Italian Communities in the UK

St. Albans Times April 2025

What emotional connection do you have with places from your childhood?

I was born and went to school in St. Albans, part of a sizeable Italian community. Like my parents, many left southern Italy and Sicily in the 1950s and 60s to escape poverty and lack of prospects, to take up jobs in agriculture, factories, care homes, psychiatric hospitals. They wanted to provide a better life for their families.

Locally, there were also strong Italian communities in Luton, Bedford, Watford and Northampton, with Italian Mass at local Catholic churches and Italian classes for the children. The entrepreneurial set up shops selling Italian food such as pasta, olive oil and sourdough bread, initially for the community, as at the time they were impossible to buy elsewhere. Others established café and restaurants.

I wanted to tell a little of that story in my novel, Broken Madonna, and am delighted that local publications St. Albans News and St. Albans Times have picked up on reflecting some of that history.

I spent many summers during my childhood returning to the small town of Atina in the Apennine Mountains, Italy that my parents hail from, visiting elderly relatives. These included some redoubtable women who I drew inspiration from for Broken Madonna. But again, it was the place - the mountains and river - that fired my imagination and play a pivotal role in the novel.

If this connection with place strikes a chord, growing up Italian in the UK, please do comment or reach out!