A Thousand Days in Venice, Dolce e Salata, An Umbrian Love Story by Marlena de Blasi, Random House.

This trilogy is a sumptuous, mouth-watering, luxuriant account of de Blasi’s romance with both her new husband and a new country.

Her writing is rich with colour and flavour. The dishes she describes almost leap off the pages and it’s easy to believe she is there, cooking something wonderful in the next room as you read.

Better still, she manages to capture the simple ethos of food and how people in Italy have always prepared it, with honesty, frugality and generosity.

Each book is different and can stand alone, yet read in sequence as I have just done (rereading Dolce e Salata, the first of her books I’d discovered years ago, and for the second time loving it even more now) is an even greater treat.

I feel like I’ve been on an Italian odyssey from Venice to Tuscany to Orvieto, and have returned plumped with the goodness of wine and olive oil and figs, and fine writing.

Grazie mille, Marlena de Blasi!