Diverse paths: the elderly British in Tuscany

Diverse Paths: the Elderly British inTuscanyRussell King1* and Guy Patterson2

1School of European Studies, University of Sussex, UK2Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, UK

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the life, migrationand retirement experiences of elderly Britishresidents of Tuscany and its adjacentdistricts. Because of the long historicalpresence of the British in Tuscany and thevariety of settings in which they live, it isvery dif®cult to generalise about older Britishpeople in this region. Common features tendto be high levels of education and `culture',and a history of prior international mobility.Many pathways have led the elderly Britishto Tuscany; only a minority have simplymigrated from the UK on retirement. Fourvery different types of data are presented inthis paper: historical material extending backto the Grand Tour, of®cial statistics on thesize and distribution of the British inTuscany, questionnaire data from a surveycarried out in late 1995, and selected depthinterviews with individuals who are broadlyrepresentative of different life-histories andmigration trajectories. Key themes exploredinclude class background, reasons formigration to Tuscany, previous connectionsto Italy, post-retirement behaviour,integration and future plans. The ®ndingschallenge some commonly-held`expectations' about the nature of retirementmigration.# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Accepted 11 November 1997Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 4, 157±182 (1998)

Keywords: Tuscany; international retirementmigration; rural population change;integration

INTRODUCTION

The objective of this paper is to explore thelife-histories of retired and elderlyBritish people currently living in

Tuscany. In so doing it demonstrates that, inTuscany, retired Britons do not conform to thesimple model of a working life in the UKfollowed by a retirement abroad which ischannelled by prior holiday experience in thechosen destination. The data and analysispresented will show that people have cometo Tuscany through many geographical, careerand life pathways; that conventional de®ni-tions and notions of `work', `retirement',`leisure', and so on, are far from clear-cut(and in many cases are hardly separable); andthat conceptualisations about `internationalmigration' need also to be re®ned and relaxedto encompass, in these cases, ideas aboutmobile lifestyles and multiple allegiances toplaces, both before and after retirement age.Above all, the case of the British in Tuscanydemonstrates the need for an analysis which ishistorically embedded in an account of thelong-established (but ever-changing) presenceof this group in a region which has tradition-ally been known as a `paradise of exiles'.1

The article is based on ®eld research com-prising both a self-completion questionnaire(118 valid responses received) and 50 depthinterviews with retired migrants and other keyinformants in what may loosely be describedas the `British community' in Tuscany. Thepaper is in four main parts. Firstly, we recount

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHYInt. J. Popul. Geogr. 4, 157±182 (1998)

CCC 1077±3495/98/020157±26 $17.50 # 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

* Correspondence to: Prof. Russell King, School ofEuropean Studies, University of Sussex, Falmer, BrightonBN1 9QN, UK.Contract/grant sponsor: ESRC; contract/grant number:R00023 5688.

some of the signi®cant historical elements ofthe long involvement of the British in Tuscany.This leads to a description of the size andspatial distribution of the British in Tuscanyaccording to recent of®cial data which are,however, unsatisfactory. In the succeedingsection we present some key characteristics ofthe British in Tuscany as derived from thequestionnaire survey. Whilst these data dopoint to some common features of the retiredpopulation, namely their wealth and highlevels of education and `culture', it also revealsvariable experiences, in particular the highlydiverse pathways which have led Britishpeople to settle in Tuscany before or afterretirement (bearing in mind that retirement, aswe shall see, is a contested concept). In the ®nalmajor section of the article we use qualitativeinformation from the depth interviews toexplore this diversity of experience fromwhich, unsurprisingly, it is rather dif®cult togeneralise. The conclusion will use these®ndings to question the view of internationalretirement migration as an easily identi®ableand standard process, but will also stress thehistorical and geographical speci®city of Brit-ish migration to Tuscany.

HISTORY OF THE BRITISH IN TUSCANY

A thorough history of the British in Tuscanyhas yet to be written; the two books by OliveHamilton (1974, 1982) provide a starting-pointwhich is useful but rarely rises above theanecdotal. What follows picks out somesigni®cant stages in this history and concen-trates on those events and perspectives thatoffer links to the post-war phase of Britishsettlement in the region.

The Grand Tour

If we discount the early establishment of aBritish mercantile community at Leghorn(Livorno), of which there is now little tracebeyond two decrepit British cemeteries, thestory starts with the Grand Tour when `everyyoung man of good family was sent to Italy tocomplete his education' (Hamilton, 1982: 62).A lengthy stop-over in Florence was de rigueur,given the city's artistic importance. The socialhub of English life in Florence for almost half

of the 18th century was Sir Thomas Mann,appointed minister plenipotentiary to theTuscan ducal court in 1740. A protegeÂ of SirRobert Walpole, Prime Minister to George II,Mann's duties in Florence were to look afterBritish residents and travellers in Tuscany,protect the interests of the British tradingcommunity in Leghorn, and act as liaisonof®cer with the British ¯eet in the Mediterra-nean. Mann's hospitality and social gracesendeared him to the Florentines, and to astream of upper-class English visitors whothreatened to overwhelm his generosity atCasa Manetti in the Via Santo Spirito, whereMann lived for 46 years.Amongst Mann's earliest visitors were Ro-

bert Walpole's son Horace, sent on the `Tour'with his Old Etonian school friend, the poetThomas Gray. Although they were bothenthusiastic about Tuscan culture and art, theyfell easily into the extravagant and hedonisticsocial life of the city. Gray summed it up: `Hereyou shall get up at 12 o'clock, breakfast till 3,dine till 5, sleep till 6, drink cooling liquors till8, go to bridge till 10, sup till 2, and so sleep till12 again ¼' (Mead, 1914: 306). If this quotegives an insight into the self-indulgent life ofthe British upper-class community in Florence,others reveal a developing appreciation of thedelights of the Tuscan countryside: the focus ofmuch of the post-war British settlement in theregion. According to Mead (1914: 301), thescenery around Florence `had that exquisite®nish which especially appealed to men of theeighteenth century'. Another writer on theGrand Tour claimed that it was the Englishwho really knew and loved the region: `Theyfooted it along the old roads in Tuscany as ifthey were in paradise ¼ They requisitionedthe most picturesque villas ¼ where there wasa ®ne view, andwherever possible made use ofcastles' (Kirby, 1952: 2).

The 19th Century and the Romantic Poets

During the 19th century Tuscany was home toan extraordinary succession of English writersand poets, including Shelley, Byron, theBrownings and the Trollopes. Much scatteredmaterial exists about the Tuscan lives of thesepersonalities. What follows here is very briefbut stresses their dual appreciation of Tuscan

# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 4, 157±182 (1998)

158 R. King and G. Patterson

cities and countryside; the growing symbolismof Tuscany as a `perfect blend' of culture, artand landscape for the British upper andmiddle classes; and hence the creation of the`constructed image' of Tuscany as a `desirableplace'.The poet Shelley, resident in Florence, Pisa

and Leghorn between 1818 and 1822, wasimpressed by the beauty of Bagni di Lucca, asmall spa set amongst tumbling streams andchestnut woods in northern Tuscany.Hamilton (1982: 68±9) describes how he wouldlie naked on the rocks reading Herodotus, thenjump into the pools to cool off. Shelley andByron were at the centre of the `Pisa circle', agroup of literary anglophones which ¯our-ished in the city for a few short years. Ofparticular interest are the relationships thatdeveloped between the Pisa circle and the localsociety. It seems that the members of the circlewere largely oblivious of the effects their oftenoutrageous antics had on native Tuscans andof the rumours and gossip they generated(Johnson and Curelli, 1985). Byron and Shelley,in particular, were held in awe because of theirliterary fame and their `other world' beha-viour, but the ambiguous reactions of thelocals also embraced suspicion and censure.It is not dif®cult to see in this mixture ofamused tolerance and disapproval some of theorigins of the impressions many Tuscans (andItalians) have of present-day British residentswhose eccentric behaviour continues to beviewed with indulgent resignation.2

Other 19th-century literary ®gures stayedmuch longer in Tuscany. Walter SavageLandor was there from 1818 until his deathaged 89 in 1864. Avoiding Byron and Shelley,whose private lives he disapproved of, hebecame a distinctive ®gure in Florentineliterary circles for many decades. Like manyrich exiles, as well as upper-class Florentines,he took a villa in the olive-clad hills over-looking the city where he enjoyed `the bestwater, the best air, and the best oil in theworld'. He could also have added `the bestview', for these sumptuous out-of-town villasnot only enjoyed freedom from the oppressivesummer heat and winter damp of the low-lying city centre, but also had magni®centviews of the incomparable city from theirbalustraded terraces.

The Brownings were the most prominentEnglish literary ®gures living in Florence in themid-19th century. They went to Tuscany in1846, partly because of Elizabeth's health. TheBrownings too would escape the summer heatby taking a cottage in the countryside, ®rst inBagni di Lucca where they were the centre ofan English-speaking intellectual circle, andthen twice near Siena where they kept awatchful eye on the ageing Walter Landor.Nevertheless Elizabeth died four years beforeLandor; both are buried in the English ceme-tery in Florence.There were many other literary and artistic

English in Tuscany in the mid- and late 19thcentury, mainly in Florence. FollowingHamilton's accounts (1974, 1982), we canbrie¯y mention the Trollope dynasty, theeccentric authoress Ouida who occupied astylish villa at Scandicci southwest of Florence,and John Ruskin who made numerous Tuscantours between 1840 and 1844. Shorter-termvisitors included Wordsworth, Tennyson,Turner, Walter Scott, William MakepeaceThackeray, Alfred Austin, Matthew Arnold,Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. Anothergroup of British ± sculptors and marble traders± settled at Carrara, attracted by the world'sbiggest marble quarries, famous since Romantimes.It is important at this point to stress the

social changes that took place amongst theBritish living and travelling in Tuscany duringthe course of the 19th century. The days of theGrand Tour, when young British aristocratsmet Italian aristocrats and moved in their highsociety, absorbing their culture as they went,gave way to a more middle-class and intellec-tual group of travellers and settlers, some ofwhom had more interest in contact with`ordinary' Italians. As the class base broadenedsomewhat, so the numbers of British inTuscany grew. By around 1900, the BritishConsul in Florence knew of 35,000 Britishresidents in the region (Carmichael, 1901).

