However, his passion for the country took root not on some relaxing holiday, but throughout the three years he served there during and after the Second World War.

As part of the 2nd Army Group Royal Artillery, Gunner Roy Quinton fought at the Battle of Monte Cassino, the four-month assault on key German lines in early 1944, which paved the way for the liberation of Rome, but came at the cost of 55,000 Allied lives, including 8,000 British soldiers. Eight decades on, sitting comfortably in his warm kitchen, the veteran soldier recalls running under fire through the rubble-strewn landscape surrounding the ancient mountaintop Benedictine abbey.

“I had been trained in signals,” says Roy, who is now 101 years old. “My job was to maintain communications, which meant repairing wires during pauses in German shelling. But still we were under fire and it was very frightening trying to find cover.

“The sound of it was terrible. You’d hear the whooshing whistle of the approach, then it would go quiet before the massive crash of the shell and all the shrapnel flying. There were casualties all around but none in my platoon. God was favouring us.”

Roy’s memories of Monte Cassino will be part of a special commemorative segment about the Battle during this year’s Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall, which will be shown live on Saturday night on BBC1.

We were under fire… the sound of shelling was terrible

“I remember looking up at the sky and seeing the monastery crumble as it was hit by bombs during the battle,” he says.

When Roy was called up, he was just 18, the son of a wealthy clothing retailer. “I was spoiled rotten,” he admits. “I wanted to go to university and study languages. They were always my strong point.”

But the war intervened. After basic training, in January 1943 his platoon boarded a ship for Algiers, spending 11 “terrifying” days weaving around the Bay of Biscay. Their immediate priority was to evade the German U-boats lying in wait to torpedo Allied craft heading for the North African campaign, by then in its latter stages. On landfall, the platoon headed east to Tunisia and Roy’s first experience of action.

“I ran messages for the officers, almost getting run over by a tank – and I was terrified of mines. I stood on one and heard a click – but it hadn’t been primed.

“Some things stay with you. Once I saw nine enemy machine gunners, all lying dead, blood pouring out of them, their wounds opening up like flowers in the sun. You never forget.”

In September 1943 Roy’s platoon crossed the Mediterranean to Italy. Sicily had fallen and now the mainland itself was the crucial objective. Yet, although this was among the most costly fighting of the Allies’ campaign, those who saw combat in Italy felt overlooked as “the forgotten forces” in comparison with those who took part in the Normandy landings of 1944.

At the time they were even referred to as “D-Day Dodgers”, something the troops themselves responded to with the creation of a savagely ironic song.

“Oh yes, we used to sing that,” says Roy, nodding at the memory of the lyrics sung to the tune of Lili Marlene: ‘Look round the mountains through the mud and rain/You’ll find crosses, some which bear no name/Heartbreak and toil and suffering gone/The boys beneath them slumber on/The D-Day Dodgers who’ll stay in Italy.’

I remember looking at the sky, seeing the monastery crumble

After Monte Cassino Roy’s platoon moved north to Rome, before continuing to Perugia where he met Irene, the daughter of the local station master. By then he was fluent in Italian, “learning the language to take my mind off the dangers all around”.

However, peril was ever present. In the last months of the war, he narrowly avoided being hit by a shell. “My pal was lying on the ground in a terrible state,” he remembers. “Shrapnel had hit him in the chest. I said, ‘You’re going to be all right lad, you’re going to go back to England.’ He found the strength to tell me that it didn’t matter to him because that very day he had received a letter from home telling him his wife had gone off with somebody else. He died in the ambulance on the way to the military hospital.”

Returning to London in 1946, Roy joined the Inland Revenue, later creating his own tax consultancy. He and Irene made their home in their “happy house”, and their three sons gave them seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. The couple holidayed in Italy several times a year until they were in their eighties.

Then this summer, after 78 years of marriage, Irene died at the age of 99. “I’m so lonely without her,” says Roy. “I would like to go to Italy once more, if I can.” Back to the place that, against all odds, brought him terror and loss, but also so much that he has loved.