Michael Pye writes for a living -- as novelist, journalist, historian and sometimes broadcaster. He is English by birth, but civilized by study in Italy and a newspaper apprenticeship in Scotland. For twenty years he commuted between New York and Europe as a political and cultural columnist for British newspapers. He now lives with his partner John Holm in a tiny village in the forests of rural Portugal. He grew up in the English countryside and, in the classic English manner, was sent abroad to grow up: to the Universita per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy. He returned to study history at Oxf...