Helena Attlee

Helena Attlee has been an habitué of Italy’s loveliest cities and landscapes for over forty years. However, her real interest has always been in getting beyond the familiar façade of beautiful places and delicious food to lesser-known aspects of Italian culture. This has been the inspiration for both of her most recent books.

Both "Lev’s Violin, An Italian Adventure" (publication 1st April 2021) and "The Land Where Lemons Grow, The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit" have been broadcast as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’. "The Land Where Lemons Grow" was a Sunday Times Bestseller. It was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year, and won the Guild of Food Writers ‘Food Book of the Year’ in 2015.

“Helena Attlee’s writing … is so sharp and evocative that she could have been writing about potatoes in Plymouth: she’d still have had me gripped.”

YOTTAM OTTOLENGHI, WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Unmissable, essential for all lovers of Italy… she has transformed my view of the country.”

Robin Lane Fox, FINANCIAL TIMES