LA BELLA FIGURA

Beppe Severgnini (Hodder, £16.99)

When Beppe Severgnini visited The Oxford Times back in 1991, he was making a whistlestop tour to publicise his book Inglesi. In that book he took a sideways look at the English, noting, for instance, that we say Thank You a lot (five times every time we buy a bus ticket), and that, though likeable, we are socially insincere: for instance. when he first arrived here as London correspondent of the Corriere della Serra he kept getting his diary out when people said: "You must come round some time." It took him a while to realise that the invitation was usually just a form of words with no substance behind it.

Then the converstion turned to Italians and their little habits and ways. Were they individualistic, for instance, I asked because I had noticed that although, a bus queue in Italy may sometimes resemble a Rugby scrum, closer examination showed that there was order in the apparent chaos. Every individual was so keen not to cut a figura bruta that each adhered to a sort of unwritten code: helping the elderly, moving down the bus so as to be effortlessly in the right place when it was time to get off, etc.

Since then, Severgninini has become an expert on the mentality of his countrymen, writing a column in the Corriere della Serra called 'Italians', which has grown into one of the most widely-read Italian websites on the Internet.

His latest book, subtitled An Insider's Guide to the Italian Mind, will fascinate many of us cold northerners. Do the Italians as a whole really have the ability to enjoy themselves more than us? They certainly appear to. I have a friend whose motto is: "Whenever you're feeling low, go to Italy and cheer up."

Severgnini will give a talk in Oxford on Thursday (see Bookings).