Italia Romantica is a vivid history of the English Romantics' love affair with Italy and of the changing attitudes in pre-unification Italy.

In the eyes of the English Romantics, Italy was not a nation but 'Italia', a place inhabited by the ancients. Theirs was a view shaped by the eighteenth century, the age of the Grand Tour, when no future nobleman's education was complete without a visit to Venice's carnival, the majestic ruins of the Forum in Rome, or the legendary Mount Vesuvius. The people of Italy, divided by language, region, and culture, did not share these artistic and historical ideals of Italia.

After the Napoleonic wars all this was to change: Napoleon's march across Europe altered the map of Italy and brought an end to the Grand Tour in its previous form. Nationalism began to replace local loyalties and the land 'where the lemon trees blow' now attracted tourists.

Through the eyes of Romantic travellers and poets such as Byron, Keats and Shelley, we see a fascinating picture of pre-unification Italy, struggling to recover after Napoleon and edging towards the Risorgimento. Here is the Italy of idealised antiquity, magnificent but crumbling, somewhat like a gigantic and rather run-down living museum.

Roderick Cavaliero's compelling story is full of bandits, unreformed Catholicism, poets and improvisatory, shot through with vignettes of timeless urban and pastoral life, remarkable characters and anecdote, in this readable and strongly-etched cultural history.

Roderick Cavaliero is a writer and historian whose interests range hugely and reflect a distinguished professional life. After reading history at Oxford he taught in Malta, and later joined the British Council, serving successively in New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, London and Rome, becoming Deputy Director-General. He has since been chairman of the Management Committee of the British School in Rome and Trustee of the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, and of the Charles Wallace India Trust. Italia Romantica is based on his intimate knowledge of Italy's history and the role of romantic literature.