Those condemned to spend their lives under grey northern skies can understandably harbour deep longings for the Mediterranean. But there is little reason to think Europe’s current headaches will be cured just by knocking back a few beakers full of the warm south.

A hundred years ago Joyce’s Portrait first appeared in the magazine The Egoist.

Michel de Montaigne set out from France in the summer of 1580 on a long journey which was to take him through Switzerland, Germany and Austria, over the Alps and into Italy. Many things interested him in the life of the Rome of Gregory XIII, but he was struck by how little of the ancient city remained.

Bruce Clunies-Ross remembers a festive meeting of the poet, a Danish expert on sheela-na-gigs and PV Glob, the royal antiquary who wrote of Tollund Man, the natural warmth of the gathering further enhanced by glasses of a Danish spirit flavoured with bog myrtle and a variety of Tuborg made specially for the Danish court.

Handsome men are a dime a dozen, believe me. And what are they going to do? Sit on you, that’s what they’ll do. But Raymond Chandler, oh Raymond, Raymond. There was a guy who knew how to treat furniture.

Goethe, visiting Rome, stumbled upon Neddy, Bluebell and Dobbin receiving the blessings of the Lord. It made his day.

Co Armagh-born Sinead Morrissey is the winner of the prestigious British poetry prize, following in the footsteps of Heaney, Muldoon, Carson and Longley.

Some notable writers left us in the course of 2013. The Guardian remembers some of them through quotations from their remarks about their work or writing, or politics.

For centuries he had found work for idle hands, and his picture book was becoming increasingly popular. Then, at the end of the seventeenth century, some people started saying he didn’t exist.

The French can be very high and mighty about their slow-cooked tripe in the manner of Caen, but there’s more to Italian cooking than red sauce, Elizabeth David insisted.