A master historian illuminates the tumultuous relationship of Il Duce
and his young lover Claretta, whose extraordinarily intimate diaries
only recently have become available
Few deaths are as
gruesome and infamous as those of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist
dictator, and Claretta (or Clara) Petacci, his much-younger lover. Shot
dead by Italian partisans after attempting to flee the country in 1945,
the couple’s bodies were then hanged upside down in Milan’s main square
in ignominious public display. This provocative book is the first to
mine Clara’s extensive diaries, family correspondence, and other sources
to discover how the last in Mussolini’s long line of lovers became his
intimate and how she came to her violent fate at his side.
R.
J. B. Bosworth explores the social climbing of Claretta’s family, her
naïve and self-interested commitment to fascism, her diary’s graphically
detailed accounts of sexual life with Mussolini, and much more. Brimful
of new and arresting information, the book sheds intimate light not
only on an ordinary-extraordinary woman living at the heart of Italy’s
totalitarian fascist state but also on Mussolini himself.
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