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John Fort's CV
The enlightenment of a Roman fishmonger
Special interest walks and excursions
Review La Geisha, Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale, Palazzo Brancaccio, Rome (Wanted in Rome January 2006)
Review Das Rheingold, Rome Opera House (Wanted in Rome October 2005)
A Corner of the Agro Romano (Wanted in Rome September 2005)
Review Cosė Fan Tutte, Teatro Nazionale, Rome (Wanted in Rome May 2005)
A Taste of the Ciocaria (Wanted in Rome March 2005)
Train Ride to Sulmona and Castel di Sangro (Wanted in Rome Jan 2005)
Archive of older articles
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Georgina Masson's enthusiasm for Rome is highly infectious, and what I had expected to be a simple coverage of new museums and updating of opening hours and so on became an absorbing passion to see absolutely as much as possible of the city. However, I soon began to sense that she did not approve totally of the Baroque, with its cherubs, gilt, stucco, coloured marbles and general frivolity, for, as well as startling total omissions, such as the churches of S. Andrea delle Fratte, S. Silvestro and S. Susanna, of the first importance by any reckoning, she is capable of taking us right past a building of interest or holding important works of art with a bare mention of its name. At the risk of offending her many devotees, therefore, I have dared to supplement in places, while leaving unchanged everywhere possible her inimitably vivid and stimulating descriptions of monuments, buildings, pictures and statues which make her book so irreplaceable to the discerning visitor.
Extra material has meant the division of the former Chapter 10 into two, with additions at both ends, and the reversal of Chapter 23, in order to avoid arriving at the Tre Fontane during closure. At the same time, I have moved the chapter dealing with those parts of the Museo Nazionale Romano near the Piazza Esedra (now Chapter 14) to be next to the chapter on S. Agnese and S. Costanza (now Chapter 15, and also slightly lengthened); these chapters were written as one in the earliest editions.
The walks range from the gruelling to the exceedingly gruelling, and I soon came very firmly to the conclusion that the suggested regime of two walks a day for two weeks was quite categorically impossible to follow; even one walk every day for two weeks would be an extreme undertaking. I have therefore removed it.
According to her own account, Georgina Masson was born in Rawalpindi in 1912, and educated at the Royal School for the Daughters of the Army at Bath. She then lived and travelled in ten countries from China to the Congo. Work in the Foreign Office brought her to Rome shortly after liberation in 1944, where she was correspondent for the Architectural Review and the Times Literary Supplement. She lived most of the rest of her life there, writing on historical subjects and art history, her principal works being biographies of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Queen Christina and Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance, and books on Italian Villas and Palaces and Italian Gardens. She died in 1980. To her friends in Rome, however, Georgina Masson was known as Babs; they remember well her formidable exterior, the tank-like build and extraordinary energy, the infinite, almost obsessive, enthusiasm for whatever she was currently engaged on, and the special walking shoes she had made to her own design by one of Rome's leading shoe emporiums, and none have forgotten her devotion to her dog, Willy - frightful according to some. But they loved her very much, for her trenchant views on practically everything, her honesty and great sense of humour, and the generosity with which she shared her enthusiasm and knowledge with anyone interested. It is this gift for communicating such enthusiasm and knowledge that puts this guide in a category so different to all others.