Gaia Servadio
(13 September, 1938 – 20 August, 2021)

I have been asked to write a few words on Gaia Servadio’s life… I have known Gaia on and off for forty years. I entered her world when I first arrived in London age 18 from an English country school. She was at the centre of an Anglo Italian life with which I was completely unfamiliar… her circle intellectual and rarified, arty and literary;  mine focused on Sunday nights with Italian mates who were more concerned with the football results from the Serie A.

Gaia invited me to her parties which.. to a provincial schoolboy … were a terrifyingly sophisticated mix of English intelligentsia, Italian high priests of the music world, a sprinkling of London glitterati, and some raffish down and outers to leaven the loaf. I felt like I’d been thrown in at the deep end. I learned, little by little, how to sing for my supper and eventually, aided by Gaia’s generous nature summoned up the courage to talk to what seemed to me impossibly lofty giants in their fields.

Further proof (if any were needed) that one had arrived in a happening place, was when we discovered that Gaia‘s husband at the time ..William Mostyn Owen …had been cast in the film Fumo di Londra directed and starring Alberto Sordi. William played a dandy partygiver in a very fancy white suit. We all wanted to be him.

After that period in the early 1980s our paths diverged and it was not until four or five years ago that Gaia, having asked me to become a trustee of FAI UK, came back into my life.

It was she who had taken it upon herself to launch the English branch of Italy’s version of the National Trust. How superbly well she was positioned to do so. One could imagine no better bridge between the UK and Italy than Gaia; with her great knowledge of both cultures, an infectious energy and a will to make things happen her way… with a little cajoling, a lot of humour and oodles of enthusiasm.

We had to find a way of turning this nascent idea into something more concrete, and in aid of this, Gaia was always concocting novel methods of finding new members. Concerts would be organised, day trips to exhibitions, lectures by luminaries in the fields of art and music, but most important, week long trips to Italy with the help of her niece Carolina Valmarana. It was those that were mostly sought-after for their uniqueness in combining wonderful places to visit, with owners’ tours in Italian grand houses

All these would be organised in trustee meetings either in her drawing room or on her kitchen table, followed by chaotic but delicious dinners, all sprinkled with her fabulous laugh.

Looking back I wish I hadn’t let so many years go by in between our first and later friendship; I would no doubt now have many more wonderful memories of a woman who was unique in her way. She was a great journalist, an accomplished writer of fiction, history and about music, a warm and loving friend, mother and wife, and finally, the organiser of this merry band of brothers and sisters who will hopefully carry on her FAI legacy in the future … as she would have wanted.

I’m sure I speak for all the Trustees when I say she will be sorely missed. We are united in sending our thoughts and affection to all her family.

Edmondo di Robilant, FAI UK Trustee

Undoubtedly England’s most famous Italian, she left us on August 20^th in Rome, where she had been staying for some time. Born in Padua on 13 September 1938, she was a great lover of art, classical music and opera and the author of some forty fiction and non-fiction books.

She had explored the Middle East far and wide as a reporter and lived for a period in Russia. In her London home, in Chelsea, among piles of books, she welcomed famous friends from Bernardo Bertolucci to Claudio Abbado, Primo Levi, Philip Roth and Francis Bacon. A tireless traveler, she had been all over the world, often with Inge Feltrinelli, her inseparable friend.

For several years she was FAI UK’s Vice Chairman promoting the love for Italian cultural heritage in London and in the UK.

Two marriages, three children, five grandchildren and some important loves. She was the former mother-in-law of Boris Johnson who married her daughter Allegra in 1987.

Beautiful, ironic, hospitable, charming, very good at entertaining and cooking, in love with life, she leaves an unbridgeable gap in the Italian and English intellectual community.