
NECESSARILY AN ACTRESS. Alba Rohrwacher studied medicine before she identified her calling as an actress. Cinema is in the Rohrwacher blood. It has been said that Alba "radiates intelligence and sensuousness in all her performances". She also provides the narration...
BUILDING NEW BRIDGES. Katia Pizzi is Director of the Italian Institute of Culture in London and 2021 is a year of Dante celebrations and many more.Katia Pizzi, before becoming Director of the Institute you were Senior Lecturer in Italian at the Institute of Modern...
A MAN WITH A MISSION. The conductor Alvise Casellati was born in Padova in 1973. He is creator and Music Director of “Opera Italiana is in the Air”, a free open air event whose debut was in Central Park, New York.This interview is also available to listen to as a...
THE STORY OF VAUX-LE-VICOMTE. Alexandre de Vogüé and his two brothers, Jean-Charles and Ascanio, own and run the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, one of the greatest Historical Monuments in France.A podcast of this interview is available to listen to here. Alexandre de...
FACT OR FICTION? Robert Lacey is a writer and the historical consultant to the popular series THE CROWN, for which he has published two offical companion volumes. The fourth season of The Crown is released on Netflix on November 15. Lacey recently published Battle of...
AUTHENTIC VOICES. James Fox is a British journalist and biographer with an American father and a British-American mother. His books include White Mischief, The Langhorne Sisters, Life - Keith Richards, and most recently Look Again – David Bailey. His work is received...
LAILA IN HAIFA. Amos Gitai is an Israeli filmmaker who was trained as an architect. Born in 1950, and best known to the public for his film Kippur, shown at Cannes in 2000, Amos Gitai bases his work to a large extent on personal experience, including the Yom Kippur...
CREATING A NEW PROGRAMME AFTER FOUR MONTHS OF COVID. French theatre director Stéphane Lissner is the current Superintendent and Artistic Director of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, which was established in 1737. Stéphane Lissner, you were Superintendent and Artistic...
THE MULTI-AWARD WINNING IMAGININGS OF DANTE FERRETTI, the Italian production designer, set decorator and art director who has worked with acclaimed directors throughout his career. A protégé of Federico Fellini, he worked closely with Pier Paolo Pasolini and latterly...
MISSING HOME. Victoire Bourgois was born in Paris, France, in 1987. She is the daughter of the publishers Christian and Dominique Bourgois. Victoire is an artist and is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at New York University (NYU). Victoire, how did you feel...
AN EYE FOR THE REAL. The London based photographer, filmmaker and author Mary McCartney’s photographs have been shown at leading international institutions and galleries. Mary’s editorial work has featured in GQ, Vogue, and the Sunday Times, and she has been a guest...
A COLOURFUL CONVERSATION. Paris based interior designer India Mahdavi is internationally known for her expressive mix of colours that argue with each other and for her furniture design.This interview is also available as a podcast. India Mahdavi, how would you define...
A SUNDAY DISCUSSION WITH A DIVA ABOUT HER LOVES AND SUCCESSES. Gina Lollobrigida: “I turned Sinatra down. To make it up to him, I gave him two Dali paintings.” This 2001 interview with Gina Lollobrigida from our archive is newly published here because we feel that the...
HANDMADE ITALY. Davide Rampello is an Italian television presenter, the Artistic Director of Davide Rampello & Partners creative studio, a university professor and a former president of the Milan Triennial.Davide Rampello, in your book “Handmade Italy. Living...
PRODUCTIONS FOR PRISONERS. Wasfi Kani OBE is the founder and CEO of Grange Park Opera and Pimlico Opera, through which she enriches the lives of British prisoners and primary school children by exposure to music. Pimlico Opera has presented co-productions with prisons...
CREATING WORLD HERITAGE. Count Luigi Donà dalle Rose is a Venetian who has spent fifty years making the marine village of Porto Rotondo in Sardinia beautiful and fascinating. Over time he has transformed Porto Rotondo into a glamorous and celebrated residential...
A LAYERED APPROACH TO LANDSCAPE. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) award winning landscape designer Todd Longstaffe-Gowan brings to his garden design a sense of the complexities of our relation to the past that is informed by his training and experience...
FROM ACROPOLIS TO AGORA. Tania Coen-Uzzielli is Director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (TAMA). She was previously Head of Curatorial Services at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem where she curated exhibitions on Jewish art and the “Synagogue Route” exhibition, one of the...
THE JOY OF CONSERVATION. Monsignor Alberto Rocca is a fellow at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana library in Milan, as well as being the director of the Pinacoteca (painting gallery), and director of the Class of Borromean Studies.As director of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana,...
THE SPECIAL VALUE OF ART. American born, London based curator Ralph Rugoff is director of London’s Hayward Gallery and artistic director of the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. He is the first UK-based curator to hold this prestigious role,...
A RENAISSANCE IN MILAN. Stefano Boeri is an Italian architect and urban planner, the founding partner of Stefano Boeri Architetti. He earned a master's degree in Architecture from Polytechnic University of Milan and a PhD in architecture in 1989 from Iuav University...
THE ARTISTS' HOTEL IN ROME. I meet with Caterina Valente at the Hotel Locarno, a five-star hotel in the historic centre of Rome. She is the owner and the soul of this hotel, which has a very strong bond with the world of art and culture; over the years it has offered...
VIOLENCE REMEMBERED. The avant-garde filmmaker Yervant Gianikian was born in Merano, an Alpine town in Italy’s South Tyrol region, in 1942. His father was Armenian, a survivor of the genocide, and his mother was half Austrian and half Italian. As a child Yervant went...
REINVENTING LONDON'S LEGENDARY LUXURY HOSPITALITY. International entrepreneur Paddy McKillen has a passion for the hospitality business and property development. In 2004 he was part of a group that bought four of London’s 5 star hotels: Claridge’s, The Berkeley, The...
A CHARMED LIFE. The internationally renowned photographer David Bailey was born in 1938 in East London. His first published portrait was of Somerset Maugham for Today magazine in 1960, and he famously met the supermodel Jean Shrimpton while he was at Vogue. Since...
SHAPING HIS UNIVERSITY TO MEET THE NEEDS OF TOMORROW’S WORLD. Joseph Klafter has been the President of Tel Aviv University (TAU) since 2009, and he is also the Chair of the Committee of University Heads in Israel. He is a professor of chemical physics and served as...
WE DEFEND INCREDIBLY BRAVE WRITERS WHO RISK EVERYTHING FOR THE TRUTH. Jennifer Clement is an American-Mexican author whose novels have been translated into 30 languages. In 2015 she was elected the first woman President of PEN International (PEN stands for Poets,...
EXPRESSING THE ESSENTIAL Nadine Johnson runs a New York public relations firm that caters to a select international clientele. With her impeccable media and celebrity contacts, Nadine Johnson & Associates Inc. has the acumen of years at the cutting edge of public...
FOLLOWING THE GYPSY FAERIE QUEENE. My interview with Marianne took place in her flat on the Boulevard du Montparnasse in Paris on a lovely autumn day. Can you tell me something about your new record, Negative Capability? I always write about what’s going at the time,...
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Money Must Stay in the Family
The plot of Money Must Stay in the Family, unfolds around the family matriarch’s last will and traces the story of an upper class Jewish family from Turin, the fictional Ottolenghis. The multigenerational saga begins with the flight from Mussolini’s Racial Laws of 1938 and continues with the arrival in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the dispersion from New York to Rome, Paris, Tuscany, South America, and Jerusalem.
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