The Prince
From today until Friday Charles, Prince of Wales, is in Italy with stops in Florence, Rome and Naples. In the city that burned Savonarola and banished Machiavelli, Charles will visit Villa La Pietra, once owned by the British historian Sir Harold Acton. He bequeathed the lot to New York University, which is restoring both the villa and its gardens, matters dear to HRH's heart. Tomorrow, Charles is at The European University Institute, a uniquely European doctoral and postdoctoral academic institution located at the splendid Badia Fiesolana which Lorenzo the Magnificent used as a refuge from the city's summer heat.
I don't know if the prince intends to visit the British Institute of Florence, but reports suggest that an appearance would be welcomed. Apparently, business is not what it once was. The venerable institute generates most of its income through the teaching of English and Italian but competition in that sector is fierce. Sure, the institute offers other courses as well. For example, from 11 to 13 November you can spend three days studying the 15th century Florentine painter Alessandro Botticelli, and for your $230 there are talks and a guided visit to the Uffizi to experience such masterpieces as the Birth of Venus and the Primavera. Trouble is, Florence is expensive, and the punters have been shaken by 11 September and unnerved by a skittish global economy.
It was all very different in the years following the success of the Merchant Ivory film, A Room With A View. Back then, huge numbers wanted to relive E.M. Forster's 1908 light-hearted tale of Edwardian manners. Remember? Helena Bonham Carter and Maggie Smith travel to Florence where they meet an unconventional Englishman played by Denholm Elliott, and his romantically unhappy son, George (Julian Sands). Among the other British icons in the cast were Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench and Simon Callow. It was a blockbuster and people couldn't get enough of British Florence. Now it appears that they have. There were hopes that Tea with Mussolini would help revive the franchise. The scene is Florence over the course of the 1930s and 1940s and the story is the raising of the illegitimate son of an Italian merchant by a group of prim English ladies whose passion for Italian culture have made them permanent residents. With the rise of Mussolini and the outbreak of war, the ladies are interned as prisoners, and the boy risks his life to help them.
Lushly photographed by Franco Zeffirelli, it's loosely based on his life as a youth in World War II-era Italy. It's also a load of nonsense. The combination of Cher, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Lily Tomlin, Zeffirelli and John Mortimer is simply too much for the digestion.
