Perfect for lovers of travel, art, cultural wonder and the natural world, The Endurance of Things is a rich and accessible collection of short, affectionate essays, chiefly about the life and culture of Italy. Each essay illuminates a different aspect of the country and stems from the author’s experience of places, paintings and people during half a century’s genial explorations. Autobiographical moments develop into reflections on the nature of history, perception, artistic representation, and the passing of time.

Inevitably, literature often underlies these discussions. Fragments of Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens and Philip Larkin find a home here, alongside comments on paintings by Piero della Francesca, Titian and Tiepolo amongst many other artists, together with descriptions of Tuscan village life. Indeed, there is almost nothing that might not find a place in these essays. They revel in the pleasures of miscellany: the portrait and the altarpiece; the ragbag and the jewel box.

Martin Gray taught for twenty-four years at the University of Stirling. He has been visiting Italy for over sixty years. Every summer when his children were young, the family threw everything into the back of an elderly Fiat and drove across Europe to stay in Camigliano, a tiny village in mountainous southern Tuscany. He now has an an insider’s knowledge and a deep love for the country.

Nearly twenty-five years ago, he started a travel company. Small in scale, but modestly large in ambition, Learn Italy takes groups to enjoy that country’s culture, history and bustling present-day reality. This volume celebrates the lasting pleasure of these visits.