RAI correspondent in the UK Marco Varvello presents his latest book, recently published by RAI Libri, in conversation with author Simonetta Agnello Hornby and journalist Paola de Carolis.
IN ITALIAN
Is the United Kingdom changing, and in what way? Is it already different, and how, following the split from the European Union? How are the changes affecting us Europeans, and in particular the Italian young men and women that used to travel to the UK to work and to learn the language, often spending long periods of time here and sometimes moving here indefinitely? The separation has just began, and only now the consequences of leaving the Single Market have become evident. The changes are palpable, both from a financial and commercial point of view and from an institutional perspective, following Brexit and the death of Queen Elizabeth II. After nearly 50 years of European membership and 70 of Elizabeth’s reign, life in the UK is not the same. Brexit increasingly looks like a faux pas, passo falso in Italian, a self-inflicted choice that is transforming the free, democratic, proud, modern, tolerant and welcoming England we used to know and love. The British public, practical and pragmatic as ever, understand it – now it is time for the politicians to admit it.
BOOK HERE
Marco Varvello is the UK correspondent for RAI – Italian State Television. He worked for “La Notte” and “Il Giornale” under Indro Montanelli. In RAI since 1987, he anchored the TV News for TG1, edited “Il Fatto” by Enzo Biagi and was previously the RAI correspondent in Berlin and the US. He won the “London Foreign Press Award 2018” for best programme in a foreign language about the UK on the subject of domestic violence. He is the author two works of fiction, Dimentica le Mille e una Notte, published by Rizzoli, and more recently the novel Londra Anni Venti for Bompiani, as well as Brexit Blues, published by Mondadori, a collection of short stories about Great Britain at the time of Brexit.
Simonetta Agnello Hornby was born in Palermo, Sicily, and has spent most of her adult life in London where she worked as a solicitor for a community legal aid firm specialized in domestic violence, Hornby & Levy, that she co-founded in 1979. She has been lecturing for many years, and was a part-time judge at the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal for eight years. Her debut novel La Mennulara (The Almond Picker) was published in Italy in 2002 by Feltrinelli and was awarded the Forte Village Literary Prize, The Stresa Prize for Fiction, and the “Alassio 100 Libri – An Author for Europe” Prize in 2003. Translated into more than ten languages, it became an international bestseller. She has since written numerous works of fiction, short stories, books of recipes and gastronomy. [She was awarded the Order of the Star of Italy in the rank of Grand Officer by the President of Italy on 2 June 2016.
Paola De Carolis has lived in Great Britain for many years, more than she has ever spent in Italy, since she attended both high school and university in England, at the time of the punk movement on the King’s Road. She has been writing for the Italian daily newspaper Il Corriere della Sera since 1996, during the years of Lady Diana. She still finds that the United Kingdom and its population arouse her curiosity and reflection.