Margaret

Books

Fiction: Still reading "The Bear & The Dragon", Tom Clancy. Didn't take it away with me at the weekend so I've not got much further.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - the Iran-Iraq war, in particular how the West cast Iran as the villains at all points, even when the Iraqi regime was gassing both Iranian soldiers and Iraqi civilians. And the accidental shooting down by the US of an Iranian civilian flight which was again treated as being somehow the fault of the Iranian government/military rather than an appalling error of judgement of the US military personnel involved.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: General Introduction - more background on how the world of the theatre worked in Shakespeare's time.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 14-28 of The History of England - we've covered the Norman Conquest and are into Henry I's reign.

Live Music: we went to see Marillion play at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. Support were Jennifer Rothery (vocals) & Riccardo Romano (keyboard) doing a mix of her stuff and his stuff, I preferred the stuff she'd written I think. Marillion were excellent, as they generally are, and played some of the current album (F.E.A.R.) plus a range of songs from the last 30 years or so - including some old favourites like Easter.

Watching

ep 7 of Civilisations - Simon Schama looking at the use of colour in art, covering things as varied as Gothic cathedrals, Goya and Hokusai.

ep 2 of Kim Philby: His Most Intimate Betrayal - the downfall of Philby, which he bounced back from at least once, and how upsetting the final discovery of betrayal was for those who'd supported him. We'd watched this in our depressing TV slot but it wasn't really, other than that he got away with it for so long because he was Our Sort of Chap so no-one really believed he could be a spy.

ep 1 & 2 of An Art Lovers Guide - Alastair Sooke & Janina Ramirez visit 3 cities to look at their art & history in a travel-guide sort of way. These episodes covered Lisbon & Beirut and I think the theme is cities where different cultures mingle.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "The Bear & The Dragon", Tom Clancy. I can see why I stopped buying these after this one... the whole plot is revolving around barbaric Chinese people being barbaric, which gets tedious fast. I do kinda want to see how it resolves tho, so I'll keep on till I'm done (I'm well over halfway now).

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - moving on to setting the scene for the situation in Iraq (and yet another precedent the US ignored later on - the British c.1920 had exactly the same sorts of problems as the US/UK c.2004, sometimes in exactly the same places).

Hidden Meanings: 10-10.16.1 - this last chapter is about motifs auspicious for particular festivals or occasions.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 1.2-1.3 of The History of England - so far up to the end of the 7th Century CE, which is a particularly fragmented period of English history, the big Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are really just coalescing during this period. Also the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity (mostly).

Sunday Podcast: ep 11 & 12 of Living With the Gods - looking at sacred buildings, and the "house of god" concept through time, and at gifts to the gods.

Music: While running I listened to Porcupine Tree "Lightbulb Sun"; Marillion "Script for a Jester's Tear", "Fugazi", "Misplaced Childhood" and "Clutching at Straws"; Queen "Greatest Hits I".

Watching

ep 5 of Civilisations - Simon Schama talking about the Renaissance in both the West and the Islamic East, and how the two great flowerings of art were in conversation & competition with each other.

ep 4 of Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher - the rest of the timeline, Egypt under foreign rulers yet still Egypt till the Romans came along. I do think it's a flawed series, but also quite well filmed & fun to watch.

The Funeral Murders - for our depressing TV slot we watched a recent documentary about murders that took place at two Irish (Republican) funerals in 1988, with interviews with people who were there or involved in some fashion (like some of the police). It was quite clear that the people interviewed on both/all sides have neither forgiven nor forgotten, it's just the violence has stopped because of the Good Friday Agreement.

ep 3 & 4 of A House Through Time - continuing to trace the inhabitants of this Liverpudlian house through the 20th Century to the present day. A surprisingly good series - gave a real feel for a slice of life through the last couple of hundred years.

ep 1 of Treasures of Ancient Egypt - Alastair Sooke looking at the art of Ancient Egypt from an art historian/critic perspective, this episode covering prehistoric through to the Old Kingdom. Another series we've watched before but decided to watch the repeats of.

ep 1 of Britain's Greatest Cathedrals with Tony Robinson - this episode was about York Cathedral. Felt a bit like it's been written by the tourist board of York, but some interesting bits of history there.

