Some peoples indulge in self-analysis while others leave the task to outsiders, and the Italians, who have attracted dazzled commentators age after age, are leaders in the second category.

Embellished by glorious cities and countryside, endowed with succulent cuisine and choice wines, home of the greatest of western art, Italy has long been the site of European fantasies of the sybaritic life. Or, as John Hooper puts it, 'few countries are as comprehensively associated with happiness as Italy".

However, Italy irritates as much as it delights, especially when its politics are under discussion. Hooper, a foreign correspondent resident in Italy and plainly an assiduous reader of international surveys which allow him to quote things like GINI coefficients on regional inequality, is not prone to fantasies, but as a commentator he has a tendency to be carried away by what could be called the Rosebud factor, a phrase taken from the last word uttered by Citizen Kane. The investigative journalist in Orson Welles's film was charged with enquiring into the press baron's private life and became convinced that the word held the key to everything. Is there one or more Italian rosebud?

Hooper seems to believe so, and has ended up writing a very uneven book depending on whether he approaches Italy as the sober reporter or as the speculative commentator. Most commonly for him the underlying explanatory key is the Catholic Church. Only a fool could deny the impact of Catholicism on the creation of Italian culture, although it is surely an element of decreasing importance in a secularised society. Hooper writes, for instance, that disabled Italians are kept out of sight due to the medieval Catholic belief that "deformity was a punishment from God", but both the invisibility and the theological underlay are dubious in the extreme. So too is his suggestion that an Italian reluctance to "have their pets euthanised" and their horror at the American attachment to the death penalty have roots in Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life. Is the life of ailing pets more prolonged in Italy than elsewhere?

This obsession with a Catholic mentality undermines even his stronger sections. He wonders why the institution which elsewhere would be known the Ministry of Justice has in Italy the title of Pardon and Justice, and stretches credulity with his hypothesis that the dual title is related to soft-heartedness as seen in the undue indulgence of parents towards children in Italy and to Catholic concepts of "confession, penitence and absolution". That is the sort of notion that could lead to night-long, wine-fuelled debates, but here it does lead Hooper, even if not smoothly, onto a shrewd discussion of the appalling dysfunction of the court system, specifically of the shameful treatment of Adriano Sofri, charged 16 years after the event with the murder of a police officer at the height of the terrorist emergency.

The only evidence was provided by a self-confessed participant in the crime who turned state evidence. The case dragged on for nine years, with seven trials before both he and his accuser were found guilty. No one believed in Sofri's guilt but when his friends wished to appeal for a Presidential pardon, he dissociated himself from the move since an appeal involved an implicit admission of responsibility. Hooper believes this procedure and attitude "clearly arise from Catholic doctrine". It is surely more plausible to take the man at his word.

I am dubious about some other judgments. I am not convinced of the Italian reluctance to buy dishwashers, even if there was a survey in 2005 which suggested this, nor do I believe that this is a manifestation of a widespread "technophobia". Is Italy really "resistant to contemporary art"? Does Italy not produce many good cheeses? Is there any connection between the attitudes shown by Pinocchio and prevalence of cheating in schools and universities?

And I am going to say bluntly that the author is mistaken when he states that the word 'verita' means both truth and version. It means the first and not the second, so while Hooper's interpretation leads him to reflect acutely on the baffling complexity and multiplicity of Italian laws, the labyrinthine bureaucracy the country has saddled itself with and the sophistry of much political or legal reasoning, the explanation has to be sought elsewhere. It may just be that Italians provide the most egregious example anywhere of the non application of law.

The book is insightful on such divergent topics as the rise of Silvio Berlusconi, on the restrictive practices in industry as well as in professional life, on organised crime and daily corruption, and also on heightened enjoyment of life in Italy. Hooper has plainly travelled the byways as well as the highways, but he too frequently encloses his tale in strange covers.