The 20th Century

The line of British literary association withTuscany next moves rather sharply to D. H.Lawrence. Lawrence's Nottinghamshiremining background could hardly have been


The Elderly British in Tuscany 159

more different from that of Shelley and Byronwho had arrived almost exactly 100 yearsearlier, but like them he both ¯outed and ¯edconventionality. For Lawrence and his partnerFrieda, Tuscany was primarily a rural idyll. In1913 they arrived to spend a year in an isolatedcottage on the Tuscan±Ligurian border. Afterthe war the Lawrences returned to Italy,eventually settling in the Villa Mirenda in thehills near Scandicci. They lived here between1926 and 1928; Lady Chatterley's Lover was themain product. Frieda Lawrence's descriptionof ®nding the noble but delapidated Mirendaforeshadows the `discovery' of picturesquecountry houses by later British settlers whocame to Tuscany after the early 1960s:

`Friends told us of a villa to let in thecountry about Florence. So we took a carand ¼ drove into the old Tuscan land-scape, that perfect harmony of whatnature did and man made ¼ BeyondScandicci we passed two cypresses andwent to the left on a small, little used road.On the top of one of those Tuscan hillsstood a villa. My heart went out to it. Iwanted that villa. It was rather large, butso perfectly placed, with a panorama ofthe Valdarno in front, Florence on the leftand the umbrella-pine woods behind.(Lawrence, 1935: 174)

Other British residents in Tuscany betweenthe wars included the Sitwells, whose story isespecially illuminating for it transcends theperiod from the beginning of the 20th centuryto the 1970s. Sir George Sitwell, eccentricEnglish landowner and MP for Scarborough,bought Montegufoni Castle, 25 km southwestof Florence, in 1906, ®nding it by accidentwhen he got lost and his car broke down. Itwas (and remains) a magni®cent constructiondating from the 11th century with a spec-tacular and elaborate tower. At one time 300peasants lived in the castle and its annexes.There are many interesting reminiscences ofMontegufoni by the Sitwell `children' Osbert,Edith and Sacheverell, notably in OsbertSitwell's writings (e.g. Sitwell, 1954). In thefollowing description of the exodus of theBritish from Tuscany when the Second WorldWar broke out, Sitwell reveals something of

the diversity of wealth possessed by Britishresidents at the time:

`The trains to the frontier were crowdedwith English invalids, retired governesses,and old people living on small pensions,who had spent whole decades in Italy andwere now obliged to abandon the homesthey loved, the people they liked ¼ FewEnglish remained ¼ even in Florence, forcenturies their chosen city.' (Sitwell, 1949:317)

During the war Montegufoni was requisi-tioned to store art treasures from the Uf®zi andthe Pitti, Florence's two great art galleries.After 1945 Osbert Sitwell was able to repossessMontegufoni, to the delight of another aristo-cratic Anglo-Tuscan Sir Harold Acton, whoowned the famous Villa La Pietra at Fiesole.Acton's autobiography makes frequent refer-ence to the Sitwells, especially to the poetEdith, whose lectures and recitals drew largeaudiences to the British Institute in Florence,and to the quality of the wine produced by theMontegufoni vineyards (Acton, 1970). OsbertSitwell died in 1969, whilst still living atMontegufoni. His heir was unable to affordthe vast expense of the upkeep of the castle,which was sold to an Italian industrialist in1973.The war had two contrasting effects on the

British community in Tuscany. On the onehand, as noted above, it led to its dismember-ment. On the other hand, the con¯ict broughtmany British soldiers to Tuscany, some ofwhom were helped by local partisans in theirattempts to escape from or sabotage theoccupying German army. The travel writerEric Newby was one of them, dedicating hisbook Love and War in the Apennines `to all thoseItalians who helped me, and thousands likeme, at the risk of their lives' (Newby, 1971: 5).Newby went back and married the youngwoman who had sheltered and nursed him.Later they bought and restored a cottage inTuscany, which was the subject of anotherbook (Newby, 1994).The post-war period saw a fundamental

change in the residential patterns of the Britishin Tuscany as the community in Florencedeclined and new arrivals opted for the



countryside, especially the beautiful Chiantidistrict to the south of the city. The last of thegreat British-owned villas overlookingFlorence was La Pietra, whose occupant gavethis elegant description of the situation a fewyears before his death in 1994:

`The British community, so large at theturn of the century, has dwindled sincethe last war, but latterly there has been anew wave of migration to the hospitablecountryside of what is nicknamedChiantishire. The ancient farms of Greveand Castellina have been converted tocosy cottages, a bit more spacious thanthose of an English shire ¼' (Acton, 1986)

Although he did not draw the distinction,Acton was probably thinking of two somewhatseparate processes: the trend for the shrinkingBritish community in Florence to suburbaniseand move out into the countryside, especiallyas individual members reached or approachedretirement age, and the phenomenon of newBritish settlers coming to Tuscany to live, againat a mature age, after spending the earlier partof their lives in the UK or elsewhere.One ®nal historical factor which is highly

relevant at this point is the availability ofhousing, especially in rural Tuscany. Earlierwe quoted Mead's remark about the `exquisite®nish' of the Tuscan landscape, whose neatlymanicured beauty was seen at its most perfectin the Chianti region, especially in the yearsbefore the penetration of outside capital andCommon Market subsidies led to the `rational-isation' of farm holdings (Flower, 1988). Thepicturesque nature of the Chianti landscapewas largely due to the efforts of a peasant classwhich had traditionally farmed under theshare-cropping system known as mezzadria,whereby the tenant paid to the landowner onehalf of the crop in return for the land, afarmhouse, tools and seeds, etc. These share-tenancies were ancient, stable and hereditaryand were inseparably linked to a dispersedform of rural settlement in which the tenantmezzadri lived in ancient farmhouses (casecoloniche) often attractively sited on hilltopsor hillsides. However, after the Second WorldWar the entire mezzadria system collapsed. Thesubservience and social rigidity that were

inherent in the system were thought to be tooredolent of a feudal past which modern Italywas trying hard to erase, and the sharetenancies were progressively outlawed byagrarian reforms (King and Took, 1983). Mean-while the industrial development of Tuscany,concentrated along the Arno Valley runningthrough the heart of the region, offered securewages to the younger farmers wanting to freethemselves of ancestral ties to the land. Withthis massive rural exodus the case colonichewere abandoned. The way was open to aninvasion of foreign property buyers whobrought substantial capital investment intowhat was of®cially designated in the late1950s as a zona depressa, and who, at the sametime, were able to acquire historical propertiesfor what seemed like ridiculously low prices.

THE BRITISH IN TUSCANY IN THE 1990s: APARTIAL STATISTICAL PORTRAIT

The previous section has set the historicalcontext for the rest of the paper and hashighlighted the long historical presence of theBritish in Tuscany, their elite character(although social origins broadened after theGrand Tour), their distribution in both urbanand rural locations, and their perception of theattractiveness of the environment, notably thelandscape and rural architecture of Chianti. Allof these aspects will be considered further laterin the paper.In the meantime, we move to discuss the

secondary data, the imperfections of whichallow only approximate ideas about the sizeand demographic characteristics of the Britishin the region. For data about the British in Italy,three main published sources exist. These arethe census, records on sojourn permits forforeigners (permessi di soggiorno), and theanagrafe or registers of foreigners kept atmunicipality level (Quirino and Leone, 1993).

The Census

The 1991 Census, the ®rst to record immi-grants, enumerated 24,432 British living inItaly. The British were the sixth largest groupafter those from Germany (86,175), Morocco(58,114), the US (37,847), Yugoslavia (28,784)and Tunisia (25,263). Aggregate regional data



show that Tuscany has one of the highestabsolute and relative concentrations of for-eigners of any Italian region, but there is noregional-level nationality breakdown in theItalian census. For a sharper focus on theBritish in Tuscany we turn to the two remain-ing sources.