Books

Fiction: Finished "Rainbow Six", Tom Clancy. It did finally click and I got sucked into the story. Nonetheless I was still somewhat appalled by the final solution to the problem of the tree-huggers-who-want-to-kill-humanity ... whilst leaving them to survive in the jungles of Brazil with nothing but their wits (literally, not even clothes) has some poetic justice there's too much of an indication of authorial approval, that Clancy feels this is how government agents/soldiers should operate and that law & order & the justice system just get in the way.

Started "The Bear & The Dragon", also Tom Clancy. Last of my Tom Clancys, after which they won't be my Tom Clancys as they'll go to the charity shop. I may write up something at some point about my conflicted feelings about them as a whole.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - enjoying this so far, tho enjoying is perhaps not the right word. After a first chapter about his meetings with Osama bin Laden in the 90s he's gone back to talk about the roots of al-Qaeda and that sort of Islamist terrorism (or "freedom fighters" as we called them when they were convenient) in the 80s. Starting with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and now moving on to the overthrow of the Shah in Iran. He's telling it via what he actually saw & did whilst reporting on the events, so it's very much one man's view but it's not pretending to be anything else. (And given the book continues up to ~2004 when it was written/finished it's not like we're far enough away from the events for authoritative history to be written about them.)

Hidden Meanings: 8.1-8.29.2 - motifs for peace, which unsurprisingly overlap a lot with earlier chapters (particularly longevity, wealth & blessings).

Listening

Podcasts: 192-196 of China History Podcast - I'm up to date with this now. There were a couple of bios of people who either emigrated to the US in the 19th Century or from the US in the 20th Century, then the last couple of episodes were a history of the British East India Company (which he'd done to accompany the Taboo miniseries, I think? For an airline's entertainment package? I didn't pay enough attention to the details).

ep 158-162 of History of Byzantium - the ongoing narrative had got to end of Basil II's reign in the early 11th Century, so he's currently doing an overview of what the state of the world (from a Byzantine perspective) is at that point.

Sunday Podcast: ep 7 & 8 of Living with the Gods, looking at beliefs & rituals surrounding birth and coming of age ceremonies respectively.

Music: While running I listened to Deacon Blue "Our Town: The Greatest Hits", Everything But the Girl "Home Movies", Joni Mitchell "Blue", Duran Duran "The Greatest", Elton John "The Very Best of Elton John CD1"

Museums & Exhibitions

National Portrait Gallery - we just pottered about in the Stuart rooms for a bit, then I looked at the Tudors (including my favourite piece there, the cartoon for the Whitehall Mural) and J looked at Enlightenment scientists etc. A warm-up for the exhibition below (literally, we had half an hour to kill and it was too cold to hang about outside on Saturday).

Charles I: King & Collector - exhibition at the Royal Academy. I'm glad we went, I liked the concept of the exhibition (the first time the bulk of Charles I's art collection had been reunited since his head was cut off), and there were some impressive pieces to see. But my take home message was I wasn't keen on his taste in art in general ;) Nor his wife's - I was particularly appalled by the Orazio Gentileschi paintings she had in the Queen's House in Greenwich, I found the paintings themselves and some of their subjects rather creepy (e.g. Lot and his daughters; or e.g. Potiphar's wife).

Watching

ep 10 of The Vietnam War - one of the more depressing things we've watched, in the appalling horror for those who lived through it, the awful behaviour of pretty much all the senior figures in both military & government on all possible sides, and also for the inescapable resonances with more recent wars. Despite the soul crushing depressing nature of the series I highly recommend it, particularly if like me you're not from the US and/or are both too young for it to ever have been current events but are too old for it to've been history when you were at school. (If I write up my thoughts about the Clancy books, this'll tie in too.)

ep 3 of Civilisations - Simon Schama looking at landscape painting, starting with Chinese landscapes.

ep 2 of Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher - the 1st Intermediate Period & the Middle Kingdom. A few more places where I don't think I agree with her in this one but it continues to be entertaining & well filmed.

ep 2 of From Ice to Fire: The Incredible Science of Temperature - the middle temperature range, where water is liquid and how this is important for our very existence. Also looking at how temperature affects living things.

