Orlando Furioso

"This is another wonderful poem. It comes from the legend of the French Knights of the Round Table and it’s all about warriors and wanderers who go walking through woods, crossing rivers, climbing mountains. There is a lot of imagination: flying horses and dragons and miraculous springs. The women are courageous and willing to travel to know the world better. That’s what I like in this epic poem. There are many women fighting as men and who go around looking for adventures, for the men they love, riding horses all around the world. It is a beautiful epic poem and the Italian language of Ludovico Ariosto is so inventive and vivid and light. He lived between 1474 and 1533 and he was from the north-centre of Italy, Emilia-Romagna, specifically from a great town called Ferrara. The fourth chapter is about a lot of people who fly, and I love this. In another life maybe I was a bird – I often dream of flying and I love birds. It’s a story of imagination, a sort of fable, but wonderfully written and described."