The Rest Is History - 73. England v Italy

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

No country has enjoyed a greater influence on the English than Italy. Ahead of the European Championship final, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland explore the history of Rome, Italy and England. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. So, football is coming home. Or is it? Might it be going to Rome? Dominic Sambret with me. A night of titanic passion and drama last night as the England football team, following in the footsteps of their Anglo-Saxon forebears,

who won at the battles of Eddington, of Teton Hall, of Brunanbur, smashed the Danish shield wall. Yes, it wasn't quite the smashing of the shield wall that you might have hoped for. No, I'm grotesquely exaggerating. It was tense. And the Danes were, I mean, they could claim they were a little bit unlucky. But it was, apart from the shining of laser pens and so on, which was probably... The laser pen of God. Yeah, which I think the Anglo-Saxons might have frowned upon. I thought, you know, the Danes bowed out very gallantly, as I hoped they would. We love the Danes.

So the Danes are kind of our kin, aren't they? They're our northern brethren. So this time, the final is going to be very different because the Italians are people against whom we've defined ourselves, but in completely different ways. There are cultural opposites in various ways. I mean, we do have a really fascinating intertwined history, but they are the kind of stereotype, aren't they? They're the Mediterranean non-Britons, if you like. But looking at it in the broadest possible span,

I mean, I think you can make the case for saying that of all Europe's countries, perhaps none of them has had a profounder influence on our history than Italy. I think we've said that about every country, with the possible exception of Ukraine. No, I think we said that the rivalry between England and Denmark was the oldest, which I think is true. But I think that the influence that Italy has had in various manifestations and in various ways, I mean, it's kind of beyond profound. And the idea that we can sum it all up in 40, 50 minutes is ludicrous. But we should probably crack on, shouldn't we?

Yeah. If you're going to go back beyond the creation of Italy as a country, then of course that's true. Especially if you go back to one of your specialisms, which is where I imagine you're going to kick off. Well, it is because I thought we really need to define Italy in England. So Italy actually is much older than the founding of the Italian kingdom in the 19th century, because absolutely the Romans had a sense of Italy as a coherent identity, certainly by the early second century BC, possibly before that. And actually the beginning of the first century BC, when the various Italian peoples and cities rebel against Rome, they mint coins with the name Italia on it.

And they proclaim a kind of a unitary Italy in opposition to Roman rule. So, you know, that's the kind of precursor for what happens in the 19th century that I think makes it legitimate to talk about Italy. Even though Italy then kind of went underground for so many centuries between those two points. is from italian it's from julius caesar who leads expeditions against britain in 55 bc 54 bc writes it up in massive self-promoting commentaries um self-aggrandizing the kind of thing that you would never do dominic and thank you tom and obviously the romans then invade permanently in 43 ad and um britain becomes part of the roman the Roman Empire for kind of four centuries. The Romans then withdraw and the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, according to later tradition, then invade and seize what had been the Roman province of Britannia. And this in due course becomes

England. So when we're talking about England against Italy, really, I think we need to start looking at the Anglo-Saxons rather than say with Caraticus or Boudicca or you're not including if this was Wales v Italy which did happen earlier in the tournament you would have gone in with Boudicca and Caraticus and so on but you're disbarring them for the purposes of this podcast I think so there are arguments there are scholars who argue that um a form of proto-english was spoken in the eastern half of britain and there's an argument that buddhica is actually a pun so in celtic languages it it's it means victory victoria so that's why you get the statue of buddhica outside houses of parliament um suppose there was a kind of proto-English, a kind of Germanic language.

It's possible that, say, Wicca, as in Wicca now, the religion, means a woman. And it's possible that there's an illusion there that it means a woman who's been attacked or a woman who's been raped, which, of course, Boudicca was and precipitates the rebellion. So perhaps there are kind of pockets of proto-english being spoken but it's a highly controversial opinion not widely accepted and not one that i think we should be going into this is way too complicated i can see the rabbit hole beckoning but what i would say is that for the anglo-saxons rome is kind of central to their imagination it It's almost the capital of their imaginings. And they have a very, very profound emotional, spiritual relationship to the idea of Rome that I think basically provides

the seedbed from which English attitudes to Italy generally come from. So English kings, the very first English kings or the kings of the people we recognise as the English, did they see themselves, do you think, as the heirs to the Roman emperors? Minting coins and living maybe in the last kingdom of Bernard Cornwell series, their palaces are kind of in the ruins of Roman villas and things. Is that, do you think, how they saw themselves? I think they have a sense of themselves as peripheral to Rome. So in that sense, they still see themselves as kind of a colonial relationship to the metropolis. Because if you look at the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is this kind of year by year account of history, it begins with Julius Caesar coming to Britain. And so in a sense, the Anglo-Saxons are

identifying the beginnings of their history with Rome's first contact with the island in which they will come to live. So that's kind of defining themselves through Rome. And again, if you look at Bede, who is the first great historian of England, so much of our information about Anglo-Saxon England in its beginnings comes from Bede. And his kind of opening, he describes Britain, which was once called Albion, he says, is an island in the ocean and it lies to the northwest. And what's fascinating about that is that Bede is situating Britain relative to Rome. So he's taking on a Roman perspective. So in that sense, there's still a kind of a hint of the

colonized to it. Yeah, Rome of the hint of the the colonized to it yeah rome is the center of the world rome and britain is on the at the edge okay i buy that i completely buy that i mean presumably all european peoples except the sort of scandinavians certainly all western european peoples but in their what people used to call the dark ages define themselves that way right rome used to be the center and it still is but there's there's a sense also i think i mean you asked about kings so even before england gets converted to the roman form of christianity um there's a group of of kings in um in east anglia probably the guys who who um who bury the um the ship at sutton who called the wolfingas. And scholars have argued that the name wolf that's embedded in that may well put it on their coins that make great riffs about the wolf. Of course,

