Many hearts sank when in August last year the Italian government gave its approval to the building of the world’s longest suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina. Carrying two railway lines at its centre and a three-lane motorway on either side, the whole structure would, we were assured, create 120,000 jobs and satisfy President Trump’s demand for NATO members to spend more on capital defence projects. The bridge’s overall design is seemingly proofed against seismic disturbance and, rather more significantly, against operations by the Sicilian Mafia at one end and its Calabrian counterpart, the ’Ndrangheta, at the other. With a €13.5 billion budget set aside, what could possibly go wrong?

All this, it is claimed, misses the point about Sicily, whose basic identity is threatened as never before. Successive waves of conquest, from the Greeks and Carthaginians of antiquity to the Allied armies in 1943, have needed to cope with its obstinate refusal to be anything other than an island, different and difficult, particular and peculiar. The essence of Sicily, argue the bridge’s detractors, is that it should always be that bit harder to get at, if only because, once reached, its various blessings are so priceless and abundant.

Travellers go on bearing witness to such singularity and two of the latest, each a seasoned Italophile, have written books to validate their attachment. Tim Parks has recently become an Italian citizen and Helena Attlee, in her profound feeling for the terrain, is spiritually and emotionally well on the way