"Every decision we make is based on what it means for the next five years." You have been the Chief Executive of Schroders PLC for 14 years. Can you describe Schroders? It is one of the oldest merchant banks in London. It started in 1804 and has evolved over two...
A project to revitalise Italian art. You are the President of the Rome Quadrennial Foundation... Yes. It is an institution that was started back in 1927 to promote Italian art. Because there was already the Venice Biennial, it was deemed necessary to create an event...
Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. Since July you are the new Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. How come you made this role your choice when you are a well-known and active photographer? Photography was and is something too...
The interview with the Patriarch took place at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. He was with a Jewish and an Arab friend. What is your role of Patriarch? The concept of Patriarch is associated with sacred history, the history of salvation that began in Mount Sinai...
The British relationship with the European Union is of fundamental importance for the future. Lord Mandelson arrives at our appointment on his bicycle in London during September 2013 , as usual very elegant, in his weekend clothes. He orders a very hot chocolate and a...
Overwhelmed by Syrian refugees, as it has already been by the Palestinians for half a century, the Hashemite Kingdom is on the front line of the Syrian crisis. War in Syria, terrorism, refugee crisis, Eastern Christians ... Alain made the following interview with the...
"A New Renaissance for Medicine." Dr. Virgilio Sacchini is a surgeon who specializes in the treatment of breast cancer. He will be attending a meeting in Florence on October 15 and 16, 2015, at the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G.P. Vieusseux. The meeting will be...
Dr Joseph Muscat has been Prime Minister of Malta, a Mediterranean island between Sicily and Libya and Tunisia, since March 2013. Malta joined the European Union in 2004. "The problem of migration has struck at the very heart of Europe." What is the situation with the...
Ingrid Betancourt works in politics and is a human rights activist. “I want back the life they took from me.” Ingrid Betancourt was held captive in the Colombian jungle for six years. She wrote a book sharing powerful teachings of resilience, resistance, and faith....
"Politics is the Greek passion from antiquity to modernity." Michel de Grèce sounds like a perfect “nom de plume” for a writer, but in your case it is your real name. How come? Because my family ruled Greece for a hundred years, and when we started we did not need a...
Lord Patten was the last Governor of Hong Kong and was Chairman of the BBC Trust. He was elected Chancellor of Oxford University in 2003. This interview was made in late 2012. “The future is in China’s hands, but the country needs to work on corruption and economic...
Rigorous empirical analysis, informed liberal values, clear reasoned argument. Zanny Minton Beddoes is The Economist's 17th Editor-in-Chief, the first woman ever to hold this job. How has your life changed since you started as Editor? My days have become more...
For the love of the devil. A kind butler lets me into Françoise Giroud’s large Parisian flat, which is not far from Les Invalides, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Seine. There are large piles of books in the entrance. Françoise Giroud is wearing what...
Tony Blair was more on the right than Thatcher. “When I think about Italian politics and corruption, I break out in hives.” Gaia Servadio lives in a typically British house in the Belgravia district of London, with a studio perched on a terrace where she writes and...
In June 2016 Simon Anholt is launching Global Vote. Starting with the Icelandic Presidential Elections and the UK’s EU membership referendum at the end of this month, Global Vote will be offering an election every few weeks on www.globalvote.org (and yes, this...
Jeff Koons harshly treated by his then wife Ilona Staller (Cicciolina) - June 1994. Ilona: “I am in Trieste, but I don’t feel safe. Minister Biondi needs to help me. My husband is going to kill me. He keeps threatening me.” Staller is on the run with her child....
Europe is my battle. Having returned from Kosovo, Emma Bonino is in her office in Rome in the Radical Party headquarters. It is September, 1998. Did you not go on holiday? I spent the first week of August in a little hole – a very charming little hole that my brother...
"FORECASTS OF DANGEROUS MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING ARE NOT VALID." Professor Armstrong is internationally known for his pioneering work on forecasting methods, which he has worked on for 55 years. Professor Armstrong, can you tell me, what is a forecaster? A forecaster...
This interview with Frédéric Mitterrand was made in 2009, when for almost a year he had been the director of Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome. Your predecessors as Director of Villa Medici include the great painters Poussin, Ingres, Balthus, and many great...
Susanna Agnelli's political career culminated in 1995 with her appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs. She is the first woman ever to hold this post in Italy. Click here for her "Life in Pictures". As foreign minister of the technocratic government, Susanna...
This interview took place nine years ago in February 2006, just before Napolitano was elected President of the Italian Republic and carried on an exceptional mandate of nine years instead of seven. Now he has resigned after an outstanding performance as President, and...
Giulio Andreotti was a Christian Democratic politician who was several times prime minister of Italy in the period from 1972 to 1992. He was one of Italy’s most skillful and powerful politicians in the era after World War II. This interview was made during August,...
"King Umberto and I abstained from voting." This interview with the last Queen of Italy was made in the Summer of 1996, when Maria José had been back from Mexico for a year. She had lived there since 1991 in a house in Cuernavaca surrounded by eucalyptus plants and...
Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs is Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Prof Sachs, how is your battle for sustainable development proceeding? It is long and difficult because sustainable development is a different direction for the world economy. The...
This is how I fight injustice. Bianca Jagger arrives on time. She was once often late, but it seems as if her habits have changed. She is all dressed in white, in a suit and a low-cut t-shirt. She plays with her hands in the lobby of the Mayfair Regent Hotel in New...
Patrizio Fondi is the Italian Ambassador in Amman. Does serving as an ambassador in Amman today mean living with a lot of pressure? Above all, it means being vigilant and not just in the obvious sense of being prudent and taking all reasonable precautions for the...
Leah Rabin: “We have to trust the idea of peace.” “Arafat is a sincere partner, he has become our friend.” “Israel, enough with the arrogance.” Leah Rabin was the widow of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. She died in November 2000...
Intolerance is more dangerous than Nazism or Fascism or Communism. We are having lunch in the bow-windowed living room in Lord Weidenfeld's beautiful apartment on Chelsea Embankment, overlooking the Thames. There are books everywhere, a piano, and Old Master paintings...
Interview with an angry writer. Gore Vidal: “The Attorney General is nothing but a puppet. Let me tell you about this massive conspiracy.” Gore Vidal, you followed President Clinton's speech on TV at your house in Ravello. What do you think about it? In a few words,...
Kerry is in her office on Madison Avenue in New York. She is President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. As a child in a very privileged condition she understood how many other people in the world were suffering injustice and...
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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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