ROME LETTER: When your humble correspondent first arrived in Rome, he did so in a pre-computer era when the most astonishing means of communication known to man was the telex machine. Those were the days, too, when tourist guidebooks tended to have the solid look of the Upper Sixth Latin grinder - no colour, few pictures, few maps and plenty of text.
As we set about the business of getting to know Rome in our first winter, we were immediately informed by an "old hand" that there was one - and only one - guidebook worth consulting. "You simply have to buy yourselves a copy of Georgina Masson's Companion Guide To Rome," we were told.
Given the era, we were not worried either by the relative paucity of illustrations or by the more than 500 pages of text.
Soon, one came to appreciate not only Georgina Masson's enthusiasm and encyclopaedic knowledge of Rome, but also her eccentrically-opinionated impressions of the Eternal City.
First published in 1965, the Companion Guide To Rome has just been revised by old Etonian, Oxford graduate and former fishmonger, John Fort. In many senses, he was the perfect man for the job. After all, it takes an eccentric Englishman to know an eccentric Englishwoman.
After three "miserable years working in the City", Fort decided that merchant banking was not for him. Instead, one morning 31 years ago, he packed his bags and headed for Rome. Here, he became involved with an uncle, a retired naval officer, who had set up a salmon and trout smoking business in a former olive mill in Tivoli, close to Rome.
For the next quarter of a century, Fort travelled around Rome much like the rest of us do - battling with the city's chaotic traffic. Except that in his case he was busy looking for street signs and shop numbers on his fish delivery run. That all changed two years ago when he opted out of the fish business and sold his little shop at the side of the Palazzo Doria Pamphili.
Fort had time on his hands and was wondering what to do with himself when his landlord (and friend), Prince Jonathon Doria Pamphili, dropped by, saying that he had just been asked by the publishers of the Companion Guide if he could recommend someone to revise the book. John got the job.
Soon, Oxford and Eton's most successful ex-fishmonger was out stomping the streets of Rome, trying to follow the "tourist walks" prescribed by Dame Georgina. Like the rest of us, Fort quickly came to the conclusion that the walks "range from the gruelling to the exceedingly gruelling", and he soon removed her "Suggested Plan for Walks".
In his reviser's note, Fort points out that the formidable Ms Masson, knows as "Babs" to her friends, had actually had special walking shoes made to her own design by a Roman shoe emporium. Perhaps that was the trick. Born in Rawalpindi in 1912 and educated at the Royal School for the Daughters of the Army at Bath, Georgina was the sort of lady who was accustomed to ordering things to her liking. Rome shoe shops probably got to know her well for, after being sent to post-liberation Rome by the Foreign Office in 1944, she spent the rest of her life here. She died in 1980.
What Fort also cheerfully admits is the extent to which following Georgina around Rome opened his eyes to the richness of a city he rather took for granted. For him, St Peter's had not meant either the Sistine Chapel or the Basilica, but rather the Vatican's duty-free supermarket, where his fish went down a bomb. For him, the Palazzo Farnese was not one of the masterpieces of Renaissance architecture, but rather the residence of one of his best customers, namely the French ambassador.
Ask Fort for his most surprising discovery and he may refer you to the Church of Santa Lucia in Selci. Just off the traffic-choked Via Cavour, this church is to be found in the little Via Selci at a nondescript entrance in a high wall. Arrive at a barrelled wooden hatch, ring a bell and you will, apparently, discover the work of Baroque architect Carlo Maderno and 17th-century architect Francesco Borromini, a pupil of Bernini.
Fort points out, correctly, that most Romans are unaware of the little church's existence. Most foreign correspondents, too, we would shamefacedly add.
In the original foreword to her book, Georgina Masson famously began by writing: "Roma, non basta una vita" (Rome, a lifetime is not enough).
That may well be so, but you could begin by dipping into the revised version of this marvellous guidebook.
The new edition of Georgina Masson's Companion Guide To Rome, revised by John Fort, is published by Boydell & Brewer;
www.boydell.co.uk