Speak the Culture

The five Italian films you should have seen [1]

Andrew Whittaker — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:38:08 GMT

Poverty stricken thieves, death camp inmates, Mafia hitmen – it’s a long way from your average fortnight in Chianti.

Where to buy

Andrew Whittaker — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:37:59 GMT

Speak the Culture: Italy is available from all good booksellers:

RRP £14.99
ISBN 10: 1-185418-628-0
ISBN 13: 978-185418628-7

You can also buy online from the following bookshops:

Buy online direct from Thorogood Publishing

Buy online from Amazon UK

Speak the Culture: Italy contents

Andrew Whittaker — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:37:50 GMT

1. Identity: the foundations of Italian culture
2. Literature and philosophy
3. Art and architecture
4. Music, theatre, dance and comedy
5. Cinema and fashion
6. Media and communications
7. Food and drink
8. Living culture: the state of modern Italy

Download the detailed contents

If you download the contents, you’ll need Acrobat Reader to view it.

Speak the Culture: Italy

Matthew Whyte — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:37:30 GMT

Speak the Culture: Italy, the fourth in the Speak the Culture series, is coming out in February 2010. Insightful, entertaining, beautifully illustrated… this book WILL change the way you see Italy.

R.I.P. rural culture? [2]

Jerry Coe — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:11:44 GMT

“It made me wonder whether there is anything like The Archers running on, say, French radio…”

La Douce France [1]

Jerry Coe — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:43:12 GMT

France wants to defend its “cultural model …. at a time when globalisation, which erases each day a little more of the characteristics of each nation, is so harsh”.

Or so said Frederic Lefebvre, spokesman for the ruling Union for a Popular Movement.

Needless to say President Sarkozy is right behind the idea. He thinks the French aren’t patriotic enough, and has duly launched a campaign to strengthen the values of La Douce France (Sweet France) in French souls.

Sarkozy has initiated a two-month long national debate on what it means to be French in the 21st century, hoping to uncover the core Gallic values.

Some say the debate is trying to resuscitate a France that disappeared 50 years ago. La Douce France was a song written by Charles Trenet that was popular in the Second World War, and is being seen now as a concept that might re-forge a national identity.

But, if we non-French citizens are being honest, isn’t this what we mean when we say we are Francophiles – that we (never mind M Sarkozy) would like to recapture a nostalgic English/American interpretation of France – to recreate what an Englishman in France in the 1920s would have experienced – the food, the wine, the music and the romance that represent the heyday of what we think are now past times. We, the Francophiles, would like to see this movement work.

At the same time, I would like to see what the Francophiles would put in a league table of core French values, and how it might compare with what the French themselves come up with.

Are we all just indulging in a bit of ‘a la recherché de temps perdu’ or can we get back to the sweet life by knowing more about our cultural heritage; with a bakery on every corner, markets selling local produce, cafes full of conversation rather than bars full of binge drinkers, when literature and art were about more than bonkbusters and stuffed cows…

Speak the Culture:France uncovers the best elements of French heritage and contemporary culture as seen by non-French as well as French writers – surely Sarkozy should see to it that every French citizen learns the book off by heart!

Plug over, let’s get to the key question – what do you think the core values of French life and culture are? Try and keep it civil…

A nibble between meals

Jerry Coe — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:22:40 GMT

A book has been published in France – a new guide on how to behave in an office in France. It is called Le Carnet du Savoir-Vivre au Bureau (The Notebook on Office Manners). Sounds good stuff and follows on from the author’s book Le Carnet du Savoir-Vivre (The Notebook on Manners) dealing with social etiquette.

Advice in the earlier book included tips on what you should talk about at dinner parties – suggestions included films and art exhibitions, but not your last holiday, your health or your children’s school results. It’s good to have some suggested themes, but when the moment comes you need to know your stuff.

This is where Speak the Culture: France comes in. You will instantly be the star of any dinner party with a witty appreciation of French culture and life – as it says on the ‘tin’, you will be fluent in French life and culture. Short of things to say – then go to Speak the Culture: France , the book you can refer to between meals.

Liam's gift of the garb [5]

Jerry Coe — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:23:48 GMT

Does the fact that Liam Gallagher has just launched his new fashion line (yes, really!) mean that there is now an Oasis in the cultural desert of British street fashion? Apparently it will be “nothing wild, man – just good clobber”. How about a name for his fashion label – Mirage, perhaps? (Turns out it’s called Pretty Green.) What does this all say about the fashion culture in Britain and where it is headed? One thing for sure is that we won’t “look back in angora”.

Let them eat cack [4]

Jerry Coe — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:52:27 GMT

What will be President Sarkozy’s impact on the food and wine culture of France?

He does not drink and eschews(!) meat, cheese and traditional desserts for a diet of cottage cheese, fruit compote and mineral water. All this, apparently, to keep him in shape. Other ministers are following suit, with one giving up his regular tipple of rosé wine as Sarkozy puts pressure on them to have flat stomachs and offers his guests small portions of fish, salad and sorbets. Not only that, but he has told one aspiring minister to lose weight and change his hairstyle if he wants a job.