Sojourn Permits

Italian law obliges all foreign nationalswishing to stay in Italy to acquire a permessodi soggiorno, supposedly within eight days oftheir arrival, and obtainable from the Questuraor provincial police headquarters. Motives forthese `permits to stay' include work, family,study, elective residence, religion and asylum.Being annual records, the sojourn data permita more regular monitoring of migrant trendsthan the decennial census. They also appear to`capture' a rather larger share of the `unknowntotal' of immigrants. Thus, if we make a directcomparison at closely similar dates, the 20October 1991 Census total of 24,432 British isexceeded by the permesso di soggiorno ®gure of27,605 for 31 December 1991. The number ofBritish permit-holders has been roughly con-stant since the mid-1980s (Bonifazi, 1994). Apeak was reached in 1993 (29,091), since whenthere has been a small decline to 27,694 by 31December 1995 (Caritas di Roma, 1996).Since the published permit data are not

disaggregated by region and nationality, spe-cial tabulations were created for us by thenational statistics agency ISTAT.3 These giveBritish permessi di soggiorno ®gures for the nineprovinces of Tuscany, by sex and motive ofstay (Tables 1±3). Unfortunately there is no agebreakdown, so we cannot separate the elderly.Figure 1 shows the location of the provinces.Several interesting features emerge from thetables. Firstly, Table 1 con®rms the survival ofthe `special link' between Tuscany and theBritish noted in our historical account. Thedata show that whereas the British count for4.7 per 10,000 of the total Italian population, inTuscany the ratio is 6.9. Secondly, Table 1shows the uneven distribution of Britishamongst the Tuscan provinces. Two of thenine provinces ± Florence and Siena ± contain53.7% of British in Tuscany. Florence alonecontains 37.5% of the British in Tuscany, but by

far the greatest relative concentration is in Sienaprovince. This province includes most of theChianti region as well as large areas ofbeautiful landscape to the south of Siena.Clearly, the British are much more concen-trated in scenically and culturally attractiveareas than they are in provinces of lesserhistorical and landscape value such as Pistoiaand Livorno.Regarding residential motives, there is a

much greater emphasis amongst the British inTuscany on `elective residence' and `study',when compared with the total of Britishpermit-holders in Italy. Table 2 presents theessential features of this comparison, transpos-ing selected data from Table 1 into percen-tages. The greater importance of electiveresidence in the Tuscan case supports thehypothesis that, when British people are in aposition to choose where to live, and possiblyretire to, in Italy, they prefer Tuscany. Thesojourn permits awarded for study are, as onewould expect, almost entirely limited to thethree provinces with universities ± Florence,Pisa and Siena (Table 1). It is nevertheless

Figure 1. The provinces of Tuscany.



important to realise that 53.6% of the motivesto come to Tuscany are based on work andfamily reasons, the latter case especially forwomen.This leads us to Table 3 which sets out

gender contrasts in the motives. As these are

broadly constant across all provinces, Table 3simply presents the data for Tuscany. The ®rstpoint to note here is that Tuscany, more so thanItaly as a whole, has a clear majority of Britishfemales: 62.8% of the British permit-holders inTuscany are women, compared with 58.0% inItaly. A number of reasons can be suggestedfor this, some of them indicated by data inTable 3. Women live longer than men, and thisfactor will assume enhanced importance in asubpopulation with many retirement-agepeople and where men have married womenwho are some years younger than them.Secondly, more women are attracted to Italyand Tuscany in the ®rst place. An interest inItalian language, literature and art appears tobe more frequent amongst females, and thisexplains why a larger number of women

Table 1. British holders of sojourn permits in Tuscany and Italy, 31 December 1994, by province and motive.

British per 10,000Motive

Province total population Work Family Study Elective residence Other Total

Massa-Carrara 6.0 41 26 2 44 9 122Lucca 6.8 63 40 0 145 15 263Pistoia 3.6 48 24 2 20 2 96Florence 7.7 450 147 52 213 61 923Livorno 4.3 66 27 1 51 5 150Pisa 5.3 103 40 36 18 11 208Arezzo 5.7 64 23 4 82 4 177Siena 15.7 127 28 96 129 17 397Grosseto 5.6 33 1 46 10 123Tuscany 6.9 995 388 194 748 13 2459Italy 4.7 14,074 5373 1162 3385 2441 26,435

Source: ISTAT special tabulations, September 1995.

Table 2. Motives for sojourn permits: a comparisonof the British in Tuscany and in Italy (%).

Motives Tuscany Italy

Work 40.5 53.2Family 15.8 20.3Study 7.9 4.4Elective residence 30.4 12.8Other 5.4 9.2

Source: reworking of data from Table 1.

Table 3. Motives for British sojourn permits in Tuscany: breakdownby gender.

Males Females

Motive No. % No. %

Work 428 46.8 567 36.7Family 85 9.3 303 19.6Study 54 5.9 140 9.1Elective residence 309 33.8 439 28.4Other 38 4.2 96 6.2Total 914 100.0 1545 100.0




acquire permits to study in Italy than men (140compared with 54). This provides a direct linkto the next point, which is that there is a greaterlikelihood of British women marrying Italianmen, and then staying on to live (and possiblyretire) in Italy, than the reverse case; thesmaller number of British men marryingItalian women would tend to result (givenunequal gender relations in marriage) inrelocation to Britain. Hence the greater im-portance for females of family motives (19.6%of all motives) than for men (9.3%).

Municipal Registers

The third data source is local municipal popu-lation registers ± the anagrafe. All foreigners inItaly who have a permanent or long-termrelationship with a particular municipality ±usually because they live there ± are requiredto register their residence in that municipality.Procuring residence status is necessary to ownproperty, register a car, run a business, haveaccess to the local health facilities, and so on.The residence data (covering all residents inthe municipality, not just foreigners) arereturned at the end of each year to ISTAT'sof®ces in Rome for further elaboration andpublication. Unfortunately the published ana-grafe records tell us nothing about individualnationalities. Regional and national aggrega-tions of these local data do pick out foreignresidents, but only by groups of countries ±hence the British are included in the EU

aggregate.Once again, we were able to commission

special tabulations from ISTAT. These com-prised both province-level data for Tuscanyand, most importantly, municipality (comune)data. All the data supplied were for 31December 1992. The provincial data are setout in Table 4 alongside the sojourn datadescribed earlier. A super®cial glance at thetwo sets of data indicates close correspon-dence; the total number of sojourn permits(2459) is slightly higher than the residencytotal (2375) and the difference could easily beexplained by the two-year gap between therecords. A closer examination, however, re-veals discordances. The gender balance differs(58.1% of the anagrafe total are females, yet62.8% of the sojourn total), and the individualprovince totals often do not match up (see, forinstance, Massa-Carrara and Lucca). Clearlythe two sources do not draw exclusively fromthe same universe: both are likely to be under-estimates of the number of British peopleliving in Tuscany.Setting this problem aside, the advantage of

the anagrafe data is that they provide a micro-statistical base for mapping the distribution ofBritish nationals registered in Tuscany,although, once again, the elderly cannot beseparately identi®ed. Figures 2 and 3 show twoways in which this data can be portrayed.Figure 2 shows absolute numbers. At oneextreme, 75 comuni have no British residents atall, and 37 have only one. At the other extreme,

Table 4. The British in Tuscany, according to two sources.

Anagrafe register, 31 December 1992 Permessi di soggiorno, 31 December 1994

Province Males Females Total Males Females Total

Massa-Carrara 33 33 66 52 70 122Lucca 185 197 382 129 134 263Pistoia 37 64 101 40 56 96Florence 334 529 863 287 636 923Livorno 67 86 153 57 93 150Pisa 63 71 134 80 128 208Arezzo 102 154 256 76 101 177Siena 115 160 275 144 253 397Grosseto 58 87 145 49 74 123Tuscany 994 1381 2375 914 1545 2459




the comune of Florence has 502, 21.1% of thetotal for Tuscany. The distribution presentedby Fig. 2 shows the largest numbers generallyassociated with the provincial capitals andsome other towns such as the coastal resorts ofViareggio and Forte dei Marmi, which liebetween Massa-Carrara and Pisa. The pattern

exhibited by Fig. 2 is therefore very muchin¯uenced by the total population distributionand by the areal size of the communes ± smallin the north, larger in the south.Figure 3 shows the relative distribution of

British residents in Tuscany, and gives a verydifferent picture. The towns and provincial

Figure 2. Distribution of British residents in Tuscany by municipality, 31 December 1992: absolute data (fromISTAT, special tabulations).



capitals no longer stand out ± a recognitionthat many British, including most of theretired, are in rural districts. Two mainconcentrations can be picked out, plus somesubsidiary pockets. The major concentrationlies in the centre of the region includingChianti. From this core other areas of British

settlement extend east, west and south ofSiena, but avoiding the city itself; this high-quality landscape of rolling hills and historictowns extends into adjacent Umbria. Thesecond zone of concentration in Fig. 3 is thesmaller group of comuni in the northern part ofLucca province. This district, Garfagnana, is a

Figure 3. Distribution of British residents in Tuscany by municipality, 31 December 1992: relative data (fromISTAT, special tabulations).



rather isolated region of small villages,wooded hills and deep valleys; Bagni di Luccalies at its heart.4

Summing-up the Numbers Game

From the foregoing discussion it is clear thatthere is no reliable estimate of the Britishpopulation in Tuscany from of®cial data, norof the proportion who are elderly. Sources doconverge on a ®gure for the total of about 2400,but there is evidence of under-enumeration.The true ®gure has to be larger, but how muchlarger?One way of trying to answer this question is

to interrogate the community itself. Unfortu-nately the British in Tuscany are so highlydispersed (to such an extent that they canhardly be called a community) that few peoplehave any accurate idea of the size of the Britishpresence. We interviewed both the presentBritish Consul and his predecessor.5 Both gavea ®gure of 9000 for the consular area, whichcovers Tuscany plus the smaller and lesspopulous neighbouring regions of Marcheand Umbria, and two provinces (ForlõÁ andRavenna) of Emilia-Romagna. There is knownto be a signi®cant British presence in Umbriaas a kind of overspill from Tuscany, butrelatively few British in Marche, ForlõÁ andRavenna. Based on interpolation of data on theregional distribution of British and EUnationals and our knowledge of the situation`on the ground', we would estimate thatTuscany contains about two-thirds of theBritish in the Florence consular district, inother words around 6000, more than twice theof®cial ®gures.The question then arises as to how the con-

sular ®gure of 9000 is arrived at. It is claimed tobe a compilation of several informationsources, the most important of which is theissue and renewal of passports. The problemhere is that for some years this function haspassed from the regional consulates to Rome,so the local passport records are dated. Bothconsuls agreed that the ®gure of 9000 could besubject to a considerable margin of error of upto 20 or 25%. If we operationalise our impres-sion that the consular estimate is more likely tobe an overestimate (at least for stable residents)and if we follow the consuls' judgement (based

mainly on birth-date records of passport-holders) that about half the British in Tuscanyare of retirement age, then our ®nal estimatesare approximately 4000 British nationals livingin Tuscany, including about 2000 of retirementage. Some hundreds would need to be addedfor the adjacent regions of Umbria, and so on.

