John Foot

Never fully exorcised, the memory of Italy’s fascist past is fading.

With Italy on the brink of financial collapse and in deep political crisis, the country’s 150th anniversary has been a dramatic one. It is especially timely, then, to take stock of new research into this most contradictory and enigmatic of countries.

John Foot describes the background to a trial that threatens to clarify an obscure and ignoble chapter in Italy’s recent past.

The strange story of the death and posthumous life of Italy's Fascist dictator, and the continuing power of the cult of his body over the Italian imagination.