Was any of this in his manifesto? Is this what people would have voted for had they known? Will French culture lose weight as a result?

Can we afford to lose Tracey? [2]

Jerry Coe — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:43:36 GMT

It has taken me a week to recover from the shock, horror and profound sadness at the news that the artist Tracey Emin might move to France to avoid the rapacious demands of higher rate UK tax because “at least in France politicians have always understood the importance of culture and they have helped out artists with subsidy and some tax advantages”.

Will her going mean that for art in Britain the writing is on the… inside of the tent?

Touch up job [1]

Andrew Whittaker — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:01:08 GMT

If you happen to pass through the lower house of the Italian Parliament in the next few weeks (you never know, you might), you’ll meet the small team of restorers charged with retouching Caravaggio’s Adoration of the Shepherds (1609). It’s a delicate masterpiece, sketchy around the edges but with the painter’s characteristic use of chiaroscuro (light and shade) and ‘real’ human faces in the central scene of Mary and the shepherds.

The Italian Government is restoring the painting on public display in Parliament (it usually lives in a museum in Sicily) ready for an unveiling in the Presidential Palace in Rome, February 2010, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio’s death. Or so they say. I suspect, instead, that they’re trying to cash in on the release of Speak the Culture: Italy (published next month).

When Caravaggio was at work, the realism that he brought to biblical figures – a real warts ’n’ all approach – was shocking. The Church preferred a more idealised beauty in their paintings, tastes that echo down the years: perhaps the restorers will soften the shepherds’ lines or airbrush the donkey’s cellulite in line with modern tastes.

Famously, Caravaggio lived a wild life, spending his later years on the run after murdering a tennis opponent. However, his death, aged 38, was a mundane affair, brought on by a bout of typhus in Tuscany. Although celebrated during his own lifetime, Caravaggio’s work was all but forgotten for 300 years after his death.

Sanitising insanity: what next for Siena’s palio? [5]

Andrew Whittaker — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:24:04 GMT

It’s one of the iconic sights of Italian culture, the Sienese palio, the breakneck horse race that thunders around the Tuscan city’s medieval Piazza del Campo twice every summer. But the race could be under threat from new animal welfare legislation being considered by the Italian government, drawn up amid concern over the number of horses injured or killed during the event

The palio in its present form dates back to 1656, when riders switched donkeys for horses (they originally started out riding buffalo). It’s an expression of Italian campanilismo, of civic pride (literally, of loyalty to your ‘bell tower’). Today, ten horses run, each one representing a contrada (borough). The ‘palio’ originally referred to the piece of silk cloth given as a prize to the race winner.

Ministers have yet to disclose just what the new laws will include, but some think they might prohibit the use of bits and whips on unofficial racecourses; something the palio’s organisers say will make the race impossible. Incidentally, the traditional palio whip, the nerbo, is made from a stretched ox penis, so any ban would no doubt win support in both equine and bovine camps.

Of course, you can argue that culture should be above pandering to 21st century sensibilities: that in Spain, for instance, bulls should still be run through the streets of Pamplona or fought in the ring at Granada. I’d back the bull or the horse over the centuries old culture myself, but then I’m a lily-livered British liberal of the sort that used to weep uncontrollably through Animal Hospital.

Andrew Graham-Dixon:stubble in paradise [2]

Johnny Bull — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:16:22 GMT

No, the truth is, he’d be struggling to push his pralines without a fim crew. Like the rest of us Unglamourous Basterds.

Brian Sharpe, Isle of Wight guitar hero [7]

Johnny Bull — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:12:39 GMT

It was such a relief, none of those ersatz surf guitars with more knobs and sliders than The Tardis, and amps and speakers housed in plywood.
Someone’s dad mending a fuse. Smoking a pipe. Talking to the vicar.

Chocoholics eponymous Willie [4]

Johnny Bull — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:33:22 GMT

He seems to be well and truly in the molten brown stuff. And he’s going to alpha it into submission. You know it.

Thumbnail and I [4]

Johnny Bull — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:46:21 GMT

I’m too terrified to watch and have been ever since the first time I looked in and noticed my old mate Nick Hewer.

Strange stuff you don't know [1]

Andrew Whittaker — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:54:44 GMT

Did you know that Alfred Hitchcock was a chicken dealer’s son from Leytonstone? No? But you had your suspicions right.

Speak the Culture unearths some other strange facts about Britain’s cultural heroes.

Spitting blood and feathers. [14]

Johnny Bull — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:48:04 GMT

Sadly, the net result is that everybody’s gone home. To drink, to smoke, to eat their dinners on their laps while watching Celebrities On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.

7th February 1964 [2]

Johnny Bull — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:26:56 GMT

They had broken the gates of the citadel, and within a week had changed Rock and Roll for all time.

Sample chapter download

Matthew Whyte — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:51:12 GMT

Speak the Culture: Britain is almost ready… as a preview, download Chapter 5: Cinema, Photography and Fashion.

Download chapter 5

The sample chapter is a PDF, so you’ll need Acrobat Reader to view it.