When you consider that, since the seventeenth century, there has been a large British presence in Sicily, it is surprising that our love of animals hasn’t appeared to rub off on the local people. Many families settled there, occupying themselves in several fields, such as the Sanderson’s essence distillery in Messina and the production of Marsala wine in the town of that name. In his book Princes Under the Volcano, Raleigh Trevelyan traces the Marsala story from the time when Benjamin Ingham first left Yorkshire to travel across Sicily in a lettiga, a kind of sedan chair but far less comfortable. He was making for Marsala on the inhospitable west coast – marshy and barren, almost certainly rife with malarial mosquitoes too. One of his countrymen, John Woodhouse, had gone before him and set up a baglio, a kind of warehouse where he had occupied himself with developing the local fortified wine, Marsala. But it was Ingham who refined it to such a state of the art that Lord Nelson ordered gallons to be piped aboard HMS Victory. Rivalry was stern between Woodhouse and Ingham, who eventually became extremely rich, allegedly the greatest tycoon England has ever known. Ingham tamed the Sicilian Mafia, became a Sicilian baron and moved in the highest circles of Sicilian society, commanding considerable respect by loaning money to some of the nobility. He also learned to speak fluent Italian with a marked Sicilian accent, tinged with a touch of Yorkshire.

Ingham’s delightful house in Palermo, Palazzo Ingham, became the city’s Grand Hotel des Palmes in 1874. His hugely successful Marsala wine business was eventually nationalised by Mussolini in 1927 and is now owned by the Cinzano Company.

It wasn’t long before Ingham also met an attractive local lady, the Duchess of Rosalia, nearly six years his senior, but whom he adored. The only problem was she possessed a string of sons who were gamblers. The astute Benjamin, aware of the laws of inheritance, refused to marry despite the constant naggings of the Duchess. As the business continued to grow, he decided more of his family should come out from England. He wrote to ask his sister to send a nephew. When the preferred one, William, died of a fever, his terse response was ‘send another’ and so it was the lugubrious Joseph Whitaker soon arrived.

Gradually, a dynasty was created with the wives of the three Whitakers vying as to who could have the most sumptuous palazzo in Palermo. Joseph’s wife Tina swept the board, entertaining royalty and celebrities from all over the world. Her sisters-in-law made their mark in various ways, such as Effie, who walked about the city with a parrot on her shoulder and was a great tennis player; also Maud, who wore vaporous tea gowns.

It was Tina who ordered the arrangement of the splendid Villa Malfitana in Palermo, while her husband Pip preferred to bird watch on the nearby island of Motya or else disappear into town to visit one of his amours.

On a visit to Palermo I had the chance to visit the Villa Malfitana myself. It is almost as it was in the 1950s at the end of Tina’s life. Music by Tosti lies open on the stands in the ballroom but the grand piano has not been tuned for a decade perhaps. The polar bear skin rugs are still on the floor. As you enter the house from the main portico, your eyes are drawn to two cloisonné elephants originally from the summer palace at Peking and purchased by Pip Whitaker at Christie’s in 1887 for £162 a pair. Nearby, are two 2.4-metre (8-foot) bronze cranes, also Chinese, holding lamps in their beaks and standing on tortoises symbolising the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. It is cool and dim in that grand central corridor and absolutely quiet. The great Gobelin tapestries from the Palazzo Colonna are still the prize treasures of the house but only a palace such as Malfitana could house them. Novelist and poet Hamilton Aide’s watercolours, his bequest to Tina, hang in the silent, rather sad and dusty billiard room. In the Louis Seize room, there are one or two fine examples of Trapani coral work and signed photographs of Queen Mary and Princess Marie, Prince Oskar and King Victor Emmanuel I.

My companion somewhat bitchily remarked that the pearls around the British queen’s neck were not nearly as big as those of the Italian princess. She had obviously been here several times and was impatient to be gone; I only had a tantalising glimpse. I should love to have spent hours there soaking up the atmosphere, wandering round the garden, with its host of rare plants.

We paused to stare at the enormous Ficus magnolioides, a fig tree planted by Pip Whitaker. It has a span of 41 metres (135 feet) and is reputed to be able to shelter 3,000 people. Sadly, then it was time to leave.