THE ELDERLY BRITISH IN TUSCANY:SOME QUESTIONNAIRE DATA

The basic purpose of the questionnaire survey± to collect systematic life-history data on alittle-researched but increasingly importanttype of migration ± is set out and justi®edmore fully in the preceding papers in this issue(see especially King et al., 1998). Comparedwith the research reported in the other papers,collecting systematic survey data on theelderly British in Tuscany proved to beespecially challenging, because of two dif®cul-ties. The ®rst derives from the population'sdispersion over the region. Lacking the denseconcentrations of the Costa del Sol or Malta,Tuscany's British population are found inmany settings and sheer distance is an ob-stacle. Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 give some idea of thisdispersion, but not a full appreciation of thetime-consuming nature of travel and thedif®culties of locating rural residents who livein isolated positions reached only by stradebianche ± rough-surfaced country roads. Thesecond dif®culty arose because of the completelack of any lists of British residents in Tuscanywhich we could use as a sampling frame forquestionnaire distribution.These dif®culties forced us to adopt a more

¯exible ®eld strategy. Our main mechanismfor circulating questionnaires was through thegood of®ces of the British Consul in Florence.On the one hand this meant we lost somecontrol over the distribution (since the con-sulate had to guarantee the anonymity ofpotential respondents and their addresses);on the other hand, this circulation screened outpersons known to be unwilling or unable torespond because of their distressed circum-stances (serious illness, failing mental health,etc.). The consular distribution was supple-mented by several informally-accessed net-works. These included the small congregationsat the Anglican churches in Florence and Siena,



lecture evenings at the British Institute inFlorence, the `Conservatives Abroad' associa-tion based in neighbouring Umbria, and acouple of social groups in the province ofLucca. Most questionnaire returns were bystamped addressed envelope to our Tuscan®eld base.6 Of approximately 350 question-naires sent out, 118 usable responses werereturned. This relatively low total (comparedwith our original target) encouraged us tospend more time and effort obtaining depthinterviews.We present a selection of the questionnaire

data at two levels. Firstly, we brie¯y recapitu-late the distinctive features of the Tuscansample as a whole. Reference back to the tablesand discussion in the ®rst paper in this issue(King et al., 1998) shows that, compared withthe Costa del Sol, Algarve and Malta, olderBritish people in Tuscany were: established atan earlier period; characterised by a high socio-occupational and educational status; moreinternationally mobile before retirement; lessin¯uenced by climate in their retirementmigration decision and more by factors to dowith work, family and the cultural attraction ofTuscany; and better integrated into the hostsociety in terms of their ability to speak thelocal language and appreciate Italian cultureand way of life.Secondly, we now delve more deeply into

the diversity of the elderly British experiencein Tuscany. Prior knowledge of Tuscany andour ®eld research suggested that the British aregrouped into ®ve main sub-areas and residen-tial environments. We are not suggesting thatthese settings necessarily provide the frame-work for the functioning of separate Britishcommunities, but we believe that the size andgeographical diversity of Tuscany makes theseunits meaningful for the purpose of analysingsome of our questionnaire data. More speci®-cally, each constitutes a different path, or,perhaps more accurately, a different set ofindividual itineraries with some commoncharacteristics, by which British migrants havecome to be resident in Tuscany at the laterstages of their lives. The sub-areas are (see Figs2 and 3):

. Florence and its immediate hinterland in-cluding Fiesole, Scandicci, etc.;

. Chianti;

. Lucca province and adjacent districts ofnorthwest Tuscany;

. other Tuscany ± mainly southern Tuscanycomprising the broad sweep of countrysidebetween Arezzo and Grosseto (and alsoElba);

. Umbria and Marche ± adjacent regions toTuscany which are known to have attractedBritish settlers as an over¯ow from oralternative to Tuscany.7

Background Characteristics of theRespondents

Table 5 sets out some basic demographic andhousehold characteristics of the respondents,divided into the ®ve sub-areas listed above.8

Although the data are by no means conclusive,Table 5 invites the following interpretations,backed up by a reading of the individualquestionnaires. Florence, and to a lesser extentits adjacent rural district of Chianti, tends toattract a higher proportion of single personsand women, some of the movement intoChianti being due to the outward retirementmoves from Florence of people who had earlierlived andworked in the city ± a movement thatwas identi®ed in our earlier historical account.By contrast the remaining sub-areas, all rural,have tended to attract retired and semi-retiredcouples. There is a smooth gradation of meanhousehold size from Florence and Chiantithrough the northern and southern peripheralareas of Tuscany into Umbria. The averageages of the respondents constitute anotheraspect of differentiation. Florence and Umbriahave somewhat lower mean ages: Florencebecause it contains a heterogeneous Britishpopulation with a continuous `throughput' ofarrivals and departures (including retirementmoves into rural Tuscany); Umbria because ofthe recency of this region as a retirementdestination.Table 6 offers more evidence on this last

point. Florence has the longest history ofBritish settlement ± a fact we know from thehistorical record ± followed in turn by Chianti,Lucca, southern Tuscany and Umbria. Thedata on the mean year of arrival at the presentdwelling also point to the recency of settlement



in Umbria. The fact that the Florence date of1984 is later than the remaining three (all 1982)re¯ects the greater residential mobility of theBritish in Florence (1.3 moves since arrival inTuscany as against a whole-sample average of0.7). The relatively high ®gure for Umbria islinked to the fact that some British residents inUmbria and Marche have recently transferredthere from earlier residence in Tuscany; this`secondary migration' is evident from ques-tionnaire returns from this subgroup and alsofrom our own monitoring of the situation `onthe ground' in these regions borderingTuscany.

Finally the more `footloose' nature of theBritish retired residents in Florence is revealedfrom the dwelling tenure data (Table 7) whichshow higher proportions in rented property(mainly city apartments) as opposed to owner-occupied, free-standing villas and cottageswhich are typical of the rural sub-areas. Table7 also shows the progressive transfer fromrenting to ownership in all sub-areas.

A Cosmopolitan and Highly EducatedPopulation

In King et al. (1998) it was pointed out that,

Table 5. Elderly British residents in Tuscany: some demographic and household characteristics.

Florence Chianti LuccaOther

Tuscany Umbria Total(n = 17) (n = 19) (n = 22) (n = 27) (n = 24) (n = 109)

Males 7 9 17 20 16 69Females 10 10 5 7 8 40Mean age (years) 65.9 71.6 69.7 70.8 66.6 69.0Married 9 8 17 24 16 74Never married,widowed, divorced,separated

8 11 5 3 8 35

Household size:1 8 7 3 2 6 262 7 11 16 23 12 693� 2 1 3 2 6 14Mean household size 1.6 1.7 2.0 2.0 2.2 1.9

Table 6. Arrival in Tuscany and subsequent moves.

Florence Chianti LuccaOther

Tuscany Umbria TotalYear of arrival (n = 17) (n = 18) (n = 21) (n = 26) (n = 24) (n = 106)

Before 1970 7 4 4 4 0 191970±79 3 7 8 7 3 281980±89 3 6 4 9 11 33Since 1990 4 1 5 6 10 26

Mean year of arrival inTuscany

1974 1977 1978 1981 1987 1980

Mean year of arrival atpresent dwelling

1984 1982 1982 1982 1990 1984

Mean number of movesafter arrival in Tuscany

1.3 1.0 0.4 0.4 0.8 0.7

Source: authors' survey.



compared with the other destinations sur-veyed, the British elderly population inTuscany had a history of high internationalmobility prior to retirement. Table 8 elaboratesthis. Retirees in Florence are more likely tohave lived abroad prior to retirement thanelderly respondents in other sub-areas. How-ever, this contrast needs re®ning. Inspection ofthe individual questionnaires reveals thatmany of the Florence subsample who hadlived exclusively or partly abroad in the ®veyears before retirement had in fact lived inFlorence itself, whereas most of the interna-tional mobility for the other groups involved abewildering array of countries in virtually allparts of the world. Particularly prevalent wereinternational career paths in business and thediplomatic service which had involvedEurope, the former British colonies and theMiddle East. A not insigni®cant minority ofBritish respondents in Tuscany had hardlyever lived in Britain. For some their only stableinvolvement with Britain had been boardingschool and university.If there is one distinctive characteristic of

British retirees in Tuscany, it is their highlyeducated status and interest in what might betermed `high culture'. The mean age of ®nish-ing full-time education was 19.8 years, indicat-

ing that most had been to university, and at atime when higher education was for a privi-leged elite. Given the role of Florence andTuscany in the Renaissance and in the historyof art and architecture, this educational andcultural selectivity is hardly surprising.Respondents were also characterised by

considerable wealth deriving both from theirhigh socio-occupational status (71% of the 93respondents who had worked were in socialclasses 1 and 2) and from inherited wealth (asrevealed in some of the depth interviews).Although the diversity of jobs done prior toretirement de®es easy categorisation beyondthe reductionist social classes, `typical' careershad involved the higher echelons of the civilservice, the legal and medical professions,education (especially higher education), thecreative arts, and business owners and man-agers. The differences cannot be statisticallydemonstrated, but it is clear from both thequestionnaires and our ®eldwork that the mostwealthy and long-established British residents(excluding the mixed group in Florence) wereto be found in Chianti and adjacent areas ofcentral Tuscany, whereas the less upper-classelements were to be found in Lucca province,southern Tuscany and Umbria. On somequestionnaires, in response to a question about

Table 7. First and present dwelling characteristics.

