CAN THE SEX-MAD MAFIA STEREOTYPE REALLY BE TRUE?

Growing up in South Wales, I was surrounded by Italians. The cafés and icecream parlours were all run by Sevinis, Bernis, Risolis and Basinis. Quite who told these Mediterranean folk that it was going to be worth their while emigrating to the dismal coal mining valleys of Glamorgan must have been having a good laugh.

Yet as John Hooper says in his lively new survey, Italians love pranksters. Theirs is the country of Pinocchio, and of Pirandello and Fellini, people whose work gnawed at ‘the boundary between reality and fiction, madness and sanity’.

And Italy adores masks – masked balls, the Commedia dell’arte. They are vain too: the biggest purchasers of sunglasses in the world, and with 30% more plastic surgery procedures even than Americans.

Perhaps due to Catholicism, which would hold that ultimate truths are known only to God, in Italy a court case can drag on for decades. In 2012, there was a backlog of 3.4 million criminal cases, involving five national police forces.

Until recently there were 375,000 separate Italian laws. So cheats and swindlers can exploit the loopholes and hide amid the flowery bureaucracy. Hence the ups and downs of Silvio Berlusconi. Yet in Italy people admire cheek and acumen. Why shouldn’t a person give their luck a little push?

Hooper calls Italians ‘an eclectic muddle’, and so is Italy itself. Until unification in 1861, Italy was always being colonised, vulnerable to ‘the whim of foreign rulers and the might of foreign armies’. The first Venetians were ‘refugees from the German tribal invasions’. Sicily is ‘a fusion of Arab, Jewish, Byzantine and Norman elements’. There are Albanian and Croatian communities in the south, and Catalan is spoken in Sardinia.

So the family is the one sure focus of security. Children are ‘an unmitigated blessing and delight, a childless woman is an object of pity’. Divorce is the lowest in Europe. Family-run businesses thrive. It is not fanciful to view the Mafia as a version or extension of family life.

They’ve not needed feminism because the women are already in charge – the cult of the Madonna, as exemplified by the buxom great stars, Gina Lollobrigida, below, Monica Vitti, Claudia Cardinale and Sophia Loren. Sex is high on the agenda. The likes of Marcello Mastroianni used to judge the Miss Italia competition, awarding marks for ‘the curvaceousness of the contestant’s behind’. According to a Durex poll, Italians clock up more orgasms than any other nation in the world.

Next to sex and procreation comes food. The ‘integrity of Italian cuisine’ cannot be underestimated, with eating together being ‘part of a family’s sense of identity’. There are few McDonald’s in Italy, and as of yet no Starbucks. Wonderful.

But of course there are drawbacks. According to Hooper, homosexuality is considered an ‘illness’ and no macho male would dream of wearing pink socks. They are such snobs that it is considered shameful to use launderettes. But let us never lose sight of their bravery. Of the 100,000 Italians who joined the resistance against Mussolini and fascism, 35,000 perished.

John Hooper has written a fine introduction to these complex characters, who are evidently as contrary, dark, maddening and brilliant as, well, the Welsh.