I had always liked Franco because his relationship with the white truffle was symbiotic – as it was with his terra (the land where he was born and which he never left). He understood the truffle and everything about it and he looked like a creature of the woods where the truffle is found – like an Italian version of a Hobbit. He used to scuttle about, stooped, rather than walk. “The best white truffle comes from Predappio where Mussolini was born,” he used to tell me. Predappio is nearby in a parallel valley. The fascist dictator had nothing to do with it, apparently, even though Franco, like so many Romagnoli, revered the Duce.