In the last 24 years, no other writer has likely lured more travellers to Italy than Frances Mayes. Her 1996 memoir Under the Tuscan Sun tells the story of how she fell in love with a rundown 200-year-old villa outside Cortona, and how she painstakingly restored it alongside her Italian neighbours.

The book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two and a half years, was made into a feature film starring Diane Lane and has led Mayes to write a series of subsequent love letters to Italy that have inspired many of her readers to dream of relocating to the bel paese.