Nicholas Farrell is the author of Mussolini: A New Life (Weidenfield & Nicolson/Orion Phoenix)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has won what looks like a significant victory in her quest to eradicate squatting. About 250 carabinieri and police officers took possession this week of a former paper mill in Milan which had been occupied by numerous groups of squatters for 31 years. The 4,000 square metre building was a
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The Feast of the Assumption began for me just after midnight with a WhatsApp message from my eldest son, Francesco Winston, 20, which said: ‘Papà don’t come, the police are everywhere.’ He and my eldest daughter, Caterina, 21, had invited me to a party on the beach organised by their group of
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna News that Italians now enjoy a higher standard of living than the British made me think: my God, life must be truly awful in Britain. Yes, the Italians do have much to feel good about in terms of the quality of their lives thanks to the beauty of their country, the splendour
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna All seven chickens we recently acquired are now laying eggs – except the one called Giovanna, which is walking with a limp thanks to our youngest child Giuseppe, who is ten. The other day, Giuseppe somehow shut Giovanna’s right foot in the back door as he shooed her out of the house.
A woman crying elicits sympathy – even if, à la Rachel from Accounts, she is some kind of nightmare soap-opera figure from the suburbs of south London. When a woman we do not know bursts into tears in public our gut reaction is to assume she must have a good reason for doing so. She
Giorgia Meloni has emerged as one of the most significant politicians in Europe since she became Italy’s first female prime minister in October 2022. I Am Giorgia, already a bestseller in Italy, is her account of how a short, fat, sullen, bullied girl – as she describes her young self – from a poor, single-parent
The global left and their many friends in the media are insisting with increasing hysteria that Donald Trump is imposing fascism on America. Their apocalyptical narrative is as simple as it is false: President Trump has begun the transformation of the USA into a fascist state. But the feverish intensity with which this tall story is
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I often feel as if I know what it was like to be a member of La Résistance in Nazi–occupied France because I have three disco-age daughters. Last week, the call-to-action stations flashed up on WhatsApp at 03.06, just as the cockerels were beginning to crow and the enemy was setting up
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The youngest of our six children, Giuseppe, nine, received the Eucharist for the first time on Sunday. He and the other 12 new communicants looked angelic in their white robes. They all had impressive wooden crosses hanging from their necks and the five girls had wreaths of tiny flowers in their jet-black
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new ‘far right’ mission to lock up asylum seekers in distant countries yesterday suffered an embarrassing setback on live television. The former human rights supremo – who cancelled the Tory Rwanda scheme on day one in office – was in Tirana, less than one year later, to discuss setting up a
To be honest, I felt relief when Pope Francis died. This had nothing much to do with his regular assertion, in contradiction of Catholic doctrine, that all war is unjust. Or his view that Ukraine should have ‘the courage to raise the white flag’ to stop more futile bloodshed which ironically is (more or less)
The 133 cardinal electors participating in the conclave entered the Sistine Chapel yesterday, singing Veni Creator Spiritus. As they conducted their first vote – which resulted in black smoke – they were no doubt unable to avoid contemplating the highly damaging stream of revelations that have plagued the frontrunner to be the next pope, Cardinal Pietro
The crisis that threatened to poison the secret conclave of cardinals which elects new popes has been resolved. It looks certain that disgraced Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu – until 2018 number three in the Vatican hierarchy behind only the Secretary of State and the Holy Father himself – has fallen on his sword. Many in
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna ‘Fortune’s a right whore: If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,/ That she may take away all at one swoop,’ wrote John Webster in The White Devil. I find it hard to disagree. I know fortune and luck are not quite the same thing, but I don’t believe the
Giorgia Meloni has confounded her critics yet again as she proves herself to be the most important leader in the European Union. She has shown in the past two days that she is the vital bridge between America and Europe. As a result, Italy looks set to play a major role on the world stage
We are about to see how significant a politician Giorgia Meloni really is after she arrived in Washington yesterday evening for bilateral talks today with Donald Trump. Tariffs will be top of the agenda but they are also expected to talk about Ukraine. She then flies immediately back to Rome to meet Vice President J.D.
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna On the final day of their state visit to Italy the King and Queen were in Ravenna to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the area in 1945 by the British Eighth Army. What they probably did not realise is that Ravenna is a left-wing stronghold in a region –
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Henry Jeffreys looks at the potential impact of Trump’s tariffs on British drinkers (1:31); on the 400th anniversary of Charles I’s accession to the throne, Marcus Walker explains what modern Britain could learn from the cavalier monarch (7:10); Angus Colwell provides his notes on beef dripping (13:55); Nicolas Farrell reveals
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I have just refused to accept the local equivalent of an Oscar, which was to have been presented later this month in the Basilica di San Francesco next to the tomb of Dante Alighieri. I have done so because I believe I am not worthy. To accept would be unbecoming. It would
Written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa at the end of his life in the late 1950s, it is a novel about the collapse – one century beforehand as a result of the reunification of Italy – of the Sicilian aristocracy of which his family was a part, and its replacement with what was called democracy.