Forence Chianti Lucca Other Tuscany Umbria Total(n = 16) (n = 18) (n = 21) (n = 26) (n = 24) (n = 105)

First dwelling:owned 5 13 12 22 17 69rented, other 11 5 9 4 7 36

Present dwelling:owned 10 16 17 25 20 88rented, other 6 2 4 1 4 27


Table 8. Responses to the question, `Where did you spend the ®ve years prior to retirement?'

Florence Chianti Lucca Other Tuscany Umbria Total(n = 16) (n = 17) (n = 21) (n = 27) (n = 24) (n = 105)

Exclusively in UK 1 5 9 12 12 39UK and abroad 4 5 3 7 6 25Exclusively abroad 11 7 9 8 6 41




choice of a speci®c place to live, there wereanswers from the `non-Chianti' groups thatreferred to the desire to avoid the snobbishnessand expense of buying a property and living in`Chiantishire'.

Reasons for and Reactions to the Move toTuscany

The above remark on residents' feelings aboutdifferent sub-areas of Tuscany leads on tomotives and reactions to the migration. Fromour earlier analysis it is clear that, for somerespondents, the retirement to Tuscany wasnot really an international move at all sincethey were already working in the region, orperhaps elsewhere in Italy. It is also the casethat, compared with other destinations con-sidered in this set of papers, the move toTuscany was in¯uenced less by the region'sclimate and more by a variety of factorsincluding work and family links, antipathy tothe UK, and positive images of Tuscany andthe `Italian way of life' (see King et al., 1998:Table 5). Questionnaire answers often articu-lated how the combination of these factorsfrequently acted to reinforce each other (re-spondents were asked to give a principalreason plus up to three supplementary reasonsfor their retirement migration decision). Hereare some typical examples:

`The most important reason was myhusband's health: he was advised to moveto a warmer climate. I knew some Italianhaving been at a ®nishing school inFlorence. We met an Englishman whohad just bought a property in this area.' (F,61, retired from Foreign Of®ce, Chianti),

`I was taken on by the British Institute asan English teacher: this enabled me tocontinue teaching until I was 73 whereasin England I would have had to retire at60. In addition, my wife is a nativeFlorentine, and hence for me it was awelcome change of scene which was nottotally unfamiliar.' (M, 75, ex-teacher,Florence),

`The most important reason was theBritain of Thatcher and post-Thatcher

society. Also the climate, the food andwine, the likelihood of being on the routeof holidaying British friends and the factthat this is not Chiantishire. Above all thehouse decided us: it was old; it wassecluded; it had land; it had olive trees;it looked like paradise.' (M, 70, retiredconsulting engineer, southern Tuscany)

There are many themes raised by these threequotes: the search for an escape from the urbanrat race; the speci®c attractions of the Tuscanenvironment (climate, landscape, food anddrink, etc.); the alienation from certain(perceived) aspects of contemporary Britishsociety; the blurred notions of work andretirement (note that one person stressed theimportance of the move to Florence to prolonghis working life); and family connections to thearea.Some of these points resurfaced later in the

questionnaire when respondents were askedto write about the key advantages and dis-advantages of living in Tuscany, as well as thethings that had most disappointed them, orexceeded their expectations. Amongst thevariety of responses, several clear messagesrang out.Firstly, the vast majority of respondents

were well-prepared for their post-retirementlives in Italy: most had prior links with orknowledge of the region, some familiarity withItalian culture and with the language. Hencethere were few major disappointments; realitymatched or surpassed their expectations.Secondly, the advantages proved to be

clearly related to the motives for settling inItaly in the ®rst place. For those who hadbought their properties early on, there was theimportant factor of low prices in the 1960s and1970s, but this attraction faded as Tuscanproperty prices were forced up, notably byGerman second-home buyers, in the 1980s and1990s. Otherwise the commonly cited advan-tages were (in order of importance): the beautyof the countryside; access to Florentine andTuscan works of art; climate; the friendly andopen character of the local people and therelaxed and civilised way of life in general(little crime, strong family values, etc.); foodand wine; good communications (Tuscany isnow reasonably well served by motorways



and there are airports at Pisa and Florence forboth scheduled and charter ¯ights to the UK).The disadvantages were more narrowly

de®ned. Virtually all respondents alluded tothe frustrating and slow-moving bureaucracyand many linked this to the corruption of theItalian political system as a whole. The risingcost of living wasmentionedmainly by the lesswell-off respondents. Other frequently men-tioned problems were language dif®culties,distance from family and friends, poor publicservices (including medical care) and the sur-prisingly cold and damp winters. There wereoccasional references to the Italians' aggressivedriving and love of hunting. The above pointswere also the main features listed under theheading of `disappointments', i.e. where ex-pectations had not been ful®lled. By far thegreatest `bonus', where expectations had beensurpassed, was the friendliness of the localpeople, mentioned by nearly half the respon-dents. There is something of an irony here asTuscans are regarded by other Italians asrather aloof and arrogant!

Integration

To what extent are the British integrated intoTuscan society? The four-country comparisonset out in the opening paper revealed that theBritish in Tuscany had a generally well-developed knowledge of the Italian language± one reasonably sensitive indicator of integra-tion (see King et al., 1998: Table 9). WithinTuscany, the degree of ¯uency is seen to bemuch higher in Florence than elsewhere, forreasons that should be obvious from theprevious discussion. Southern Tuscany and

Umbria are rural regions where British settlershave arrived relatively recently; Florence is amajor city where the British have a longerpresence. Moreover, some British residents inFlorence have been involved in teaching, thearts or business in the city for many yearsbefore retirement and therefore have anexcellent command of the Italian language.Table 9 shows that newspaper readershipexhibits a similar contrast between the `twoextremes' of Florence and Umbria. In Florencethe vast majority of British residents regularlyread an Italian newspaper; in the three sub-areas of rural Tuscany a slight majority does; inUmbria the large majority does not.The two indices of integration set out in

Table 9 are, of course, crude approximations ofa richly varied set of real-life situations whichwill be further examined using data from thein-depth interviews.

DIVERSE PATHS

In this ®nal section of the paper we draw onthe depth interviews to illustrate the diverseroutes that have led to the establishment of asigni®cant retirement-age British population inTuscany. This is achieved by the presentationof ®ve cases, each representing a differentpathway and set of retirement and migrationexperiences.9 Each also ends in a different sub-area destination. Given the diversity of experi-ence revealed by our research, the ®ve casescan hardly be regarded as `typical'. However,we have selected them in order to illustratesome common traits and have avoided choos-ing highly exceptional cases. The names are®ctitious.

Table 9. Two measures of integration.

Florence Chianti Lucca Other Tuscany Umbria Total(n = 17) (n = 19) (n = 22) (n = 26) (n = 23) (n = 107)

Italian language:very ¯uent 9 4 6 8 4 31quite ¯uent 7 12 12 10 8 49some knowledge or a few words 1 3 4 8 11 27

Italian newspapers:read at least weekly 13 11 13 14 7 58read occasionally or not at all 4 8 9 12 16 49




Margaret's Story

Margaret lives in Florence, a single woman, 68years old at the time of the interview, and notuntypical of a lot of peripatetic artistic andintellectual people who live in the city. Herstory also reminds us that high levels ofeducation do not necessarily equate withwealth; a surprisingly large number of elderlyBritish who live in Florence do so in modestcircumstances on rather low or ®xed incomesand pensions, as Sitwell (1949) noted 50 yearsago.Margaret read English at Oxford and her

career involved 12 years of university teachingin England and Nigeria, ®ve years at the BBCand other shorter periods of varied work. Shehad spent the year 1955±56 in Florence teach-ing English at a ®nishing school, and had spentsome time trying to earn a living as a writer.Margaret picks up the story of how she came tolive in Florence:

`My main reason for coming here wasbasically work. I had been without aproper job for many years, which frigh-tened me. Previously I had been out for aholiday, and also twenty years earlier ¼ Ihad always been fond of Florence since aneccentric English woman from Florencehad come to stay at my boarding school toconvalesce after an illness. She told me allabout the glories of Florence ¼

My mother paid for my ticket to Italy. Ilooked up people I knew in 1955. One wasa lady who used to work at the BritishConsulate but had since transferred to theBritish Institute. She told me they neededa core of experienced teachers and asked ifI would take a job with them ¼ That wasin 1975 ¼'

Margaret then went on to describe how shefound accommodation in Florence: again afairly typical story of several moves, of stayingmainly within the rented sector, and ofinformal leasing arrangements.

