by Dart Travis
Publication: April 2024
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Italian Affairs
1977. It’s five years on from the events in Foreign Affairs. A new English Language Teaching text book by Graham Donaldson, Intercourse (he thinks it means ‘conversation’), is about to be launched on an unsuspecting world by the august United Universities Press. Graham wants time off from teaching at World English Centre (WEC) in Bournemouth for his first promotional tour ever, which will be in Italy. It gives his Director of Studies, Malcolm O’Reilly, an idea. He can go out to the major language teaching conference in Rome and promote WEC at the same time. Gloria, his wife, can accompany him and do a little sightseeing. Graham’s travels take him right around Italy with the UUP reps, the elegant Francesca and the punk-rocker from Blackpool, Luciana. How will the reclusive and bad-tempered Graham take to Italy? The food? The drink? The incessant history? The teachers? The large bottle of olive oil which he has to carry round from place to place? Then there’s Giles, his editor, tagging along to persuade him to become a full-time author. The issues all come to a head when they reach Rome.
Though chronologically the second in the series, it’s the fifth of the comedy series to be written. Readers of the later ones wanted to know just HOW the testy and irritable Graham managed to become world-famous.
Cover illustration by Ed McLachlan
We had to think about colour for this one. The other four took their colour from a ‘certain well-known existing series, but there was never a fifth in that series.
NOTES BY DART TRAVIS
It takes some thought to add a fifth one in a series, especially when it has to be slotted in between two existing titles, FOREIGN AFFAIRS (set in 1972) and HOME AFFAIRS ( set in 1982). I wanted one set in Italy, and earlier in the series rather than later. ITALIAN AFFAIRS (1977) links the surrounding books, and is the shortest of the five. That’s how the story came out and the tale is told in full.
In the ENGLISH AS A FUNNY LANGUAGE SERIES, characters come and go. Graham Donaldson appeared peripherally right at the end of the first book in 1972, but then became a major character in all the later books. Malcolm O’Reilly, overseeing the mayhem, is the only other major character who appears in every title in the series. I felt that as in your real life people appear, some stay around, some disappear then come back again years later, some you never see again.
Will there be a sixth? The main competitors are Mexico, the USA and Spain. The first two could be combined.
Dart Travis 