the wolf suckles Romulus and Remus. So perhaps that's a part of it. Certainly in their genealogy, like all the Anglo-Saxon kings, they trace it back to Woden, the king of the gods. But they distinctively say that the son of Woden was Caesar, and therefore they are descended from Caesar. And this is a tradition, you know, you ask, do the Anglo-Saxon kings kind of ape the model of imperial rule? They absolutely do. So the story is told of Alfred, he definitely goes to Rome on pilgrimage once, but he's supposed also to have gone um as a boy and to have been um blessed by the Pope and to have been anointed by him rather as Charlemagne did I mean this is most unlikely to have happened because there was no prospect at that point that Alfred was going to become king but it's a story that matters and it

gets told in due course um Athelstan um Alfred's grandson he is the first king of the whole of England and he summons kings from across the north of Britain so those stretches of Britain that the Romans had never conquered kings of Scots kings from the Strathclyde and he summons them to a place called Amont in in Cumbria and what's significant about that place is that there's a Roman fortress there there There's a symbol of Roman power. And Athelstan then, he holds these kind of great derbars in Roman cities, presumably in the kind of amphitheaters that are still functional and which established the prototype for Wembley. Very good. That's where it all begins. who we mentioned in the podcast against Denmark, he has this very imperial coronation.

And where does he choose to have it? In Bath, which is full of Roman buildings. The most extravagantly imperial city in Britain. So I think that that is absolutely a part of it, that there's a kind of a cultural cringe before the idea of the roman empire and a desire to emulate it so this is a very good start for italy in this podcast it's looking good so that's good so so we're yes so the kind of intimidating presence of the italian team we're flinching before it but yeah there's also stuff that we can learn because of course

rome is not significant only as an imperial capital, as was, but as the city of the popes. Yes. I thought we'd get to the popes. The place where Peter and Paul are martyred, where the Bishop of Rome has his bishopric. And it's the Bishop of Rome who sends missionaries to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons. and the guy who does that is gregory the great who is a massive punster a punster he's a punster he loves his puns right so he's a famous story that he goes out into the slave market in rome and he sees these blonde boys blonde children who've come from a kingdom called deira part of Northumbria in northern England. And he asks who they are, and he's told that they are Angles, Angli.

And he says, non-Angli, said Angeli, not Angles, but angels. And everyone collapses into laughter. And when he asks where they come from, he's told Daera. He says, ah, Daera, which means from anger. I have been called to rescue them from the anger of Satan. Oh, my word. I mean, a stream of terrible jokes. Yes.

So this is like some sort of foreign football association in the 1990s saying we'll send you some coaches to break your long ball game and teach you how to play proper football. Exactly. We'll send you Claudio Ranieri and Gianluca Vialli and so on. Exactly. Well, actually, and the English end up, they take Gregory as their celestial patron. So they imagine that at the end of days, Gregory will plead their case before the throne of God. But they also, they set up a kind of training school in Rome.

So they set up a hostel where pilgrims can stay. It actually preserves a trace in the street plan of Rome to this day because they call it a burr. Oh, right, after Alfred's Burrs. After Alfred's Burrs. And so the Burgo Santo Spirito, which is the kind of the road that leads from the Tiber up to the piazza in front of St. Peter's,

that preserves, you know, that derives from the Burg, which was there because that's where it stood. Very nice. But obviously the Pope, he goes on to be, you know, public enemy number one for generations of English men and women, doesn't he? I mean, even preceding the Reformation, there was a bad blood between the papacy and the English crown, right? Well, in the Anglo-Saxon period,

the sense that the Pope is their kind of godfather, I think is... The godfather, very nice. No one has an issue, you know, in every sense of the word. No one has an issue with that. Gregory VII, the kind of great reforming Pope of the 11th century, he sends, as we mentioned in our episode on 1066, he sends a banner to william the conqueror yes kind of wishing him good luck yeah and the reason that gregory the

seventh is so revolutionary a pope is that essentially he is the guy who pushes the idea that the pope should be superior to all earthly kings in a way that he hadn't been before yeah and that of course is what then generates the sense of tension. So you get it with Henry II after he's held responsible for the murder of Thomas Becket, that essentially he has to be kind of whipped through the streets of Canterbury to pay penance. And then, of course, in the reign of John,

which we talked about in our episode of Magna Carta, John basically kind of has a massive bust up with Innocent III, who is a ferociously powerful and authoritarian Pope. And John is broken by it and ends up offering England as a papal fiefdom. He holds it in trust from the Pope. And I think that probably does kind of establish a slight legacy of tension. So during all that period, I mean, the italian the the english as it were the other the whipping boys is too strong but we're definitely in a sort of to borrow your phrase from the beginning there's an element of cultural cringe right i think so that the the rome is where it is the papacy is the sort of you know gods the pope is god's vicar on earth and english kings

sort of basically, you know, they can try to weasel their way out as John did or as Henry II, you know, by killing the Archbishop of Canterbury. But basically the Pope is the power broker. He's the dominant figure in that relationship. Yeah, it's the centre. I mean, it's the great place of pilgrimage. Jerusalem is under Muslim rule. Yeah.

So it's too far. But Rome is, you know, for most of the middle ages apart from when the popes go to avignon is the that's the that's the kind of the great court and it's an earthly as well as a spiritual power so um absolutely um england has a kind of peripheral relationship to it and on top of that of course and italy is also a cultural and an economic powerhouse increasingly. Yeah, I was going to ask about this. As the Middle Ages progress. The cultural relationship.

So people like, let's say, Chaucer. I mean, Chaucer must have a sense of Italian culture and all that stuff, does he? Absolutely. And it's kind of interwoven with the economic power, because the reason that Chaucer goes to Italy is to negotiate trade deals over wool. He wants to improve trade deals cutting out middlemen, so that this boosts trade and boosts the amount of money that goes directly into English coffers, rather than to middlemen in the lowlandslands so chaucer goes to genoa he then goes on to

florence um and of course in florence he may well have met bacaccio who is the um author of the camera yes so this kind of great series of interlinked tales which almost you know provides a model for the canterbury tales and he may have seen giottoto, Giotto's paintings. So he's, Chaucer is a very European figure and hugely influenced by kind of, you know, Italian culture is massively significant for him. As it is basically for every cutting edge English writer, artist. Italy is the cultural centre. But there's also that sense, you know know he's going there because italy is incredibly rich and again england is kind of economically supported i mean not entirely so edward so you start to get banks in italy these banking families yeah so edward i borrows obscene

amounts from a banking family in Lucca. And then there's a war between England and France. There's a kind of snarl up. There's a credit crunch. Edward needs money from this banking family. He demands it. They can't pay it because they don't have access to ready cash. So Edward then appropriates all their belongings in England.

