Early renaissance man: Tristram Hunt finds inspiration for his study of civic consciousness in Tuscany and the lecture halls of Cambridge.(Point of Departure)

PERHAPS it was the Merchant-Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room With a View that did it for me. As a teenager I could think of little more romantic than eccentric Florentine pensiones, walks through the baking Fiesole countryside, and, of course, my very own Helena Bonham Carter. So aged seventeen, with some mediocre GCSEs behind me but with a growing interest in history, I headed off ad Tuscany with the proceeds of rive terrible weeks selling ice creams at Hamley's toy store.

Staying with a friend, who cruelly declined the role of Miss Honeychurch, we explored the ...

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