Michael Meyer

Digging in the stacks unearths unexpected things, but never expected the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize to be one of them. Awarded to a journalist whose bravery in exposing corrupt and lying leaders led to a concentration camp, and his death. #NobelPeacePrize

My Paris Review interview with Georges is a career highlight. What a life. theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/2…

Mourning my friend and agent Georges Borchardt, who died at the age of 97. Georges escaped the Nazis, made “Waiting for Godot” his first sale (followed by “Night,” and books by multiple future Nobel laureates), and fought fiercely, with a wry wit, for his writers. I’ll miss him.

On a Thomas Mann pilgrimage to the Lido and see that today “Death in Venice” means a lovely public notice board for funerals. Unlike Mann’s 53-year-old protagonist, the average age of these Italian departures was 86, and they’ll be missed. (Now reading "The Magic Mountain": A+)

Morning in Venice. The unrealized ice skating potential is strong.

News you can use: Being a Guggenheim fellow does *not* entitle you to use the loo here without an entrance ticket.

🇸🇲 San Marino, pop. 34,402, including one Michelin-starred chef - Luigi Sartini - who makes the best pasta I’ve ever had (a seafood tagliatelle) at his two-table deli in Borgo Maggiore. One bowl for the hike up, one bowl as a reward after the hike down.

A film waiting to be made: the life of Nathan Cassuto, Florence rabbi, who with priests hid Jewish children in local monasteries. His own sons survived the war. His wife asked to be sent to Auschwitz with him. She survived, but was killed in 1948 in the Hadassah Convoy Massacre.

Nailed it.

Uffizi, Florence — The boy always carries a book. Here it’s Adam Hochschild’s story of the British conscientious objectors who tried to stop WWI, “To End All Wars.” So glad we never gave this kid a phone.

Add Florence to the Stolperstein project. Enrica Calabresi was a zoologist purged from the city’s university in 1938. She stayed to teach Jewish children barred from public schools. In 1944, before her deportation to Auschwitz, she swallowed the poison she carried for years.

A short walk in Milan takes you past Roman ruins, a Renaissance masterpiece, a Napoleon-financed cathedral, the birthplace of Fascism, and TikTok’s Italy hq, plus 2026 Winter Olympics venues.

At Milano Centrale, which Frank Lloyd Wright declared the world’s most beautiful train station. On the inside, and despite its history, he may still be correct (sorry, Leipzig).

The 2020 darkening of the blue in the French Tricolore really makes the flag pop against Paris's Lutetian limestone buildings.

George Orwell's Paris boarding house in "Down and Out" was at number 6 of what he termed Rue du Coq d'Or." No plaque on his residence, unlike Hemingway's home from "A Moveable Feast," over at 74 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.

Annie Besant's former home/Theosophy HQ has been refurbished into eight flats at 17-19 Avenue Road on the northern edge of the Regent's Park, London. All that's missing is her Blue Plaque, which should be moved from her short-term let on Colby Road, south of the Thames.

The new V&A Museum Storehouse in east London is like the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” only without crates. Here’s Edgar Kaufman’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed office, from downtown Pittsburgh:

@oasis-assisted aura farming in a London Charles Tyrwhitt fitting room that also made me feel very, very old. I swear I just keyed the celo off this CD. Nope, it was 31 years ago, in Madison, whilst wearing very un-Charles Tyrwhitt clothes. There we were, now here we are . . .

Superb WWI memorial and preserved trenches at Vimy Ridge, maintained and staffed by Canadians, as this was their victory in April, 1917. Thanks to its college intern guides for a great tour (eh).

Booking.com has outdone itself with its recommendation of a quaint rural French home stay.

“We’ll start the war here.” Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. after he and his men landed in the wrong spot on Utah Beach on D-Day. (Now it’s a great place to start a beach holiday - miles of shallow and smooth sand.)