`Initially I stayed with friends ¼ theyoffered to let me live with them for a yearuntil I found my feet in the city. I stayed

the year and then decided to move andlive alone, which I found dif®cult. I founda room to rent in someone's ¯at. I stayedthere about a year and then I lived anotheryear in a pensione at the top of a beautifulpalazzo, cheap but very good¼And then Icame here in 1978¼ It is very special here.Very comfy and light ¼ The garden weare looking at is the Torrigiani with theamazing eighteenth-century observatorytower. On the other side of the ¯at we seeFiesole, Settignano, the Duomo ¼ I wasgiven an opportunity to buy this place ®veyears ago, but I didn't have enoughmoney ¼

I don't have a lease here and that is why Ican pay a low rent. My landlord has beendreadful over the business side and nevergave me a contract. He also doesn't reportthat he receives rent from me and there-fore doesn't pay income tax! He wouldn'tdare raise the rent now. I could report himto the tax people!'

Finally, Margaret considers her rather un-certain future:

`I don't intend to end my days here. Intheory I would like to go back to Englandwhen I am 70. Although I feel like 50, I amaware of becoming forgetful ¼ My prob-lem is that I have got nothing to go back to.I have no property of my own or pension,except the state pension ¼

The problem is that I am homesick; I aman old-fashioned patriot. I always listen tothe World Service, I'm always reading theEnglish papers. I spend every Christmasin England for three weeks, part of thetime with my sister in London and mybrother in Chichester. Two or threemonths in the summer I spend with myfriends in England. I make many tele-phone calls to the UK aswell ¼ Tome, myreal friends are those I've got in England.'

Vernon's Story

Vernon and his wife Gilda (both aged 70) livein a beautiful restored farm complex in the



heart of the Chianti district. In addition to thecentral house there are three cottages and alarge area of woods and olives. The property isseveral kilometres from the nearest tarredroad. In one sense Vernon's story is theopposite of Margaret's, for considerablewealth has followed a minimal formal educa-tion. The main point of this case, however, is todemonstrate how many elderly British inTuscany have not really retired at all. Rather,`retirement' offers new business challenges tothose with the energy and commercial acumento take them.Like many of the interviewees and ques-

tionnaire respondents, Vernon's background iscosmopolitan. He was born in central Europewhere his parents were musicians. As a resultof the Anschluss the family ¯ed to England in1938 when Vernon was 13. He attended aQuaker school in Kent for one year but had toleave when war broke out and his ®nancialsponsor at the school died. Vernon spent thewar years on farms in Berkshire and Devon,then in London working for a Jewish refugeeorganisation. After the war he worked in thefurniture and interior design business; even-tually he became managing director of acompany which, as well as being a householdname in Britain, was heavily involved inexport work which led to international travel.Company take-overs and policy changes led tohis retirement from this line of business in1988; the following year Vernon and Gildamoved permanently to their Chianti homewhich they had bought 20 years earlier.

`The original idea was to change ourlifestyle at 50 ¼ So we started lookingfor a place ± we didn't want something inEngland ¼We discarded France because,although it has good scenery and food,some friends of ours had problems withthe people. In Italy we felt at home withthe people and we found it easy toestablish a rapport. I had been here on anumber of occasions on business and hadmade trips around. We decided Italywould be the right place and we felt itessential that although we wanted anattractive part, it had to be near culturalcentres; concerts, opera, whatever. Byprocess of elimination ± for Rome the

countryside was too far from the city,from Venice you needed to drive over anhour to ®nd attractive countryside ± theobvious choice was Florence and Sienabecause everything was available and yetthe countryside was also beautiful.'

Vernon and Gilda took a holiday at Ricavo, acountry hotel in Chianti whose Swiss owneralso acted as an informal estate agent fornorthern Europeans wishing to buy ruralproperties in the district (cf. also Flower,1988: 206±13).

`At that time ± the 1960s ± all the proper-ties around here were bought through her.People came to stay in the hotel whowanted to buy in the area. She lookedaround for properties. Little colonies wereformed: Dutch, German, English ¼Whenwe bought this place it had been aban-doned for 11 years ¼ Anyone buying aproperty required a large amount ofmoney to bring it up to standard. Sincethe Italians were uninterested in doingthat, they were quite happy to ®nd some-one who could take it off their hands.'

Moving on to the business side, he thenoutlined the two enterprises he has set up. The®rst ± olive farming ± was initiated whilst theTuscan house, once restored, was still used as asummer home. The second ± agri-turismo orletting out the cottages ± took off after Vernonand Gilda moved to Chianti permanently.

`We started the new olive grove in 1972 ¼Apart from our own funds we got acontribution from FEOGA for the reclaim-ing of the land. The actual planting of thenew trees was done by a neighbouringfarmer and we paid him for the work ¼ Ittakes a lot of my time ¼ we make oil andthat requires a lot of preparation: it is not asimple process.

Then, there is the agro-turismo side. Wehave three properties: two propertiesdown here and another cottage on thehillside. The organisation of that is muchgreater than the organisation related to theolives. Between the two things, I do



complain that I have spent too much timein the of®ce!'

There is no doubt that, amongst the manypeople we came to know and to interviewduring our Tuscan ®eldwork, Vernon andGilda are amongst the most materially success-ful and contented ± although for them, andothers like them, contentment involves a lot ofhard work and a sense of purpose. The olivegrove is barely pro®table and is subsidised bythe letting. In addition to sharing the runningof the letting, Gilda (who also came to Englandas a child from a German-speaking Jewishfamily) is an accomplished artist who hasexhibited both locally and in London. Theirsocial life is enhanced by the letting sincemanyclients are repeat visitors and friends. Locally,their social integration appears well advanced;they employ local workers in both businessesand Vernon is actively involved in the localolive oil cooperative. Both speak three lan-guages ¯uently and told how they divide theirdinner-parties into English, Italian and Ger-man-speaking evenings. Their adult childrenvisit a couple of times of year, and Vernon andGilda make occasional visits to England.

Barbara's Story

The next case history illustrates some othercharacteristic features of the British in Tuscany± for instance, how many British women cometo Tuscany through marriage (although inBarbara's case not to an Italian) and howmanyelderly British settle in Tuscany after a periodliving in a different part of Italy (in Barbara'scase Milan). It also illustrates aspects of the lifeand attractiveness of Lucca province in north-west Tuscany ± an area which is a long wayfrom the `Tuscan heartland' of Florence andChianti and yet which contains an importantconcentration of British people.In the opening sequence of the interview

Barbara exempli®es the upper-middle-classsocial origins of many British retired peoplein Tuscany:

`My parents came from the Essex coastwhere my father had a shipping business.It had been in the family for 300 years.Like everybody else, I went to boarding

school. I didn't know what to do when Ileft school, but in those days you didn'thave to do anything ± it wasn't the donething for girls to have careers ¼ Well, Iworked as a nurse for a while, but I got aghastly allergy and had to stop ¼ I thenwent off to ®nishing school and I ®nally®nished school at 20.'

Barbara's migration pathway led to theMiddle East, back to London and then on toItaly in 1958. The key to these movements washer marriage to Benny, who had taken Britishnationality soon after the war.

`I met my husband in London. He was inthe insurance world and on a mission forthe Egyptian government. I married andwe went to Egypt where we stayed forthree years until the Suez War. Aftervarious adventures we arrived back inEngland and he had to look for anotherjob. He got a job with a large insurance®rm who sent him to Italy to set up theItalian branch company ¼ It became avery large company here.'

In this next extract Barbara describes heryears in Milan, including how she learnedItalian:

`¼ the ®rst thing we bought was atelevision. That is how I started to learn.My baby daughter went to nursery schooland after a month she didn't speakEnglish any more so I had to speak Italian!

Our social life was mainly with theEnglish-speaking business community inMilan. We had quite an important orga-nisation there ± the British/AmericanClub. After a year, I knew as many peoplein Milan as I did in Cairo or London, andof all nationalities. We had a cocktail partypractically every day. And if we gave adinner it was important that the ambassa-dors from Rome came.'

The house in Lucca province where Barbaraand Benny now live was bought in 1974,several years before Benny's retirement. Bar-bara lists some of the factors that led to the



purchase of the house and the move:

`We lived in a very nice ¯at in the centre ofMilan but it was rented. Then I said, wemust have a home; we must make ainvestment ¼ We had been for manyholidays to this area and the beach atViareggio was very nice in those days.After the climate in Milan, which is foggyand grey, the weather was also one of thethings that attracted me ¼ Then westayed with Benny's cousin who lives onthe other side of the valley and I foundthis for sale. It hadn't been lived in for tenyears and the top part didn't exist then. Itwas just heaps of rubble but it had landwith it. From the minute I saw it, I knewwhat I could do with it; you see theEnglish have imagination when it comesto the restoration of houses ± the Italianswould need an architect ¼ You can'timagine how cheap it was: it has increasedin value 30 times!'

The ®nal passage from this interview con-cerns social and cultural life in the area.Although Barbara is mainly occupied withtending her vegetable plots and horses, sheand her husband maintain a fair number ofsocial contacts in the small local towns ofCamaiore and Pietrasanta, as well as theseaside resort of Viareggio.