It's poor form, isn't it? It's a very poor form. It kind of destroys this bank. But it also cripples England's economy because from that point on it was self-destructive, completely self-destructive behaviour. Yes. And over the course of the 14th century, English kings keep kind of having to agree

ever more humiliating terms and then get driven to default. And basically England in the 14th century, I mean, it's the Argentina of the European economy. Apologies to our Argentine listeners there. But it has a third world relationship to the IMF. Yeah. It's that kind of thing.

So I think, you know, England is, in this episode, it's very much a game of two halves. And the first half, England is kind of losing 6-0. Right. That's very disappointing. What about the Lombard? Where do the Lombards come in, Tom? Are we at Lombard Street and Lombard Bankers?

Is that this stage or is that later? Yeah, so Lombard Street is the main, I mean, it's called the Wall Street of London, isn't it? It's kind of the great concentration of banks now running from Bank Tube Station. And it's named after goldsmiths from Lombardy. And again, it's Edward I. He gives these goldsmiths from Lombardy a plot of land. And that's what they then give their name to what becomes Lombard Street. So again, you see that, again, a bit like a kind of a third world economy wanting to attract inward investment, or indeed Britain now actually,

wanting to attract inward investment. You're in an inferior position to those who are able to hand out the economic patronage um so again that's a kind of another index you're not getting um italian cities kind of giving plots of land to english merchants because they don't need it if you're a sort of very bright successful italian i mean england is not really the place you'd move to right i mean i know italians do so john cabot the explorer was originally I don't know, what was he, Giovanni Cabot or something like that, wasn't he? I've probably got that completely wrong,

but I think it's something along those lines. But by and large, an ambitious young Italian, if you're from a banking family or you want to go out and seek your fortune in the world, England is not the obvious destination because it's a bit of a backwater. I mean, your obvious destination is presumably France or or or yeah you know castile or somewhere i think that's true i mean you know obviously that you do famously you get the venetian ambassadors whose um accounts of yeah they're always writing the murderous doings in in england is yeah incredibly

useful source um but it is a bit like you again, a kind of IMF official writing reports from a war-torn dictatorship. From La Paz or something. Yes, a bit like that, I think. And then, of course, the relationship becomes massively complicated in the 16th century with the Reformation. Yes, because obviously the popes are all Italian at this stage, right? That's right, isn't it? So all the popes that Henry VIII falls out with, they are Italians. And Rome itself, I've always wondered whether that point you made earlier about the map that people have, whether that plays a part

in the Reformation imagination. So Rome has always been the centre of the world. And when Henry says, you know, this realm of ours is an empire and, you know, basically sod the Pope and all his cardinals and we don't care what they think, there's a sense of, you know, we're sick of being the puppet controlled by the puppet master. And there is almost the element of rebelling against the cringe in that. Yeah, well, I mean, the very fact that Henry is forced into, you know, kind of throwing the Pope out,

abandoning the English church's loyalty to the papacy is an index of England's marginal status. Because the reason that the Pope can't grant the divorce to Henry is because the Pope has been captured by Charles V, the Emperor. Yes. And Catherine of Aragon is his aunt. Yeah. So Henry doesn't register in the balance. Yeah, he's just not as important, is he? Just not as important.

I mean, we've got henry the eighth podcast to come and henry's always he's always trying to be on at center stage with the king of france and the emperor but he's very much clearly the third man in that kind of relationship which clearly irritates him i always wonder whether that's why he became so fat because he's just desperate to kind of push them off stage and make himself look bigger. More important than he was. But I think, I mean, that does then recalibrate, obviously, England's relationship, not just with the Roman church,

but with Italian culture generally. Italy remains very much the kind of sun around which people of culture revolve. And I suppose the classic example of that would be Shakespeare. Loads of whose plays are set in Italy. Well, I really wanted to ask about Shakespeare, because there is a theory, isn't there, an outlandish theory, it seems to me, that Shakespeare,

well, it's one of these many conspiracy theories that the Shakespearean plays were not written by a man called William Shakespeare, but there's one theory that they were written by an Italian, or a man of Italian extraction called John Florio. Are you aware of this? I wasn't. Tell me more. Oh, I was hoping you were aware of it.

That's basically all I know. Well, I know that there's a quite widely held theory that Shakespeare has these missing years. Yes. And nobody quite knows where he went. And the familiarity that he shows with Italy. theory that Shakespeare has these missing years and nobody quite knows where he went and the familiarity that he shows with Italy Well exactly, this is the

Florio thing, that Shakespeare knows too much about Italy Thomas Cromwell who launches the whole Reformation in England he had been in Italy so that's kind of quite a tried and tested path and the theory is that maybe Shakespeare went there as a mercenary or a teacher or whatever.

But Shakespeare's geography is dodgy, isn't it? Because it's in The Winter's Tale where somebody gets a ship to Vienna or something like that. From Bohemia. From Bohemia. That's it, from Bohemia. But I don't think anyone's suggesting he went to Bohemia. But you think of all the plays that are set in Venice and Rome and, of course, Verona. Yeah, Romeo and Juliet.

I suppose now, so what does that mean to those people who are seeing it, do you think, at the sort of turn of the end of the 16th, beginning of the 17th century, when they're seeing this play set in Italy? Does that denote, I mean, that presumably doesn't denote, even though Italy is the home of the Pope and Rome is the sort of headquarters of the Antichrist in people's minds. Presumably, they have no problem with seeing plays set in Italy with a sympathetic Italian character.

And that must still denote to them high culture, sophistication, lovely weather, citrus fruits. Yes, and even if you think about it, there's a very sympathetic portrait of the friar who weds Romeo and Juliet. Yes. He's not a kind of particular object of abuse in the play.

