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June 26 2016 The world claimed to be shocked at the news that British voters had chosen in their referendum to leave the European Union after 43 years of membership, in what we call “Brexit”. But they should not have been shocked,... read more >>> |
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May 18, 2016 To vote to impeach a president is, in any country, a kind of political nuclear weapon: it should be a very last resort, for such an extreme act can have extreme consequences. The consequences in Brazil, where the Senate... read more >>> |
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Welcome
I am an independent writer and consultant on international affairs, write columns for La Stampa in Italy, Nikkei Business in Japan and Project Syndicate worldwide, am a non-executive director of Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, and was narrator and co-author, with the director Annalisa Piras, of a documentary film about Italy's 20-year decline, Girlfriend in a Coma, in 2013 and then executive producer of a documentary directed and written by Annalisa, "The Great European Disaster Movie", in 2015. In May 2016, the documentary won Germany's prestigious CIVIS Media prize. In April 2016, the Japanese government awarded me the "Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon".
Annalisa Piras and I have set up The Wake Up Foundation, a charity dedicated to using film, text and data for public education about the decline of Western societies. Our first big initiative, Wake Up Europe!, was launched in October 2015, aiming to start a pan-national conversation about the future of Europe.
From 1993 until 2006 I was editor of The Economist, the world's leading weekly on international current affairs, a publication for which I had worked since 1980 in Brussels, Tokyo and London. More biographical information can be found here.
Annalisa Piras and I have set up The Wake Up Foundation, a charity dedicated to using film, text and data for public education about the decline of Western societies. Our first big initiative, Wake Up Europe!, was launched in October 2015, aiming to start a pan-national conversation about the future of Europe.
Girlfriend in a Coma is now available on DVD from Amazon in the UK here
and in the USA here.
Or it can be found online: watch it here
and in the USA here.
Or it can be found online: watch it here
Good Italy Bad Italy
My new book, "Good Italy, Bad Italy", is now out in paperback,
in an edition updated to take account of the disastrously messy outcome of Italy's general election in February. It looks at why Italy is now at the centre
of Europe's economic whirlwind, and at its prospects of emerging from it stronger. The truth is that Italy, which is the euro-zone's third-largest economy
and has the world's third-largest government debts, has been in a political, economic and moral crisis for the past 20 years, as it never really succeeded in achieving agreement over
reforms following its earlier collapse, in 1992. And the story of this book begins in 2001 when I was editor-in-chief of The Economist, and when our
decision to declare on our cover that Silvio Berlusconi was "unfit to lead Italy" caused a huge political and media storm which formed the beginning
of my professional engagement with that country but also of a great personal fascination and affection for it.
Read more >
My new book, "Good Italy, Bad Italy", is now out in paperback,
in an edition updated to take account of the disastrously messy outcome of Italy's general election in February. It looks at why Italy is now at the centre
of Europe's economic whirlwind, and at its prospects of emerging from it stronger. The truth is that Italy, which is the euro-zone's third-largest economy
and has the world's third-largest government debts, has been in a political, economic and moral crisis for the past 20 years, as it never really succeeded in achieving agreement over
reforms following its earlier collapse, in 1992. And the story of this book begins in 2001 when I was editor-in-chief of The Economist, and when our
decision to declare on our cover that Silvio Berlusconi was "unfit to lead Italy" caused a huge political and media storm which formed the beginning
of my professional engagement with that country but also of a great personal fascination and affection for it.Read more >
The bittersweet life - FT Review
- Review by John Lloyd
A sympathetic but clear-eyed assessment of what ails and sustains Italy
Early in this lucid and thoughtful book, Bill Emmott cites Dantes Divine Comedy, with its Hell and Paradise at opposite poles, as a way of understanding the split nature of Italian society: a very Italian sort of a divide, he calls it.
Read full review >
A land of virtues and misdeeds - Evening Standard Review
- Review by Ian Thomson
In the 1980s, Italy surpassed Britain to become the fifth industrial power outside the Far East. Italians spoke proudly of il sorpasso the overtaking. During those Thatcher years, however, Italian politics acquired a showbiz tawdriness.
Read full review >
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