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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

This week I'm very pleased to be joined by Lloyd Grossman, one of our great Renaissance men.

He's a television presenter, he's a rock guitarist, he's a Pasta Source magnate,

and he's also as his new book, An Elephant in Rome,

Benini, the Pope and the Making of the Eternal City demonstrates, he's a formidable scholar,

an antiquarian, and his subject is, of course, another Renaissance man, or a baroque man, at least.

This story of Benini. Lloyd, what was it that made you think this is the guy to write a book about?

Where did you first fall in love with Bernini? Well, I sort of fell in love with one of Bernini's

works before I actually knew it was by Bernini. I love Italy. And one of the strangest things in Rome, and Rome was full of very strange and

intriguing things, is this rather large statue of an elephant in the Piazza della Minerva, which I first

stumbled across, you know, accidentally on my very first trip to Rome. And subsequently, whenever I walked through that square,

which I often did because the very excellent papal tailors are around the corner and they do rather

beautiful socks in different sort of appellational colors. And on my way to the sock shop, I often sort of

pass by this statue of an elephant and thought, what the heck is a statue of an elephant doing

in the middle of a Roman square? So to satisfy my own curiosity, I began to try to answer that

question.

And it took me straight into the middle of 17th century Rome,

about which I knew very little.

I love learning.

...