Chapter 4 demonstrates the gradual entrenchment of the Pisani family in the Bassa Padovana region of Venice’s mainland territories, showing that Villa Pisani formed part of a long-term strategy of estate building. Francesco Pisani’s construction in 1553–54 of his Palladian villa outside Montagnana culminated a multi-generational process of developing the family’s agricultural possessions.

Teaching a language lesson, even for experienced teachers, involves a degree of forethought, and this is typically realized in the form of a lesson plan, even if it is nothing more than a few notes on the back of an envelope.

• 11 Why plan?

• 12 Planning v spontaneity

• 13 Design thinking

• 14 Lesson shapes

• 15 The lesson plan format

• 16 The context (1): The learners

• 17 The context (2): Beyond the classroom

• 18 Aims, objectives, goals and outcomes

• 19 Formulating lesson aims

• 20 Backward design

• 21 Researching and analyzing language

• 22 Anticipating problems

• 23 Routines and rituals

• 24 Activity types

• 25 Staging and sequencing

• 26 Using coursebooks

• 27 Using authentic materials

• 28 Integrating technology

• 29 Using online resources

• 30 Using artificial intelligence (AI)

• 31 Collaborative planning

Why plan?

Why plan lessons? The question may seem redundant. We plan for the same reasons that we plan so many other social events such as meals, vacations, parties, or business meetings: however many times we might have experienced them, we can never be sure they won't spin out of control. Lessons are like that. According to Doyle (1986), classroom teaching takes place in conditions of multidimensionality (i.e., there are a number of events and processes going on); simultaneity (i.e., they are happening at the same time); immediacy (i.e., they happen quickly); and unpredictability (i.e., we can never be sure what is going to happen next). Given this complexity, it makes sense to have strategies to deal with it, one of which is planning ahead. Planning doesn't necessarily preempt the need to think on our feet, but it provides a degree of structure with which to mitigate potential chaos. Like a route map to a hiker or a compass to a sailor, it helps orient our journey.

And every lesson is different: we can't keep repeating the same lesson day after day, week after week. Even if the format is essentially the same, the content must vary – whether it is derived from a syllabus, a coursebook, or the expressed needs of the learners (or a combination of all three).

This chapter turns its attention to the first years of the Great War. Commencing with a reading of James’s wartime correspondence, its first half charts how the aging author was tormented, in the latter stages of 1914, by the possibility that his life and works might be subjected to retroactive disavowal in light of the conflict he never saw coming. It then discusses two of James’s wartime works, The Middle Years (1917) and The Sense of the Past (1917), focusing on how these texts engage with and reflect upon the prospect of undoing and recasting formative experiences. In its second half, the chapter zooms out slightly and offers a broader investigation of the wartime critical climate within which James’s acts of creative self-interrogation took place. Noting that as the conflict raged on, authors and critics alike became caught up in debates about the purpose of reading in wartime, the chapter draws on Rebecca West’s reviews of James from 1915 and 1916 and analyses her Jamesian novel, The Return of the Solider (1918), to explore the psychological and ethical pressures that were placed on another form of counterfactual consolation: the world into which we can escape through fiction.

On the morning of 2 August 2016, the air in Varanasi was heavy with excitement and preparations were underway for a massive political rally that had been announced by the INC. Sonia Gandhi, then president of the INC, had arrived in the city earlier that morning and was set to undertake a massive roadshow through the city later that day. This event had been organised with considerable fanfare to launch the INC's campaign for the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly election that was scheduled to take place in early 2017.

After arriving at the Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, Sonia Gandhi's motorcade headed off towards the Varanasi Circuit House, which was supposed to be the starting point of her 6.4-kilometre-long roadshow. Along the journey to the Circuit House, an estimated 10,000–15,000 bikers drove alongside her motorcade as part of a public display of strength for the INC. Gandhi inaugurated her rally by paying her respects at B. R. Ambedkar's statue near Kachahari Chauraha and thereafter set off on a winding course towards the neighbourhood of Englishiya Line, where she intended to culminate her rally by garlanding the bust of Kamlapati Tripathi (a veteran INC leader and former union minister) and by delivering a short speech to the press. During the course of the afternoon, as the INC's cavalcade slowly made its way through the narrow streets of Varanasi, thousands of citizens came out to witness the roadshow where they were greeted by a flurry of rose petals, INC party flags and the sight of Gandhi emerging from a white Mercedes, waving at them. In the teeming crowds that jostled along the cavalcade, one could find stern-looking security personnel in charcoal safari suits, police constables in khaki uniforms and INC party workers dressed in their traditional attire of white khadi (handwoven natural fibre). Amidst these familiar dramatis personae that animate all political rallies in India, also present that day was a group of individuals who had played a significant, albeit discreet, role in the organisation of the roadshow. Recognisable only through their outfits that consisted of black T-shirts and blue denim jeans, these individuals were the employees of Prashant Kishor's political consulting firm I-PAC, which had been hired by Rahul Gandhi a few months earlier to manage the INC's election campaign in Uttar Pradesh.

Chapter 9 looks at how Francesco Pisani used his will to shape the future of the estate and his family’s fortune after his death.