This is the nostalgic sun-filled story of a beautiful, lifelong friendship of laughter, writers and aristocrats that centred around the Villa Marchio near Lucca, Tuscany.

Here John Fleming and Hugh Honour, both world-famous art historians and the last great British eccentrics, had created the perfect life for themselves. They first met Susanna Johnston, their quirky neighbour-to-be, at Oris Origo’s villa set on a rocky promontory in Lerici when we Susanna was down and out looking for a job as a teenager. They adopted her much like a stray cat. Why don’t you stay on at Lerici and read for the blind last lover of Henry James, they suggested...? A life of laughter followed.