`Our social life has changed over theyears, but I still go to theatres and concertswhenever I can. In Pietrasanta there is avery nice theatre, and we are only 10 kmfrom Viareggio. There is always plentygoing on around here.We go out to dinnerparties. We have friends of all nationalities± it is an international group here ¼'

Brian's Story

Brian lives with his Australian wife Shirley in ahistoric hill-town in southwestern Tuscany,close to the Umbrian border. The town, famousfor its wine, remains encased within itsmedieval walls and is virtually a livingmuseum. Brian and Shirley are interestingbecause of their decision to live in a small townand not in the open countryside like most of

the British in Tuscany outside of Florence.Their house is on the edge of the townramparts and enjoys spectacular views. Brian'sstory illustrates once more the elasticity withwhich we have to view the concept of retire-ment. For him (like Vernon), `retirement' toItaly signi®ed a change of direction rather thana cessation of work.Brian was 67 when interviewed. Shirley is

his second wife and rather younger. Brian hastwo grown-up children by a previousmarriagein Australia. Seeing them only very infre-quently has been the main negative aspectabout his otherwise successful move to Tus-cany.Brian came from a legal family in suburban

London. Being of an artistic inclination, Brianfollowed grammar school with courses in artand graphic design at Regent Street Polytech-nic. This led to a career in advertising in whichhe rose quickly to become artistic director of alarge advertising agency with clients in Amer-ica and Australia. He moved to Australia andset up his own company there, spending twoyears in Hong Kong before he retired fromadvertising at the age of 55.The decision to come to Italy was couched in

the following terms:

`I married an Australian but still felt veryEnglish all the time I was in Australia ¼ Igot this nostalgic thing about trips toEngland and Europe. Then I went toMilan to do a project there. That's whatreally started the whole Italian thing. Iliked Milan a lot and the next year wentback for a holiday. This became a regularthing: I used to go to Italy for work, hire acar and drive all over the place. This wasin the late '60s and early '70s ¼ Then,when we retired, we simply came here tolook for a place to buy. We weren't quitesure whether Italy would be long-term.That was 12 years ago!'

Since they have moved to southern TuscanyBrian and Shirley have continued working.Both are able to indulge their love of painting.Brian writes and photographs for Australiantravel magazines ± mostly he supplies materialon Italy. Shirley makes and sells tapestries andgives private English lessons.



Brian was de®nite about the advantages ofliving in a Tuscan town as opposed to thecountryside:

`Well, we didn't want to run a car anymore: we both had had enough of cars. Ifyou don't have a car, you have to live in atown and that is the best decision wemade. I can't tell you how hard the wintercan be here. There can be snow, you can'tget out, power lines are down ± all theseproblems happen. We know some expatswho live in farmhouses and it's oneproblem after another. They also don'tmake much contact with local Italians ¼How do we live without a car? Theshopping is easy because we have localshops. But the great thing about livinghere is that we have a marvellous busservice. We go to Siena on the bus once afortnight. We can go to Florence and wecan even be in Rome at 9 am in themorning from here on public transport,though we have to get up very early! Youcan't park in these places, after all ¼'

Next, Brian was asked about their social lifeand integration, and also how they coped withthe language.

`When we ®rst came here, we didn't knowanyone except the people we bought thehouse from; they have become very goodfriends ever since. We made some initialfriendships but these were rather from theItalian curiosity angle: people werecurious to see how we ticked. So theyinvited us in for meals ¼ And when theyfound how we were, I think they ratherlost interest. Making real friendships,well, that came a lot later. We now dohave really good Italian friends ¼ Whattype of people are they? That's anothertricky thing, because this is really anagricultural town ± nearly all are contadini(peasant farmers). Even if you scratchsome of the lawyers and doctors, you will®nd a contadino underneath! So thatnarrows it down a bit ¼ None of ourItalian friends can speak ¯uent English.We had both gone to evening classes inAustralia and studied so we had a good

basic Italian grammar background, but wehadn't much conversation ¼ Now we canconverse ± we don't have any realproblems now.'

Brian then moved on to his English-speak-ing friends:

`When we ®rst came here, we didn't knowabout anybody else from England livingin the area. Then we were approached bya member of the Conservatives Abroadwho lived near here who asked us to joinin their activities ± they have little parties,meet occasionally and go to restaurants.We thought that was a good idea and wemight meet some people that way. Andwe did. But we had to put the brakes on abit. We found that it was OK when weused to go to a restaurant and discussthings and have a good time. But thenpeople started inviting the group to theirfarmhouses and laying on lunch foreveryone. And then everybody started tovie with everyone else. It was horrible:people started saying ``their lunch wasn'tvery good last time'' ± you know what Imean? I don't buy that sort of thing, so wetended to ease out of that situation.'

Regarding the future, Brian expressed amixture of optimism and realism:

`We have roots here now, and a lot ofItalian friends. We are not isolated likesome of our farmhouse friends ¼ We arejust enjoying life as it comes ¼ I hope wecan stay on for another 10 or even 20 years¼ But ultimately it all depends on whathappens with health, doesn't it? Shirley isa few years younger, but I am not gettingany younger. I have been in hospital here± I had problems with blood pressure afew years ago. I thought the doctors werevery good and I have had no healthproblems since then, but if either of uswere left on our own, I suppose we wouldnot stay. If Shirley died, I would go toBritain, and I think if the other thinghappened, Shirley would go back toAustralia. It's something we don't thinkabout too much ¼'



James and Valerie's Story

Our ®nal case-study concerns a retired Scottishcouple living in a remote valley near Sarnanoin Marche. Whilst their story contains severalechoes from the previous cases, such asappreciation of the landscape, peace and quiet,and friendliness of local people, it also intro-duces some new elements. James and Valeriecan be regarded as lower-middle-class, theyhave only modest means, and they havechosen to settle in a `new' and hence cheaperpart of central Italy where there are relativelyfew British settlers, all of them recent arrivals.They are the antithesis of the ChiantishireBritish.James set out the background to their move

as follows:

`Mywife was suffering from ill-health andI was working for a retail company wherethe normal retirement age was 60. At 52years of age, with a small inheritance andthe pension rights I had already achieved,we made the decision to move to Italy. Wehad been to Italy on many holidays andmy wife's health had always improvedduring our stays. At that stage we werewatching the press and the Sunday Timeshad an advert ± ``Properties for sale in LeMarche, ready for occupation in 1993,prices from £50,000''. We had looked atproperties on previous visits to Italy butthe cost was prohibitive. So we madearrangements to come and meet the agenthere. We viewed the site and there weretwo houses under renovation. One was®nished and this one partly done. Weliked the site and the area, plus thescenery. The price was right so we wentahead. I signed the deeds, went back toScotland and handed my notice in. Wethen hastily read up on what you shoulddo when you move to Italy. That's how itall happened. We came in September tolook at the place and were out here thefollowing June, 1993.'

As the questionnaire survey discussed ear-lier showed, antipathy to the UK was a factorin many moves to Italy. James put this pointwith some force:

Ì have travelled all round Britain and theindustrial belt of Scotland is the absolutepits! I don't know how anyone couldenjoy living there. The difference betweenthere and here shows how much Britainhas degenerated. The mindless violence athome is horrendous ¼ It is a breakdownof normal family life. Here, it restores yourfaith in human nature ¼'

However, Valerie's health was the mainfactor.

Ì contracted this illness at home. I was ingreat pain and couldn't move well.During our holidays, I felt so much betterin Italy, and then felt ill at home again. Ibegan to question why this was happen-ing. It appeared the water in Scotlanddidn't agree with me. Because of thegranite the water is soft. Here it is lime-stone so it is harder. At home I was gettingto the stage where I was con®ned to awheelchair. Here I can climb the stairs andcan even drive the car ¼ This is justparadise as far as I am concerned.Although we are a bit cut off, I don't feellonely ¼ I hate noise and love the sceneryand the birds here ± that is, those that havenot been shot!'

The main practical problem James andValerie face is their still rudimentary knowl-edge of Italian. Perhaps partly for this reason,they have been àdopted' by the local farmersand their wives who live just up the lane.According to Valerie:

`The local people have been absolutelymarvellous. Our Italian is limited and theydon't know any English. They invite us upfor dinner and it's a hoot! The ®rst timethe farmer visited us he gave us histelephone number in case we got stuckwith the car. It snowed shortly afterwardsand he came and towed us up the road.Since then they've put tarmac on the roadand we have no problem. But they stillvisit us ¼ I went to visit Rita, the farmer'swife, the other night. She told me a groupof women were having a night out and



would I like to come. They were going outtomangiare.We set off in a convoy of sevencars in thick fog, met up with seven othercars, and set off again to a pizzeria wherewe had fabulous pizzas. There were 14different types! Now thatwas a night out!'

James continues the story of their dealingswith the local people:

`There are three other farmers who we arefriendly with. One of them has taken meunder his wing, from an agricultural pointof view. He has vacated a large corner ofone of his ®elds and has brought every-thing down to us in seed form ± peas andbeans and so on ± and told me what to dowith them. He's told us all about theprocesses the vegetables have to gothrough. We have been invited to theirhome for a meal and we've had him andhis wife up here. He's a wonderful oldfellow! Basically our social life is with thelocal Italians. We can't, of course, have aproper conversation with them but wemanage somehow. In Britain I know Iwould not have bothered to persist withtwo Italians living next door who couldn'tconverse with me! That would be the casewith most British people, I think, but it isnot the case here. Apart from that we havegood friends in Sarnano ± a young couplewho are British. He works as a cabinet-maker and is doing very well. AnotherBritish couple have also moved in nearthem ¼ but we avoid British people whohave holiday homes here. We havenothing in common with them.'

