Italian Job

I HAVE just finished Eric Newby's A Small Place In Italy.
It can be thought of as a history book in that it is about Eric and his wife Wanda buying and renovating a house near where he hid as an escaped prisoner-of-war (and where she helped him evade Germans and Italian fascists).

Small ... but beautiful

They bought their Italian idyll more than 20 years after WW2, but the 1960s are history now in that they were long before the lifetimes of most people alive today.
Newby became famous as a travel writer - one who could be relied on to cover the history of the places he visited.
This book has little travel or history per se, but I enjoyed it and feel I learnt a little something about life in rural Italy before cars, TVs and widespread use of plastic changed living conditions for ever.