Putin: The New Tsar - bio of Putin to date (well, his career). Felt oddly like something he would approve of - in the "useful propaganda to keep people/countries from challenging him" sort of sense. Lots of emphasis on how ruthless he is etc. And a classic rags to riches story with an emphasis on how he just accidentally became president. Which may be true, I don't know one way or the other, but sounds like it was written by Tom Clancy.

The Irish Rock Story: A Tale of Two Cities - the story of rock music in Ireland, with a focus on Belfast & Dublin. Both how it brought people together and how it was affected by the violence tearing people apart. As an aside, I had no idea that Thin Lizzy were Irish, nor that their lead singer was black.

ep 2 of A House Through Time - this ep covered the late 19th Century, when the house was twice a lodging house rather than a family home.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Rainbow Six", Tom Clancy. I do now know why I thought this was the one with the Ebola sub-plot ... it has one too. Haven't really got caught up in the story for this one, it feels like a TV series where there's a series arc but each episode is also kinda independent.

Non-fiction: Still reading "1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed", Eric H. Cline. Now into Chapter 5. Chapter 4 was more substantial in feel to the previous chapters, which was welcome. It was a survey of the various city destructions that occur at probably the right time round the Eastern Mediterranean; and a critical look at the various theories. The picture it built up is "It was the Sea Peoples what did it" had become a curiosity stopper and when you began to look at the actual evidence there's little if any that's clear cut.

Hidden Meanings: 7.42.4-7.59.3 - there are a lot of ways of conveying a desire for the blessing of longevity in Chinese art.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 92 plus a mini-episode of History of Egypt podcast - I'm now up to date, and he's got as far as Amenhotop III, where I imagine we'll be for the next while.

ep 93-98 of Renaissance English History - some episodes on the English relationship with the Ottoman Empire, and a whole collection of supplementary episodes with bios of notable women from the period. Up to date with this, too.

ep 187-188 of China History Podcast - currently he's in the midst of a 9 part series giving an overview of the history of Chinese philosophy.

Sunday podcast: ep 5 & 6 of Living with the Gods - one a look at religious interactions with nature, pointing out the difference between our culture's roots in a religion where people are explicitly given dominion over the Earth and some other culture's more collaborative narratives. The other episode a look at religion and death, and how in many cases the dead are still a part of society in a way that's alien to us.

Music: While running I listened to Everything But the Girl "Home Movies", "Walking Wounded", "Amplified Heart" and Texas "White on Blonde". Not as much running this week as snow stopped play.

Watching

ep 8 of The Vietnam War - including war crimes being covered up and brushed under the carpet, and the shootings of student demonstrators & random bystanders by US police.

ep 3 of Art, Power & Passion - the 20th Century monarchs & their influence on the Royal Collection, also the great fire in Windsor Castle, and the making of the collection (and palaces) into tourist attractions, initially to raise cash for the rebuild. I liked this series, a different sort of look at history.

ep 1 of Civilisations - the Beeb's new flagship history of art/culture series. We could've watched it all on iplayer immediately but we prefer to spread a series out anyway so we're sticking to one a week as they're aired. This one was Simon Schama looking at a broad sweep of art across ancient cultures taking us from the lion man (of course) through to Minoans, Mayans and so on, framed both as "art is what humans do" and that art is cultural memory.

Magical Mystery Tour Revisited - an Arena documentary from a few years ago about the making of the Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour. Interesting programme, but I do think I saw sufficient of the film itself in the clips shown to not bother seeing it if opportunity every presents itself.

Charles I's Treasures Reunited - a rather shallow tie-in for the current Royal Academy exhibition, which brings back together a lot of Charles I's art collection (which was sold after his execution).

ep 1 of From Ice to Fire: The Incredible Science of Temperature - Helen Czerski telling us about temperature and the history of our understanding of it. This one was about cold, and the liquid/solid transition.

ep 1 of A House in Time - David Olusoga looking at the history of the inhabitants of a house in Liverpool, this episode covered just the first decade or so of the house's existence from 1840ish to 1850ish (the people's stories covered a longer period). Really interesting.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Executive Orders", Tom Clancy. Less time to read this week so haven't made much progress.

