Henry James wrote of Venice: \'You desire to embrace it, to caress it, to possess it .
John Julius Norwich has put together a dazzling anthology, drawing on the writings of Byron, Goethe, Wagner, Casanova, Jan Morris, Robert Brow.
Reactions to Venice have been, throughout the ages, astonishingly different. propped on its long row of thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, it seems like a vast, warty bug taking a meditative walk\'. . . .\' whereas Mark Twain found St Mark\'s \'so ugly . .
Henry James wrote of Venice: \'You desire to embrace it, to caress it, to possess it