Imprimatur

As the evenings draw in the hours for reading lengthen.

What better than “an exuberant and discursive historical novel crammed with fascinating detail” (The Independent)? On the other hand anything with “the international best seller” on the cover may be suspect. Imprimatur was published in Italian by wife and husband co-authors in 2002. Peter Burnett has translated it into English and I heard yesterday there is a campaign to get translators names on the cover. Not being a great hand at foreign languages I have read many translations – usually excellent. But, always a but, a single clunky or ludicrous word or phrase reduces a translation to rubble. Peter Burnett read Economics and Modern Languages (French and Spanish) at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and kept his language skills up to date by working as a translator for the EU. So far he is sure-footed.

You may be interested. Selwyn is named after George Selwyn. His first job was teaching something at Eton before becoming the first Bishop of New Zealand and then Bishop of Lichfield. Bishops, even in the 19th century, weren’t loaded so the college opened in 1882 in his name paid for by donations and subscriptions from his friends and admirers. Should you be invited to dine it is traditional too remain seated for the Loyal Toast. George’s son was the second Master and could not stand.

The first 543 pages of Imprimatur take place in September 1683. The characters are confined to an inn in Rome, the Locanda del Donzello. They are barricaded in as one of their number has died and it is suspected of plague; lockdown in 17th century Rome; and it is “about a plot to unleash a weapon of mass destruction in the battle between Islam and the West” (back cover of my paperback). I hope it will be a Da Vinci Code for grown ups.

Meanwhile leaving the EU is beginning to bite. I had to order something from Fragonard in Paris. There used to be a shop in Covent Garden. The BP petrol station outside the bathroom window opened for one day this week. Le Colombier is closed on Mondays. Insignificant, you may say, so long as the UK is not part of a single currency, a single army and collective taxation to subsidise a bloated bureaucracy and subsidise ludicrously generous State pensions over the water.

Even the bad times are good.