Yeah, he's not a Jesuit sort of conspirator. So maybe that reflects sympathy for Catholicism in Shakespeare's part. Lots of people have argued that. It's so difficult to know because Shakespeare's character is so opaque. Yes. But if you compare that with other playwrights who are doing portrayals of Italy at the same time, they're much more propagandistic. So you have all these Jacobean tragedies where you only have to have a cardinal and he's, you know, fancying his sister and poisoning people and that kind of thing,

poisoning Bibles and kissing skulls and things like that. And in those plays, Italy is portrayed as an absolute kind of sump of potpourri, depravity, murder, rape, incest, every sin possibly going is there, is taking part. And I think that that does kind of mark a sea change in England's relationship to Italy, which is perhaps summed up by Milton, kind of devout Protestant, Puritan, going to Italy. And Milton is hugely, profoundly influenced

by Italian culture. You know, he speaks Italian fluently. He's absolutely versed in the works of influenced by Italian culture. He speaks Italian fluently. He's absolutely versed in the works of the great Italian poets. Mr. Red Dante and all that stuff. Yes, absolutely. But he goes to Italy on a kind of cultural pilgrimage, obviously not a pilgrimage of the kind that his English forebears had because he's Puritan.

But one person he does go to see supposedly is Galileo. And he references it in Paradise Lost, his great poem. And he says Galileo is a great man. He has opened up untold worlds, unglimpsed worlds. And it's Milton really who articulates what will become the great myth that Galileo has been silenced and tortured by the Inquisition, by all the evil apparatus of the Roman Church. Hold on, is that a myth? It's a myth to the degree that Galileo is not tortured. He's not imprisoned. Right. He was put under enormous pressure though, wasn't he?

He's put under pressure. though wasn't he he's put under pressure um but i think we should do an episode on galilee because the whole story is so fascinating describing this pressure in a very blasé way i have to say what i would say is that that milton bigs up the repressive character of the roman church yeah in a way that will have an enduring influence on the way that protestants see the catholic church's relationship to astronomy to the sciences that's how i've been in the long and that then in the long run bleeds into the way that say atheists or secularists like to cast it yeah it's basically it's a protestant myth philip bullman is a great i mean so philip bullman is the heir of mil in this regard, isn't he? Well, obviously Paradise Lost plays an enormous part in Philip Pullman's.

And so Philip Pullman, I imagine, is not a, I mean, I don't know if he's a listener to this podcast. Let's assume not. He's not a great Italianophile in that sense. He would probably sign up to the sort of black legend. I mean, black legend is Spain, isn't it? But it's kind of equivalent. The black legend that cast the Roman church as a kind of sump of repressiveness and ignorance and bigotry and intolerance is, I mean, there are elements of truth in it, but it gets massively amplified by English Protestants. And it has then, because England and America have culturally been Protestant, it's kind of bled into post-Christian attitudes,

you know, hostility towards Christianity, which is often a kind of anti-Catholicism, really. Now the producer is telling us we have to go for a break. But I think that's the perfect moment, Dominic, because I think this has been very much a game of two halves. And the first half, Italy's dominated, but I think there's hope for England to come back in the second half okay jolly good I was just about to say and I'll just put it in um because it fits here just before we go for the break so Italy are winning but um this is just a sort of footnote to that we had a

listener called Mikey who said if you don't are you going to mention Mary of Modena in your podcast if you don't I won't tell you exactly what he said but he would say he would soil himself in a warming pan um so we have to mention her and i think this is the moment so mary modern was the wife of um james the second wasn't she and she gave birth unexpectedly to a healthy baby boy just before the door is revolution well this is the question or was a baby smuggled in a warming pan hence mikey's threat well when, when James II was kicked out, where did he go? Well, where did the Jacobites end up? I mean, the headquarters of Jacobitism was Rome, actually, and that sort of cemented, I think, Rome's reputation

as the sort of anti-England par excellence, don't you think? So the old pretender, the young pretender, and then the last Jacobite, who I think was Henry the... Was he Henry the ninth as they called him he was cardinal and there's a monument to them still in Rome a monument that presumably all sort of Protestant Englishmen when they go on their trudging around St Peter's they regard with horror because I think it's somewhere in St Peter's so so that's just to me is the sort of tipping point because that's the point at which Rome is associated with losers, the Jacobites.

And obviously at that point the engines of kind of English and then British capitalism and there's a sense of Britain kind of overtaking Italy and hopefully we will make a second half comeback based on all that. So we'll see you after the break. episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Hello, welcome back to the second half of England against Italy. As I said in the first half, I think this is going to be very much a game of two halves. First half, it was all Italy, all over the English. But I think now there's every chance that england can do a comeback um dominic i i'm afraid i completely i completely hogged that first time no no it's quite right i think everybody enjoyed it well i think anyway but the second half you've got lots of good stuff and it all seems to be food based well there's a lot about pasta and biscuits yeah i think that's what people have come to this podcast for, to be honest.

I don't think they've come about that. They didn't go down by the Pope. They just want the bloody biscuits. Right. So let's start. I think we should start with the Grand Tour. Because the Grand Tour, as a lot of people know, is a sort of 18th century phenomenon,

late 17th, early 18th century phenomenon of people going rich, young aristocrats and whatnot would kind of go on this great expedition, almost like a colossal gap year um they'd go to france then they'd sometimes go to switzerland and they always end up in italy i mean italy was always the place and and i guess this really reinforces what you were saying in the first half about the importance of rome and the legacy of the roman empire because that's what they're going to see isn't it they're going to see roman ruins i mean gibbon edward gibbon Gibbon, who I worship as this sort of titanic historian. A wise, sceptical historian.

