John Hooper is Italy and Vatican Correspondent of The Economist and writes for The Economist and other publications on trans-national organized crime. He has been a foreign correspondent for over 30 years and reported from more than 50 countries, working for – among others – the BBC, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, Reuters and NBC. His book, the New Spaniards (originally published as The Spaniards) was a bestseller in both hard- and softback and won the Allen Lane award for a best first work of Literature or History. His latest book, The Italians, was published in January, 2015, and has featured in best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic.