CLARE FLYNN

There are places that stay in your head long after you leave them. For me, Italy is one of those places. I first visited Italy when, aged seventeen, I went all over Europe for the first time, on a one-month InterRail holiday with friends after A Levels. Somehow I lived for a month on less than £50. I fell head over heels in love with the country and that has never left me. I was fortunate enough to live in Milan in the 1990s, working, learning the language, and getting to kno

I had a writing drought for three months. Not what I’d expected when I set off to sail around the world in one hundred and thirty days, hoping to get my next book written.  With all that time and having finished my previous book I was certain I would have the next one complete by the time I landed back in Britain. But despite (or because of!) visiting so many wonderful places, I didn’t feel inspired and my laptop gathered dust as I whiled away sea days knitting, reading, draw