Exactly. Like an owl. You couldn't have, no, I couldn't have put it better myself. So Gibbon goes in 1763 to four and there's this famous you know he has these famous lines um i shouldn't i can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as i first approached and entered the eternal city and all this stuff and then he says you know to to be in the forum the place where romulus was where cicero spoke where caesar fell and he and he's he's almost drunk with excitement and it's then it was a little bit later that he's almost drunk with excitement. And it's then, or it's a little bit later,

that he's famously sitting among the ruins of the Capitol while the friars are singing Vespers in the Temple of Jupiter. And he has the idea of writing his decline and fall of the Roman Empire. So you get this sort of sense of how in the 18th century, Rome still, some of the anti-Catholicism has faded, but you still have this sense of the sort of colossal sway. And that's kind of widespread, I think, across. So Dr. Johnson says a man who hasn't been to Italy is always conscious of an inferiority

because he hasn't seen what a man ought to see. That's true. That's true. But it's also, it's ruins, isn't it? It is ruins. So the English lords and people like Gibbon and so on are going to see ruins. Yeah. And they're the ones with the cash.

They're the ones with the big carriages. And basically they're there to gawp at, you know, the remnants of Italian greatness and to bring back loot. Well, they do, but they also go for, some of them go for more sordid reasons, more bodily reasons, Tom, because do you know what Boswell wrote? A typical line from Boswell's diaries of his time in Italy? I can imagine. Well, they do, but some of them go for more sordid reasons, more bodily reasons, Tom. Do you know what Boswell wrote, a typical line from Boswell's diaries of his time in Italy? I can imagine.

Yesterday morning with her, pulled up petticoat and showed whole knees. I was touched with her goodness. All other liberties exquisite. That's exactly how I'd expect. He's Scottish, though, isn't he? So maybe that doesn't really count. Also, he was hardly remiss in undertaking similar research in London. So all these guys go for the grand tour, right?

And this is going to bring me to what I really want to talk about, which is macaroni. So all these people go for the grand tour. Now, macaroni was known in England because the first recipe for macaroni cheese comes from, I think, the very beginning of the 14th century in a book about curry. That's confusing. That's a recipe for macaroni cheese.

But clearly macaroni had been forgotten in the intervening period because all these people, they get a recipe for macaroni cheese. But clearly macaroni had been forgotten in the intervening period because all these people, they get a taste for macaroni when they're in Italy and then they come back and they bring back not just their enthusiasm for macaroni, but Italian-style dress. I mean, there were some absolutely hilarious quotations. So they say, I don't know whether it sort of starts as a saying among themselves, sort of these sort of trust affair and gap year veterans. They say, oh, you're looking very macaroni today, darling, or whatever. And then people start to mock them. So this is the

Oxford Magazine in 1770. There's indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a macaroni. It talks without meaning. It smiles without pleasantry. It eats without appetite. It rides without exercise. It wenches without passion. So there's a sort of sense of effeminacy. And basically what's happening is these are guys who've come back with Italian fashions. So they're wearing multicolored stockings, very sort of tight britches. Their coats are considered too short. Massive wigs.

And wigs that, I mean, the claim is that these wigs were half the size of a man. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. And they're actually kind of being carried by servants. Yeah. And then they'd have a little hat on them on the top. And you could only get the hat off with a sword

because it was so high up. And also they didn't eat roast beef, which is always a bad sign. Well, yeah. I mean, they weren't eat roast beef, which is always a bad sign. Yeah, I mean, they weren't very, they were seen as un-British. So the Universal magazine, two years after that, 1772, said,

you may know a macaroni when you come near him by his essence and his scented waters. And you will discover him by seeing everything about him most extravagantly outre. He attends at auctions where he picks up the names of painters and vomits them forth at all occasions. That's, I mean, that kind of runs through, doesn't it? So Italian dancing masters are objects of absolute hilarity.

And you think of Room with a View with Cecil. So I think all of those things are picking up all this macaroni stuff. So I think Dickens and Co. are absolutely picking up this stuff 100 years later. Actually, Dominic, wouldn't you say the influence of all the opera in Italia 90 in creating a kind of slightly effeminate class? Feminizing football. Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth in that. And then the arrival of Italian players and indeed of Italian football

on Channel 4 in the 1990s was part of a sort of gentrification of, yeah, a demasculine proletarianisation of football. Because there's a kind of ambivalence there. Because on the one hand, there is a sense of Italy as, you know, mafiosi, diving, unlike our brave British, our brave English strikers. Yeah. We would never do that.

So there is that. But then, of course, there is also the sense of of you know this macaroni tradition well the macaroni the other thing about the macaroni thing is there's obviously a whole lot of stuff about sexuality and gender kind of bound up with that about go on so so there's somebody wrote a journal of a macaroni um and it reads like that i can't read at all it is very funny Rise at 11, survey my sweet this is a diary, this is what they do in the day survey my sweet face in the glass and pick my teeth for half an hour, breakfast at 12 saunter to the park and stare

at the women for the reputation of having a taste for them, so he's only doing it for the reputation, not because he wants to stare at the women and then he goes to the coffee house, goes to the theatre 9 o'clock, take a woman of the goes to the coffee house, goes to the theatre. Nine o'clock, take a woman of the town to the Shakespeare, treat her with a bottle of champagne and leave her as I found her. And the sort of damning thing there is that he's leaving her as he found her.

He's not sort of debauching her because the assumption, you know, the implication is because he's gay. And all of this stuff is just for show. So that's kind of, there is always this stuff about Italian effeminacy, which runs through, I mean, I think it's probably gone now, but no one would look at Giorgio Chiellini, the captain of Italy, and say he's an effeminate man. He's not. He looks like a kind of Roman centurion from central casting.

But that obviously runs through from, I say, the 18th century to the mid-20s, to mods, when mods were sometimes dissed by rockers as effeminate and a bit italianate yeah obviously italian because they wore italian fashions and they had their scooters and they went to coffee bars and things exactly so there's so there's this kind of association with with um youth culture yeah fashion yeah um gender bending absolutely cutting it so cutting edge and so they um the uh yankee Fashion. Yeah. Gender bending. Absolutely. Cutting it. So cutting edge. And so the Yankee Doodle went to town. Wow, yes.