CONCLUSION

The nature of the evidence presented in thispaper is as heterogeneous as the migrationprocesses and life-histories we have sought todescribe. To recap, each of the four mainsections of the paper has dealt with a differenttype of data: historical and literary evidence toreconstruct the long involvement of the Britishin Tuscany; census and other of®cial data toattempt a quantitative portrayal of the currentBritish presence in the region; questionnaire

responses to achieve a more detailed portraitof our target population of elderly Britishresidents; and depth interviews to ¯esh outsome broadly typical cases. In this conclusionwe draw some of the threads of our analysistogether and place our ®ndings within thecontext of the small number of related studies.The ®rst point is to reiterate the historical

speci®city of Tuscany as a destination forelderly British migrants. Tuscany represents aclear deviation from a notional `standardmodel' of international retirement migrationwhich sees people moving abroad to predict-able destinations and residential settingschannelled by their prior holiday experiencesand the dominant factor of climate: a modelwhich is most clearly seen in the south ofSpain. Tuscany's speci®city has partly to dowith the long British presence which startedwith the Grand Tour ± althoughwemust stressthat much research remains to be done on thehistorical connections between those who havearrived since the 1950s and the previousperiods of settlement outlined in the ®rst partof the paper. Partly too it has to do with theparticular amenities of Tuscany and Umbriawhich are seen less in terms of climatic andseaside attractions and much more in terms oflandscape, high culture and the `Italian way oflife'. Above all (with the major exception ofresidents in Florence), movement to this part ofItaly is seen as a `rural idyll' which perhaps hasmore in commonwith recent British settlementin Provence or the Dordogne than with Maltaor the Iberian coasts. We shall pick up thecomparison with France later in this conclu-sion.The second concluding point is that our

Tuscan ®eld research has led us towards apartial deconstruction of the very concept ofinternational retirement migration on whichthe entire research project was based. OurTuscan data have made us realise that:

. only in a minority of cases have elderly orretired British arrived in Tuscany by meansof an international migration which coin-cides with or follows retirement;

. many people reject the notion of retirement,either because they wish to carry onworkingas long as possible or because they do notmake a clear distinction between work and



leisure;. numerous cases exist where the `inter-national' part of the migration precedes the`retirement' move, e.g. an intitial migrationto Italy to work or marry is followed by aninternal move within Italy at or around`retirement';

. although all our subjects were Britishnationals, only a minority had a retirementmigration to Italy direct from the UK; agreater number had followed more complexmigration paths including many withcosmopolitan backgrounds and global ex-perience of prior mobility.

Thirdly, the paper has given ample evidenceof the diversity of experience of the elderlyBritish in Tuscany and its adjacent areas. Thisdiversity is expressed partly through a widerange of variable mechanisms and pathways ofmigration, and partly through the ®ve geogra-phical sub-areas into which our questionnairedata were divided. Florence and Chianti wereshown to contain the longest-established Brit-ish populations; arrivals in southern Tuscany,Umbria and Marche were on the whole morerecent. Differences between the various sub-areas were also noted with regard to sex, age,household size and composition, educationaland class background, housing tenure, priormobility and integration. More subtle perspec-tives on these and other characteristics wereoffered by the interviewees. They gave insightsinto the relative attractions of living in differ-ent parts of the region; retirement, migrationand site-selection processes; post-`retirement'activities; integration and plans for the future.For instance, Vernon and Brian had had

high-¯ying careers which had led to earlyretirement and a continuation of professionalactivity (but in different ®elds to their careers)in Tuscany. Vernon and Gilda had opted forChianti because of the landscape and nearnessto Florence and Siena, Brian and Shirley chosea small town because of their wish not to beisolated and dependent on a car, and Jamesand Valerie were drawn to a remote locationbecause of the cost factor, their love of peaceand quiet, and their wish to avoid the upper-class British retiree and holiday-maker.Varying insights were given into language

and integration, including a demonstration

that the latter does not necessarily depend onthe former. James and Valerie, despite theirpoor Italian, were in many ways more inte-grated with the local people than wasMargaret, a `loner' in Florence who hadexcellent Italian but whose real friends werein Britain. Each of the interviewees gave someinformation on how social networks wereformed with other British residents andItalians. Both Margaret and Brian showedhow, despite prolonged absences in othercountries, a certain quintessential `Britishness'remains.Fourthly, our survey can be compared with

others. Given the obvious differences betweenthe British involvement with Tuscany and thatin Spain or Malta, the most fruitful compar-isons are with Hoggart and Buller's researchon British home-owners in rural France. Spacedoes not permit a detailed comparison; just afew salient points will be made. Despite thedifferences in survey parameters (the Frenchstudy concentrated on home-owners), strikingsimilarities can be noted with regard to thesocio-occupational backgrounds and motiva-tions of the two groups, especially whenHoggart and Buller (1995a) separated out theretired subsample of their population. Man-agerial, administrative and technical occupa-tions dominated British home-owners in ruralFrance; teaching was the single most importantprior occupation, closely followed by companydirector. Both rural France and Tuscany/Umbria can be regarded as `high-amenity'areas. The main attractions for retirementmigrants in Hoggart and Buller's study werea combination of the beauty and peace of theFrench countryside, a warmer climate, Frenchfood and drink, and the French way of life. Anantagonism towards the current political andsocial climate in Britian was also notedamongst Hoggart and Buller's respondents.Social integration processes described byBuller and Hoggart (1995) are also remarkablysimilar, with many positive comments on thehelpfulness and friendliness of local Frenchpeople and a desire to avoid too much contactwith other British. The contrasts that we havedrawn between different sub-areas of Tuscanyand Umbria have parallels in the differencesnoted by Hoggart and Buller (1995b) betweenareas such as Normandy, the Dordogne and



Provence. For instance Umbria and Marche'soverspill function with regard to Tuscany isparalleled by Lot which attracts `those whothought to buy in Dordogne but found itsprices too high'.On the other hand, some differences exist

between the ®ndings of the two researchprojects. There was not a strong prior link toFrance amongst elderly British residing there.Out of a subsample of 125 retired households,71.2% had never lived in France before buyinga property there and 53.6% had no friends orrelatives who had ever lived in France.Hoggart and Buller (1995a) also recordedsurprisingly low levels of holiday activity inthe area prior to buying. These differences canbe partly explained by the de®ning criterion ofhouse-ownership in Hoggart and Buller'sstudy, and by the fact that the timing of themain wave of settlement in France is morerecent, linked to the British house-price boomof the late 1980s which enabled the migrants totrade from a strong to a weak market (Hoggartand Buller, 1995c).Finally, we consider what is happening with

regard to the British in Tuscany in the contextof other sociodemographic and rural processesin the region. The retired or elderly Britishhave contributed to a repopulation of theTuscan countryside which in statistical termshas been clearly evident during the 1980s and1990s. Like British migrants in rural France(Buller and Hoggart, 1994), the British in ruralTuscany have been key agents of counter-urbanisation. Telleschi (1994) mapped thecommune-level pattern of population changein Tuscany for each decade between 1951 and1991, showing rapid rural depopulationduring 1951±71, little change during 1971±81,and repopulation in all except some remotemountain communes during 1981±91. Britishresidents, present in signi®cant numbers inChianti since the early 1960s, were thus thepioneers of a re-evaluation of the attractions ofrural living. They were soon followed by otherEuropeans, notably the Germans who are nowthe dominant force in the foreign-ownedproperty market (most of the Germans aresecond-home buyers rather than permanentresidents, however). There is also a revival ofinterest in rural property on the part of Italians,especially those coming from the wealthy

industrial cities of the North Italian Plain.Hence, from its wholesale rejection and aban-donment by mezzadri in the 1950s and 1960s,the Tuscan countryside has quickly become aninternationally and nationally coveted asset.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper presents results from the Tuscanphase of an ESRC-funded project (R000235688) on International Retirement Migrationfrom Britain to Southern Europe undertakenby the authors together with Tony Warnes andAllan Williams. Amongst many individualswho provided invaluable assistance inTuscany, we would particularly like to recordour thanks to the staff of the British Consulatein Florence, as well as Raymond Flower andMary Foreman. The helpful comments of tworeferees are acknowledged.

NOTES

(1) This phrase, coined by Percy Bysshe Shelleywhen he invited his cousin Thomas Medwin tojoin him, is repeated in the titles of two books onShelley and the British in Tuscany (Hamilton,1974; Curelli, 1985).

(2) Something of the same view comes across inBernardo Bertolucci's recent (1996) ®lm StealingBeauty (Italian title Io ballo da sola) which centreson the bohemian and gossipy life of an English-speaking group in Chianti.

(3) The data were supplied to us in September 1995by Dr Sergio Carfagna of ISTAT's ServizioDemogra®co.

(4) The Garfagnana has a long history of emigra-tion, much of it directed to Britain, especiallyLondon and Scotland (Farnocchia Petri, 1995;Sponza, 1988); some of the `British' residents arethe British-nationality descendents of emigrantswho left during emigration waves which lastedfrom the late 19th century to the 1950s.

(5) Interviews with Ralph Grif®ths, 22 September1995, and Michael Holmes, 17 October 1995.

(6) Because of the prohibitive expense of accom-modation in the Chianti heartland, we operatedfrom a small rented cottage in a less popular, butperipheral part of Tuscany. The ®eld researchoccupied the three months September±November 1995.

(7) Umbria andMarche were included because theywere part of the Florence consular district. Morethan a ®fth of the respondents to the question-



naire survey were living in Umbria, plus ahandful in Marche included under `Umbria' inthe tables.

(8) In Table 5 and those that follow, the totals arelower than 118 because of failure by some of therespondents to answer the relevant questions.

(9) The interviews were conducted by the authorsin October 1995.

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Diverse paths: the elderly British in Tuscany

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