Non-fiction: Started "1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed", Eric H. Cline. We bought this after seeing a video of a talk Cline gave on the subject & finding it interesting. In the book he's looking at the causes of the simultaneous decline of the major Bronze Age civilisations in the Mediterranean & Middle East around about 1177 BCE. So far I've read the Prologue (where he describes the events he's interested in) and Chapter 1 (where he goes back to the 15th Century BCE to start setting the scene).

Hidden Meanings: 7.3.9 - 7.14 - still reading about motifs for longevity, which include things like chrysanthemums and cranes.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 4.14-4.B of History of India - he's finished the narrative episodes associated with Harsha & is now examining other aspects of that period of Indian history. I've caught up to date with this one now.

ep 103-107 of History of English - looking at how Middle English continued to evolve in the 13th Century, including all the prefixes & suffixes that were beginning to take over from older English ones, and how book production & selling were changing in this period (and words entering the language from that).

Sunday podcast: ep 3-4 of Living With the Gods - water and light, respectively.

Music: While running I listened to Porcupine Tree's "Deadwing", Bon Jovi's "Cross Road", Guns'n'Roses "Appetite for Destruction", INXS "X", Scissor Sisters "Ta Dah", The Beach Boys "Greatest Hits", 10CC "10CC" and Various "Dreamboats & Petticoats CD1".

Talks

Glanville Lecture Study Day: Religion in the Ancient World, which had 6 talks:

"Egyptian Concepts of Cosmogony and the origin of philosophy" Jan Assmann - Egyptian notions of creation of the world involve continuance with the pre-existing situation, with no conflict or violence - that comes later with the creation of rulership.

"Gaming with Death" John Tait - an overview of the game of Senet.

"Antinous and Death in the Nile" Tim Whitmarsh - examining the text of a poem about Antinous and Hadrian going on a lion hunt, written shortly after Antinous has died & is deified.

"Communicating with the Gods: Liver Divination in Ancient Mesopotamia" Selena Wisnom - overview of what the liver omens are, how we know about them and how they were performed. I've been translating some as part of my Akkadian homework and it was very interesting to get an overview of what these texts were all about.

"Egyptian Afterlife Texts and Ancient Christian Apocrypha" Simon Gathercole - how ideas from the Egyptian Book of the Dead (and other texts) carried on into the Christian texts written in Egypt.

"Demons in Late Antiquity" Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe - an overview of texts relating to demons from roughly the 1st Millennium CE. Covering both Christian and not, and both practical and theoretical.

Glanville Lecture: "The Book of Exodus and the Invention of Religion" Jan Assmann - basic idea is that he sees a qualitative difference between the Abrahamic religions and the older religions and sees the Book of Exodus as pivotal in the change of emphasis. Before religions were religions of cult and weren't something that required belief, they just were. And Judaism (and subsequent) are religions of covenant and require belief, and are something to which you can convert (and set up a dichotomy between those who believe and are thus right/good and those who do not who are thus other/bad). Assmann manages to pack an awful lot of "idea" into a small space, I haven't yet gone through my notes properly to unpack it in my head.

Watching

ep 6 of The Vietnam War - the failed Viet Cong attacks of 1968, plus the assassinations of both Martin Luther King & Robert Kennedy.

ep 3 of Nigel Slater's Middle East - this week Nigel Slater enthused about Iran and its cuisine. Again he stuck to mostly the rural food. We enjoyed this series, lots of interesting looking food.

ep 2 of Art, Power & Passion - the influence on the Royal Collection of Charles II and of George III.

ep 2 of Hits, Hype & Hustle - live shows & how their importance has waxed & waned over the decades. Included some footage from before the U2 gig that we were actually at last year (tho no signs of us, would've been rather unexpected given how many people were there).

The First Brit: The 10,000 Year Old Man - rather disappointing programme about the recent reconstruction of the face of Cheddar Man, plus a genetic analysis of him. The material was interesting, but the decision to present it as an unfolding narrative was the wrong one I think. It resulted in a shallow programme trying to build up suspense and drama at the expense of actually showing us the results in any depth.