This is fascinating. So that's a joke about Americans being backward. Being backward and trying to be macaronis and failing. So this is a really weird thing. And our American listeners will find this weird because they think of Yankee Doodle Dandy as a patriotic song, but it began as an insult that British redcoats would sing during the American War of Independence to mock the Americans. So the first, I think, is it the first verse? I don't know. Yankee Doodle went to town riding on a pony,

stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni. It's basically exactly that. They're putting a feather in their cap because they think it's going to make them look like a dandy. Because actually you need a massive wig. Yeah, because they're just hayseeds. Exactly that. You know, they're putting a feather in their cap because they think it's going to make them look like a dandy. Because actually you need a massive wig. Yeah, because they're just sort of hayseeds. Exactly that. So you get that tradition going through with Byron being the famous example

of a lord who goes to Italy, who writes about it, you know, his gibbon had done, about its ruins, about its beauty, but also mourning the fact that it's basically prostrate and humiliated, that it's under the thumb of the church, it's under the thumb of the Austrians, it's fragmented, there's no prospect of it recovering its former greatness. But then I guess over the 19th century, gradually it does. Yeah.

And the key man here... This is where the biscuits come in. The key man here is Garibaldi. Now, I'll come to... Well, maybe we should start with the biscuit. Everybody... To me, a Garibaldi

is a very, very fine biscuit. I know people often have these World Cups of biscuits on Twitter and so on. World Cups are a ridiculous idea. Yeah. It's so tawdry and shallow, isn't it? Anyway, they have...

They have a word... Garibaldi never does as well in these competitions as i think it should because i think it's a bit boring no i think the garibaldi is a marvelous biscuit anyway listen dominic do you know when the garibaldi was invented tom um 1865 oh god you've clearly swatted up on it it's 1861 was it it's 1861 yeah i'm guessing it was named after garibaldi it's such a shame the listeners can't see just how childishly pleased you are that you always got it right so yes um garibaldi you know most people will have some vague awareness that he's a guy in a red shirt and he

um is key in the unification of italy um so he was quite famous in England before the unification of Italy, because he was famous for his role in, he tried to lead a revolution in 1848. And then he'd gone around kind of trying to raise funds. So he'd gone to America, for example. And actually, when he was going to America in 1854, he stopped in Newcastle. dan jackson is a friend of the podcast who's always tweeting us things that he knows far more about than we do but they always have a newcastle link they always have a newcastle link and he will definitely know more about this than us garibaldi arrives in march 1854 and he gives speeches to all these working men for italian unification for liberty and so on and this is precisely the kind of cause that's very popular

with kind of, you know, working men's groups and sort of liberal-minded people in the middle of the 19th century. You know, let's build Italy, throw off the shackles of these old empires and so on. He's given a golden sword bought by public donation by the people of Newcastle, inscribed with the words, presented to General Garibaldi by the people of Tyneside, friends of European freedom, April 1854.

God, I can imagine Dan purring as he wrote to you about that. Exactly. So then six years later, Garibaldi has his most famous sort of moment in history when he leads what's called the expedition of Emile, the Thousand, to land in Sicily. And he's going to attack the expedition of Emile the Thousand to land in Sicily. And he's going to attack the kingdom of the two Sicilies, which is run by the Bourbons. That's more biscuits.

Also a biscuit, but later. Also a very good biscuit, I think, but not as good as a Garibaldi. Now, he has huge support in England for this, because, again, he's a liberal hero, sort of hero of liberty and stuff. So tens of thousands of pounds are donated to help his expedition the times war correspondent goes with him all the way or every sort of step of the way but crucially the royal navy supports um garibaldi's landings in sicily so they send hms hannibal hannibal ironically of all the ships there to send hms hannibal and two gunboats, Argus and Intrepid.

And they basically make it possible for him to land. The Bourbon ships, which aren't as good as ours, can't sort of do anything to stop him. Garibaldi lands in Sicily, he captures Sicily, then he goes over to Italy and he sort of marches up towards Naples and sets in train this great sort of series of, frankly, to me, incomprehensible and baffling events. But it does ultimately involve a march on Rome, right?

Yeah, they march on Rome eventually, exactly. And the Pope is hostile to this. Yeah, the Pope says papal troops fight against the kingdom of Piedmont, which is the Garibaldi's big ally. And so how is this playing with kind of anti-Catholic opinion back in England? I think it's all... I mean, incredibly well. I mean, the anti-Catholic people, but people generally absolutely love this.

So by 1864, when Garibaldi's had a lot of success and he comes back to London, there is... I mean, he's met by, I think, half a million people in London on the streets, which is unbelievable when you think in the context of the time. Because he's a freedom fighter. He's a freedom fighter, exactly. He's anti-Catholic.

He's everything that kicks the English boxes. He stays at a place called Stafford House, and he's so popular that the servants make a fortune by bottling the soap suds from his washbasin. God's like the Beatles. And selling them. It's exactly that. But the great and the good ones see him as well,

Lord Palmerston and people like that. There was a massive trade. Garibaldi is one of the most memorialised men of the 19th century in knick-knacks, in merchandise. So there's dolls and there's plates and there's tankards and there's ceramics and there's postcards because there's photos of him. He plants a tree in Tennyson's garden.

So basically... He's a celebrity. So basically the establishment of Italy is down to us. It's because of the Navy and because of down to us and Garibaldi. And there's a football link because he goes and gives a speech, I think, in Nottingham or Nottinghamshire, or there's some Nottinghamshire connection, which means that when people start playing as Nottingham Forest Football Club,

they wear red tasseled hats called Garibaldi hats. And then later on when they decide that hats are not suitable for football, they wear red shirts instead in honour of Garibaldi. So there's a football link. There are still tons of roads all across Britain called Garibaldi Street or Garibaldi Road. There are at least eight pubs, Garibaldi pubs, and the biscuit. So Garibaldi leaves this incredible legacy,

and the Bourbons can't really compete. They also have a biscuit, but their biscuit isn't launched until the 19... Well, the biscuit is launched early, but they don't add their name to it until the 1930s, by which time it is far too late, because Italy is under different management, as we all know know in the 1930s

i think it's an index of my essentially reactionary character that i do actually prefer bourbons yeah well that says yeah as a bourbon you have learned nothing and forgotten nothing or yeah whatever it is i can't remember what it is but you as a kind of instinctive revolutionary so um yeah your red blooded marxism exactly exactly you you mentioned football yeah um of course the the famous detail is that uh ac milan does it not begin as a cricket club i think it does it does exactly that's why it's called milan rather than milano yes so it's founded by english very much you know, rather like Augustine coming to Canterbury and spreading Christianity. Yeah.

