The other great Sicilian novel

Federico De Roberto’s 1894 novel The Viceroys deserves to be as well known as Lampedusa’s The Leopard, which it undoubtedly influenced, and it is similarly set in Sicily. Both works – though De Roberto’s is the more expansive – detail a noble family’s failing fortunes, in this case, those of the Uzedas, a relic of the island’s Spanish rule who are struggling with the impending Risorgimento and the modernity it heralds. Set in Catania, Sicily’s second city, rather than Palermo, the book has a distinctive volcanic, sepulchral flavour of its own.

Spying in a time of decline

The celebrated TV adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy offers a bleak, if compelling, portrait of late 1970s Britain, of its grey, slow decline before Thatcher’s Big Bang brought some blood back to the nation’s veins. After a gap of 40 years or so, I’ve finally reacquainted myself with The Sandbaggers, which debuted a couple of years after TTSS, and has been gaining plaudits, though it still remains much less well-known. It presents a similarly cynical view of British intelligence and its place in a society newly uncertain of its role in the world. Roy Marsden stars as the unusually sober Machiavellian Director of Operations Neil Burnside, whose elite officers in the Special Operations Section – the Sandbaggers of the title – risk their lives in the service of a state that cares little for them, against a background of transatlantic tensions, baffling bureaucracy, outdated attitudes, chaotic personal lives, cigarette smoke, and wide lapels.

The eternal magic of Martha Argerich

If pushed to name the greatest concert I’ve ever seen, I’d probably plump for a 2002 Prom in which a visibly frail, almost translucent Claudio Abbado conducted the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Bartók (Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta), Debussy (La Mer), and an unforgettable encore of the Good Friday Music from Wagner’s Parsifal. But perhaps the icing on the cake that night was Martha Argerich’s performance of the silkily dissonant, slow movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. The great Argentinian, now 85, was back at the Albert Hall last week for a performance of Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto. It soon became clear that she has lost little of her magic, 60 years on from her Proms debut.