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Executive Orders", Tom Clancy. The fantasy of "what we really need in the White House is someone outside the system who'll put things right" is rather less appealing now when we can see what that sort of thinking leads to ... this is also feeling very padded with political posturing I disagree with.

Non-fiction: Still reading "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat", Samin Nosrat, but haven't had a chance to read any since I last wrote.

Hidden Meanings: 5.25-6.14 - after wishes that one gain a high official job come wishes for wealth (generally gained via your government salary).

Listening

Podcasts: ep 3.K-4.4 of History of India - after several episodes looking at various aspects of the Gupta world (including what medicine was like) he's returned to the narrative to see what happened post-Guptas.

Sunday podcast: This week we listened to an episode of In Our Time about cephalopods. I hadn't realised they all had such short life spans (some of the large species might live a few years, the rest have lifespans better measured in months).

Music: While running I listened to Elton John's greatest hits, and 3 & a bit discs of "100 Hits Rock" (there are 5 discs in total) ... I also drowned out bits of the film (Bladerunner 2049) that J was watching with Belly's "Seal My Fate" singles (no criticism of the film, I just can't write while there's another verbal stream that I can hear).

Talks

"Saite Tombs at Saqqara" Ramadan Hussein - February's EEG meeting, he's excavating at Saqqara both re-examining stuff that's already known and finding new things. Over-ran by an hour as he had so many interesting things to tell us about.

Watching

ep 4 of The Vietnam War - more of the horrors of the war, plus the high command's obsession with body count (and lying about it).

ep 2 of Thailand: Earth's Tropical Paradise - still pretty, still full of woo but perhaps less woo than the first episode.

ep 3 of Big Cats - the theme for this one was obvious: how the big cats are being studied and the people that're doing the work. A good series, if you like watching footage of awesome cats being awesome (and who doesn't?).

ep 2 of Monty Don's Paradise Gardens - he wrapped up the series by visiting Turkey and India before returning to the UK. I think the UK segment was the weakest, but perhaps if you were a Gardeners' World watcher it'd be the best bit?

Lucy Worsley: Elizabeth I's Battle for God's Music - about choral evensong and how the music was shaped by the back & forth of the Reformation in England.

ep 1 of Nigel Slater's Middle East - aka Nigel Slater enthuses about cooking in Lebanon? Some nice looking food, some interesting bits of culture, all glowing commentary.

Cuba with Simon Reeve - programme from 2012 (as part of the This World series) when Cuba had only recently relaxed some of its stance towards capitalism and was (is?) now permitting citizens to set up businesses like restaurants or plumbing supply shops.

This isn't a review, just a small collection of thoughts on the book as a whole followed by a dump of my notes from when I was reading it (which gets long).

"Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" Gerald Harriss is part of The New Oxford History of England series, and is I think aimed at actual historians (or at least at undergraduate level). Which is part of why I found it took me a long time to read it (50-ish hours over 9 months) - my last formal education in history was 30 years ago, and I'd dropped the subject before I started my GCSEs. So whilst I have a reasonably good grasp of the story line of English history, I was aware while reading this that I really don't know enough about other aspects of history - like political theory or economic theory. So I read this in "absorb like sponge" mode, rather than with a critical eye as to whether I agreed with it or not.

For a bit of context: This book covers the time from the last years of Edward III through to the early part of the Wars of the Roses. The time of Richard II, the time of Henry V & Agincourt. The Black Death was less than a decade before this book's period of focus, and the mid & long term effects on society are a large part of what's driving the changes in this time period.

Harriss's overall thesis is that while this was once seen as a time of collapse & chaos, it's better seen as a period of transition - from feudalism to capitalism in particular, driven by the new scarcity of labour. But also from war as chivalric seeking for individual glory, to conquest in the service of the nation. In fact the rise of the idea of community with the nation - English-ness becomes important as juxtaposed against the French that are the enemy. And political society continues the evolution from the Magna Carta of the King not being above but being part of the political community. You also see the seeds of the coming Reformation - it may still be half a century away by the end of this book, but the signs of dissatisfaction with the Church are already there.

