Monday 31 October, 6pm
A thrilling biography of Edda Mussolini – Benito Mussolini’s favourite daughter – and a heart-stopping account of the unravelling of the Fascist dream in Italy, from award-winning historian and biographer Caroline Moorehead.
The author will be in conversation with historian Richard Bosworth.
Edda Mussolini was Benito’s favourite daughter, her father’s confidante during the 20 years of Fascist rule, acting as envoy to both Germany and Britain, and playing a part in steering Italy to join forces with Hitler. She married Galeazzo Ciano, who would become the youngest Foreign Secretary in Italian history, and they were the most celebrated and glamorous couple in Roman society. Their fortunes turned in 1943, when Ciano voted against Mussolini in a plot to bring him down, and his father-in-law did not forgive him. In a dramatic story that takes in hidden diaries, her father’s fall and her husband’s execution, an escape into Switzerland and a period in exile, we come to know a complicated, bold and determined woman who emerges not just as a witness but as a key player in some of the twentieth century’s defining moments. This is the first dedicated biography of Edda Mussolini, in English, and celebrated historian Caroline Moorehead draws on seldom consulted Italian archives, on memoirs, documents, papers and letters and on a number of interviews with the descendants of the Mussolini and Ciano families. This book paints a picture not only of the formidable Edda, but also of twenty years of fascism with all its glamour, decadence, political intrigue, and turbulence before its violent end.
Caroline Moorehead is a bestselling and prizewinner author, and the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo, Madame de la Tour du Pin and Martha Gellhorn. Her recent books – a quartet focused on resistance to dictatorship, particularly in Italy – were shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Orwell Prize and the Costa Biography Award. She lives in London.
Richard Bosworth is an Emeritus Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford and the author or editor of 30 books about modern Italian history. His most recent work is Mussolini and the eclipse of Italian Fascism from dictatorship to populism (Yale University Press, 2021). Cambridge University Press are about to publish: Politics, Murder and Love in an Italian Family: the Amendolas in an age of totalitarianisms.
The Italian Cultural Institute will not admit anyone showing covid-19 symptoms such as a continuous cough, a cold and a temperature. You are strongly invited to wear face covering during events, maintain social distancing and use wall-unit sanitizers, as a matter of courtesy to the clinically vulnerable. We keep windows open whenever possible to ensure ventilation and thoroughly clean our rooms before and after each event. Thank you for your co-operation. We reserve the right not to admit any late comers.