English people go to Milan, set up a cricket club, set up a football club. Disappointingly, the Italians aren't as keen on cricket as they are on football. But also, I believe Juventus, which is by far the most popular Italian team, supported all across Italy, not just in Turin. Juventus got their black and white colours from Notts County. So the Nottingham, I mean, this is basically a Nottinghamshire-Italy relations podcast rather than a... So it really is the case that when Italy play at Wembley, they will be coming home.

They will be coming home. Very good. But, Tom, so at this point, Italy is thought of very well in British circles, high and low. But then in the 20th century, I think it's fair to say that by and large, people had very low opinion of the Italians politically. So in the First World War, Italy lines up, as it were, on the other side of the draw at the beginning. So they're supposed to be in an alliance with um uh with with germany and with austria and basically about a year into the war they they completely break that alliance stab their allies in the back and decide they're going to attack austria and they they they do that in the most

i mean it's very hard to um i don't want to sound like i'm biased but it's very hard to defend their behavior here because they do it in a very weaselly way. They basically say to Britain and France, what will you give us to join you? We want land. We want Austrian territory. And all the British sort of politicians, they want Italy on side.

But Asquith, for example, he described Italy as that most voracious, slippery and perfidious power. It's important to bring Italy in at once. Greedy and slippery she is, he says. Churchill described Italy as the harlot of Europe. Lloyd George, they are the most contemptible nation. Jackie Fisher, who was the first sea lord, he said, the Italians are mere organ grinders. They will be no use whatsoever. Could I join in with some abuse of Italy?

Do. Yeah. Okay. So First World War, obviously, they were on our side. Yeah. Second World War, they... Of course, incredibly bloody campaign. Second World War, they weren't. They were against us. They weren't, indeed. And led by Mussolini, of course.

Also entered late, as they had in the First World War. Yep, yep. I've been sent this by Wavell. Yeah. Well, he didn't send it himself, did he? He said this himself, but I was... No, he didn't send it to you. You said he said this himself but i know he didn't

send it to you you said no no this was sent by this was sent by my friend um daisy christodley who will be coming on and talking about exams history of exams uh to coincide with that sound more like a threat a level of gcse results um so wavel yeah this is a mate this is fabulous we can name the nations who started the fire germ Germany and Japan, stupid, ill-bred children who have never been properly brought up or learnt good international manners. Their silly little girlfriend, Italy, joined them in hopes of some cheap fun and now finds herself being taken for a ride with two really bad boys. And that is not going to be cheap for her or much fun. I mean, that's the kind of commentary that I think we want from the commentators

on Sunday night. But that was so common. I mean, I suppose because of the weight of the sort of post-macaroni stuff, it was almost impossible for the British in World War II to think of the Italians in any other way. So there's a description of one British officer

who describes the Italians heading from Libya into Egypt he says they looked as if they're on their way to a birthday party and also all the jokes about Italian tanks only having a reverse well this is the thing so when we capture Tobruk and so on in 1941 um there's some wonderful descriptions from the Australian journalist Alan Moorhead who wrote a brilliant book about the war in the desert and he says basically when I got to the Italian camp I found it full of linen bed sheetsets, lace-trimmed uniforms, tasseled belts, peacock hats. And then later on, there's a big box or something and they look in it and they say,

jars of bottled cherries, tins of ham, anchovies and bread. Basically, the Italians are packed for a picnic. Well, you remember the episode we did on games, on war games. And there's a massive war game about the war in Italy. That's right. Where every round you have to have enough fuel to boil up the water for the Italian army's pasta.

So that kind of mockery of Italian war martial efforts carries on right into the present day. But it is fair to say, is it not, Dominic? Yes. That the invasion of Italy in the Second World War is incredibly brutal, incredibly bloody. Yes. And actually, the British come to have a huge admiration and respect for the partisans. I think they do, yes.

And they're slightly frightened of them, to be honest. But I also think it's really fascinating, Tom, how after the war, there is still a lot of bad blood towards the Germans and the Japanese. And there's the classic thing of people who won't buy a German or Japanese car. But nobody ever says that about Vespa scooters or about Fiat or about Italian coffee. Because I think the Italians are felt to have contributed to their own liberation. I think it's partly that. But I also think it's partly that Wavell quote that you said earlier on, that the Italians have been led astray,

that they, there's this sort of slightly patronising attitude. I mean, I will say one thing. So in case people are listening to it and thinking, oh, this is very sort of jingoistic and they're laughing at Italians. There is another element to the Italian story in the war, which is actually very sobering, which is what happens to the Italians in Britain.

So there's a lot of Italians, particularly in Scotland, and they are pretty atrociously treated. So people go and smash the windows of their shops. I mean, some of them are Italians who'd fought for us in the First World War in our army. And their shops are all smashed. They're looted.

One shop owner in, I think, Edinburgh is shot dead. And the crowds kind of riot and they beat people up and stuff. Things like, I mean, just little things like another biscuit. McVitie is the biscuit factory. They sacked all their Italian staff out of hand. And Churchill

was basically, he's asked, what should we do about the Italians? And he famously says, collar the lot. So every Italian in Britain is rounded up. Hundreds of them are put into camps well thousands of them um hundreds are put on a ship called the arandora star one there were 1200 people mostly italians but germans as well some of them refugees they're sent off to um camps in canada but they're torpedoed by a german u-boat along the way. And about 800 people are killed. So these are Italian waiters, people who, I mean, literally organ grinders, or people who work in ice cream shops and so on,

all the classic things that Italians did before the war. 800 of them die. The rest just put on another ship and then sent to Australia. When they get to Australia, they're kind of beaten up and all their possessions are stolen from them. So it's a really sad and sort of shameful chapter. So it's not all kind of fun and games, this. I mean, there are sort of sad and dark chapters to the story as well.

