Bella Ainsworth seeks a new start for his family away from his native London, after the ravages of the Great War. That’s when you decide open an exclusive hotel with her husband and children in the small town of Portofinowhere years ago he spent his honeymoon.
But this change so desired by Bella does not go as planned: both the guests and the employees are demanding and difficult to please, secrets from the past that the Ainsworth family has been hiding for years are revealed and, without knowing how, the hotel is placed in the crosshairs of local political interests in the service of Mussolini.
This is the argument of Port Fino 1926the novel of J.P. O’Conell which arrives in Spain after becoming a series starring Natascha McElhoneknown for her roles in the series Californication (2007) y The crown (2016).
Actually, Portofino Hotel It has a lot of traces left by period series such as The crown and it has already been released in Australia, where it was the second most-watched on-demand series on the Foxtel platform; Italy, becoming the most watched international premiere on Sky Italiaand in Catalonia, with very good reception by TV3 audiences.
written in confinement
Today, this story of self-improvement takes us to the beautiful Italian Riviera of the 1920s. “When I started writing Portofino 1926 we were still in the midst of a pandemic, and the prospect of enjoying a glass of prosecco on the sunny terrace of a hotel in the Italian Riviera was so unlikely that it was even comical.. But, apparently, I turned that frustration into motivation, and by channeling it into writing, I was able (albeit briefly) to forget everything we were told in the daily news and travel in my imagination to to the beautiful seaside town of Portofino, in 1926. ”, says the author.
Like any good historical novel, it took some time to research. “To document myself during the creation process, I combined, on the one handmy childhood memories when I spent the holidays in Italy, and, on the other hand, the old-fashioned archival research I conducted at the British Library. Also, to get an idea of what the Riviera was like in the 1920s, I read a lot of travel literature and several novels, including The hotelof Elizabeth Bowen; and as if to capture the essence of what it was like to be British in Italy, it’s best to start with EM ForsterI read his novels where angels don’t venture there A room with a viewadmits O’Conell.
All that remains is to visit us for a trip that gives us ideas for Easter which is approaching: “We will be staying at the Portofino Hotel, the boutique pension just opened by Bella and Cecil Ainsworth, a wealthy London couple who moved to Italy with their children, Lucian and Alice, hoping to leave behind the devastation caused by the Great War. Don’t forget to pack your fanciest outfits (Portofino is full of stylish travellers), but also more than one swimsuit: the beaches of the Bay of Paraggi are truly impressive”.