An unrewarding first position gave place to one with John Lane, founder of the Bodley Head, and publisher of the major works of 'the nineties' (which significantly influenced his style).
The many English residents there who became his friends included Bernard Berenson and Norman Douglas while in 1917 he was instrumental with others in establishing the British Institute of Florence.
His writing was not confined to Italy, however, and there were single books on Greece and Spain and also three in the Highways and Byways series, on Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.
The Second World War with its threat to Italy's cultural heritage caused him great distress but he was influential in saving some of this by producing extensive lists for the Allied Intelligence Corps of what it was essential to protect.
[3] For fifty years Hutton lived in Clifton Hill, St John's Wood, London, in a house once occupied by the Victorian painter William Powell Frith (who is commemorated by a blue plaque on the façade).