And then post-war, I mean, relations have been pretty good, I think. I mean, the Italians surpass us, don't they? Il surpassu. Yes. Well, they have this tremendous economic growth. I mean, the Italians surpass us, don't they? Il surpassu. Yes. Well, they have this tremendous economic growth. I mean, this economic miracle in the 1950s and 60s. So we've spent three centuries sneering at them for being economically backward,

and then they zoom ahead of us. But what's really remarkable, actually, is the legacy. So you talked right at the beginning about Rome and Rome being the centre and Rome being more sophisticated and more civilised. So in the periods that I've written about, let's say the 1950s and 1960s, people absolutely had that view of Italian culture.

Italian films, Fellini and Antonioni and so on, they were more highbrow. Italian fashion was the thing, you know, Italian shoes, Italian trousers. As we said, mods, you know, went out of their way to look like Italians. Dominic, I mean also the the enduring appeal of the stuff that enthused you know chaucer and perhaps shakespeare the time poetry and yeah tuscany is a kind of shorthand isn't it for oh yes upper middle class elite tastes yeah i mean

if you're a guardian colonist by law you have to go on holiday to Tuscany. That's the joke, isn't it? I mean, that is absolutely still the shorthand. So just as in the 14th century, in the 21st century, Tuscany, it conjures up everything. How much of that is to do with the legacy of Rome, Tom? I don't think it has much to do with the legacy of Rome. Don't you? No, I think it's to do with the beauty of the landscape, with the beauty of the art. I think it's much more a Renaissance thing.

I don't. I think if you say to a child, for example, Rome, lots of people love going to Rome. Yeah, but it's... No, but Tuscany, as in short-handedly people from Hampstead. Well, Tuscany specifically, okay. Tuscany specifically is sort of... It's Florence and...

The Guardian readers' fantasy. I agree that's kind of a Renaissance thing. But people go to Pompeii, don't they? in short people from hampstead okay it's it's florence and the the guardian reader's fantasy i agree that's kind of a renaissance thing but people go to pompeii don't they and they i mean i the first time i went to naples or indeed to rome there was this real sense of electric excitement you know these are real these are the real places of course absolutely i mean yes of course the rome is a huge part of the appeal if you're a tourist. But I think the lifestyle thing. Yeah, it's more Renaissance. I think the Italian, you know, the Dolce Vita.

I know it's set in Rome, so that torpedoes my argument. But I think that the sense of Italian fashion, of Italian style, is kind of rooted in the Renaissance. To plug your own book, Rubicon, which has the most fantastic descriptions of Roman villas and the luxury and the bay of Naples but they've gone Naples I mean Naples is a wonderful city it's my favorite city in Italy yeah but it's it's not a place you'd go for burning piles of rubble high end that's what I go for people people setting rubbish on fire because the mafia refused to collect it yeah yeah but that's what that's what I go for. People setting rubbish on fire because the Mafia refused to collect it.

Yeah, but that's what makes Naples such a thrilling place to visit. It does. It's not what it was in the days of the late Republic. When I went to Naples, the coffee machine and B&B exploded in a very disturbing way. Well, Naples also, of course, has

Shrine to Maradona. It does. I've seen that Shrine to Maradona. And, of course, the home of the Beatles. With the holy hair. Does he have holy hair? There's a single hair, I think, from Maradona's head, full of cocaine. When, on a football related, when Argentina

played Italy in Naples in the 1990 World Cup, Maradona tried to incite the people of Naples against the Italian national team, because he said, you're Neapolitans, you're not Italians. And that actually, we haven't really talked about that at all, about whether Italy is artificial. There was a great book a few years ago by David Gilmour, and he basically said Italy is a fake country.

It shouldn't really exist as one country. I mean, the trouble is you could say that about so many countries. But I'm sure Italians would say the same about Britain. Well, exactly, they would. Exactly, they would. Which is why they're playing England, not Britain. Yes. So we're just rambling now and I think it's time for

prediction. I think that Italy will win based on my viewing of the two semifinals. I think 2-1. 2-1. Yes, I think Italy will win. I think they will win. I think they'll win 1-0. I think Italy will win. I think they will win.

I think they'll win 1-0. I think England will huff and puff. And the Italians are too wily in defence. What I will also say about the Italian team is this sweep of history we've been doing from Roman times up to the present day is that they all look like figures from Italian history. Do you know, I was thinking, if he doesn't say that, I will say it.

So we have said that about the England team, but I think that's even truer. It's unbelievably gratifying, I find, because I'm a man who loves and trades in national stereotypes. So I find it incredibly gratifying when a national team look as they should, when they just look like a casting agency

has supplied some Italians. And that's exactly, every man of them, they just look... They couldn't be anybody else. They couldn't be France. They couldn't be Germany. I find all my Jacobean Protestantism kicking in. Yeah. And I kind of imagine them going off to poison nunneries and things.

They have that look. They even did a thing. So I don't know if you saw, but before their penalty shootout with Spain, Italian captain Chiellini. I did. He was kind of doing this fake punching and embracing of the spanish captain and the spanish captain geordie alba just looked so much smaller yeah he was small and he just looked utterly distraught and kind of intimidated i mean that's the wrong word but he was just put

out that this sort of italian leaning over him putting his arms around him, all of this stuff. I mean, they're crafty, aren't they? They've had thousands of years. And I suspect that they will notch up another victory. Yeah, well. But we will see. Anyway, I've very much enjoyed the Euros this time around, particularly for the opportunity it's provided to Dominic

to talk to you about England's relations uh the various countries that we have played uh so i'm very sad to see it end but i'm also absolutely thrilled that england have made it this far not just for patriotic reasons but because um we've been given the chance to talk about italy as well as denmark ukraine and germany so um thank you to the England team thank you to listening to us and hopefully we will be back maybe for the World Cup, who knows Alright, splendid

see you all next time, good luck England it's coming home, goodbye Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.