Deirdre Pirro

Well over twenty years ago, I sailed from Melbourne, my home town in Australia, on an ocean liner heading for Italy but never used my return ticket home. Instead, I married the ship’s Italian captain and settled in the very heart of Florence just behind the beautiful Basilica of Santa Croce where I now live and work as an international lawyer and freelance journalist.

Apart from the law which is the true love of my life, my interests include the sometimes almost unfathomable mysteries of modern Italian history and the history of gastronomy. I write non-fiction pieces for magazines and newspapers in Italy and abroad and have a regular column for The Florentine, Tuscany’s English-language newspaper and have done since it was founded in 2005. My column Italian Sketches served as a springboard for my book Italian Sketches: The Faces of Modern Italy (The Florentine Press) published in 2009.

You can contact me at: ddpirro@gmail.com