Author of 'Claretta: Mussolini's Last Lover' and Italian historian R. J. B. Bosworth, reflects on the tumultuous relationship between the dictator and his lover Claretta Petacci, and the diaries that reveal the intimate details of their affair.
This provocative book is the first to mine Claretta’s extensive diaries, family correspondence, and other sources to discover how the last in Mussolini’s long line of lovers became his most intimate and how she came to her violent fate at his side. 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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