The Hero's Way: Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna

by Tim Parks

As Garibaldi’s bones would one day be buried, against his will, in hallowed ground after a Christian funeral. After death you must accept where you belong, or where society wants you to belong. Independence is over.

Perhaps the most instructive moments for any writer of non-fiction are when you feel a strong resistance to the material you have found. Belluzzi didn’t want to believe Müller capable of betrayal. And reading Belluzzi before reading the Austrian dispatches, I didn’t want to believe it either. Denial is always inviting.

Writing and reading stories, you learn about yourself, which way you want things to go. And this is all the more true of history, where some facts just can’t be ignored.

From time to time we glimpse someone mushrooming. Mushroomers are secretive folk, always afraid you’re trying to discover the hidden spots where they unearth their truffles.