By the way if any readers are wondering who Alex is you can find out more, along with lots of great information and analysis about Italy, on his excellent Italy Chronicles site.

Glad you found the earthquake piece interesting – it might put some people at ease.

The National Earthquake Centre’s RSS feed is a useful resource and I used it to check whether the earthquake which was predicted to hit Rome recently has any basis in fact – and it did not, not really.

Lots of quakes happen here every year – but very, very few do any real damage.

All the best,

Alex