Read on for my notes section by section as I read, which are of varying quality ;) ( Read more... )

A couple of days ago I finished off the right hand side of the penguin frieze I'm embroidering. The five penguins you can see in the photo (at a slightly jaunty angle to avoid a casting a shadow across it) are the ones I've stitched since my birthday at the end of August. I'd done the central four sometime ago (20-ish years) and now I've started the four on the left hand side - who've gone through the rainbow and are no longer black & white penguins :) So I'm making quite a lot of progress - I might be finished by the summer! ;)

So last year I set myself the challenge of taking a photo every day throughout the year - I managed to take photos on 359 of the days, so made up the last 6 in the first few days of 2018. It was an interesting challenge, though by the end of the year it was beginning to feel more & more like a chore. And I found myself thinking each season that the next season would be easier (more flowers in spring! better weather in summer! etc).

One way in which it was a great success was that it got me over habits of perfectionism - in many cases I couldn't reject the photo as failing on this or that ground because the moment was over (or the day was over) so I had to use what I had. And often I got more likes on 500px for stuff where I could see what to me were glaring flaws rather than the photos that were technically more proficient. Another success along those lines was that I had to stop procrastinating about taking photos off the camera & processing them (and to some degree I've streamlined my workflow, or at least got quicker at it).

Re-reading what I've just written it sounds like it was terribly "virtuous" ... it was fun too! I've picked out some of my favourites (or at least those that caught me eye most this time looking through) below. One for the whole year, one per month plus one of the extras in 2018. The whole album is now up on flickr here - if you're so inclined, please tell me what your favourite(s) are :)

( 14 photos follow, rather long )

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Debt of Honour", Tom Clancy - I'm nearly finished it now, we're well into the endgame of having to break eggs to make omelettes (i.e. people are dying, but it's the enemy so oh well).

Hidden Meanings: 2-2.17.4 - chapter 2 is about motifs that are auspicious for marriages. Most of which mean something along the lines of: may you have a harmonious marriage and give birth to many sons. Sometimes they wish for the couple to grow old together, or other such things, but the emphasis is on harmony and sons, always sons. I'm not sure if the symbolism I was most surprised about was the crabs or the badgers (puns for harmony & joy respectively).

Listening

Podcasts: ep 2.5-2.D of History of India - he took the narrative up past the end of the Kushan Empire and is now into extra episodes about themes from the time period. Quite a bit of the emphasis of the whole 2 series has been outside India - foreign rulers, but also foreign trade and influences.

Music: while running I listened to "X", INXS; "The Hits/B-sides", Prince; "Cross Road", Bon Jovi.

Watching

ep 7 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - still making us hungry, but that's the end of the series. Despite the presence of many dishes with too many legs & eyes, it was a good series.

ep 8 of Eight Days that Made Rome - Bettany Hughes finished out her series with the deathbed conversion of Constantine the Great to Christianity. It was a mostly good series - but the dramatisations erred on the melodramatic side even when that was at odds with the narrative, and the narrative could be rather shallow at times.

The Year in Music 2017 - BBC awards, plus a general retrospective of the year. No stunning surprises, nothing we wanted to check out after hearing on the show, but a pleasant enough piece of entertainment.

ep 3 & 4 of Digging for Britain - the last of the main series covering the North, and a bonus episode looking at new work on Hadrian's Wall including a re-enactment/piece of experimental archaeology that demonstrated Roman cavalry techniques. Good series, always enjoy these. And this year there was no pretence at having a second presenter, they let Alice Roberts get on with it herself and it was much better than the forced chemistry with the other chap (chaps? I can't remember if there'd been multiple ones).

A Blackpool Big Band Boogie with Jools Holland - we actually watched this coz it solved a technical issue with my spreadsheet. Reasonably entertaining, but not actually anything special - basically a film of a live performance filmed (or edited/produced) by someone who thought music was inherently boring so one needed to pull out all the dynamic nonsense camera work one could. By the end both of us were wishing the viewpoint would just Stay Still for even a moment.

ep 1 of Rome Unpacked - Andrew Graham-Dixon and Giorgio Locatelli travel round Rome talking about the art (A.G-D.) and food (G.L.). A sequel of sorts to another series (Italy Unpacked), which we've not watched, I should set it to record when it's next on.