A Long Way for a Pizza

Author and journalist Brian Mooney returns to Italy, the country where some 30 years earlier he reported on the deaths and elections of two Popes, and the kidnap and murder of its former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro. He travels on foot, setting out from his home in Essex, and going via London so that he can walk from St Paul’s Cathedral to St Peter’s Basilica. His journey is for enjoyment, but is also a quest to find out what kind of a pilgrim he is; Hilaire Belloc’s classic, The Path to Rome, helps him come up with some surprising answers. Belloc’s and Mooney’s journeys could not be more different. Belloc, pilgrim staff in hand, set out in the early 20th century to celebrate Christianity; Mooney, with Visa card, BlackBerry and St Luke’s Gospel in his rucksack, journeys through a much changed secular Europe.A Long Way for a Pizza is a picaresque and at times provocative narrative of a 1,300 mile walk through France, across the Jura and Alps and down Italy, and a cheerful account of the people Mooney meets and places he visits.