A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Remarkable Story of an Italian Mother, Her Two Sons, and Their Fight Against Fascism

by Caroline Moorehead

Overview

Shortlisted for the Costa Award

Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize

The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter and Village of Secrets delivers the next chapter in "The Resistance Quartet": the astonishing story of the aristocratic Italian family who stood up to Mussolini's fascism, and whose efforts helped define the path of Italy in the years between the World Wars—a profile in courage that remains relevant today.

Members of the cosmopolitan, cultural aristocracy of Florence at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Rosselli family, led by their fierce matriarch, Amelia, were vocal anti-fascists. As populist, right-wing nationalism swept across Europe after World War I, and Italy’s Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini, began consolidating his power, Amelia’s sons Carlo and Nello led the opposition, taking a public stand against Il Duce that few others in their elite class dared risk. When Mussolini established a terrifying and brutal police state controlled by his Blackshirts—the squaddristi—the Rossellis and their anti-fascist circle were transformed into active resisters.

In retaliation, many of the anti-fascists were arrested and imprisoned; others left the country to escape a similar fate. Tragically, Carlo and Nello were eventually assassinated by Mussolini’s secret service. After Italy entered World War II in June 1940, Amelia, thanks to visas arranged by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt herself, fled to New York City with the remaining members of her family.

Renowned historian Caroline Moorehead paints an indelible picture of Italy in the first half of the twentieth century, offering an intimate account of the rise of Il Duce and his squaddristi; life in Mussolini’s penal colonies; the shocking ambivalence and complicity of many prominent Italian families seduced by Mussolini’s promises; and the bold, fractured resistance movement whose associates sacrificed their lives to fight fascism. In A Bold and Dangerous Family, Moorehead once again pays tribute to heroes who fought to uphold our humanity during one of history’s darkest chapters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062308313
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Series:	Resistance Quartet Series , #3
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	340,837
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Caroline Moorehead is the New York Times bestselling author of A Bold and Dangerous Family, Village of Secrets, and A Train in Winter, which, with A House in the Mountains, form the Resistance Quartet. Human Cargo, her book about the international refugee crisis, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. An acclaimed biographer, Moorehead has also written for the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, the Times, and the Independent. She lives in London and Italy.

Table of Contents

Principal Characters ix

Chronology xi

Preface xiii

Chapter 1 A Watery Childhood 1

Chapter 2 Donne Emancipate 19

Chapter 3 Defining la Patria 32

Chapter 4 Becoming a Man 51

Chapter 5 The Dark Seraphim 66

Chapter 6 Planting a Tree 89

Chapter 7 Moral Choices 109

Chapter 8 'Non Mollare' 127

Chapter 9 Breaking Free 152

Chapter 10 Defying the Barbarians 170

Chapter 11 Il Confino 188

Chapter 12 The Island of Winds 202

Chapter 13 Not Even the Flies Escape 221

Chapter 14 To Be an Exile 236

Chapter 15 Just One Heart 259

Chapter 16 Dancing for Liberty 278

Chapter 17 A World of Moral Richness 297

Chapter 18 A Free Man Again 328

Chapter 19 A Corneillian Tragedy 351

Postscript 373

Acknowledgements 375

List of Illustrations 377

Sources and Select Bibliography 379

Notes 389

Index 405

Editorial Reviews

An intimate family portrait…. Moorehead has done us a great service in restoring the humanity of the Rosselli family…. It’s the most complete portrait we have in English of this extraordinary family fighting—each in his or her own way—the most pernicious ideology of the last century.

New York Times Book Review

An inspiring story, well told.

Booklist

Much has been written about life under fascist rule.... But the study of a nation can never be as emotionally compelling as the study of a family. Expertly alternating vivid domestic detail with lucid exposition of the gradual evolution of totalitarianism, Caroline Moorehead allows her readers not only to know, but also to feel, how it was to endure fascist oppression.”

Guardian

Offers a neat capsule history of Italy in the first half of the century, particularly Mussolini’s rise to power…. Hit[s] home… in its inescapable parallels to our current situation. Ms. Moorehead never makes the point explicitly, and she doesn’t have to.

Wall Street Journal

Moorehead recounts a story that deserves to be better known, exploiting her remarkable understanding of the nation and its culture.

Max Hastings

A haunting reminder of the fragility of liberty and the dangers of complaisance.

Times (London)

This account of a patriotic Italian-Jewish family at the forefront of the resistance to Mussolini’s regime follows the brothers.... But the center of the book is their mother, Amelia, a prominent playwright and feminist to whom they wrote frequently. Moorehead draws extensively on their letters, giving the reader an intimate sense of the everyday depredations of life under Fascism.

New Yorker

Moorehead, a distinguished biographer and historian, tells the story of the Rosselli brothers and their mother Amelia, a playwright, with sensitivity, erudition, and balance.... A fine tribute.

Financial Times

An inspiring story, well told.

Booklist

Moorehead, a distinguished biographer and historian, tells the story of the Rosselli brothers and their mother Amelia, a playwright, with sensitivity, erudition, and balance.... A fine tribute.

Financial Times

Moorehead, a distinguished biographer and historian, tells the story of the Rosselli brothers and their mother Amelia, a playwright, with sensitivity, erudition, and balance.... A fine tribute.

 Financial Times

A moving novelistic portrait. . . . An inspiring and fascinating read.

People on A Train in Winter

By turns heartbreaking and inspiring.

New York Times Book Review on A Train in Winter

A compelling and moving book. . . . . The literature of wartime France and the Holocaust is by now so vast as to confound the imagination, but when a book as good as this comes along, we are reminded that there is always room for something new.

Washington Post on A Train in Winter

Le Chambon has long been mythologized in France for the actions of its inhabitants, who sheltered the refugees and helped many escape to Switzerland. But, as this riveting history shows, the story is more complex.

The New Yorker on Village of Secrets

The definitive account.

Wall Street Journal on Village of Secrets

Compelling and deeply informed…. [Moorehead] has done us the great service of unveiling the real lives behind the myth and in demonstrating that fallible human beings are far more interesting and dramatic figures than those who make up the stuff of legends.

New York Times Books Review on Village of Secrets

A haunting reminder of the fragility of liberty and the dangers of complaisance.

Leanda de Lisle

Moorehead’s portrait of the Rosselli brothers is at once a political history of pre-second world war Italy, a beautiful literary portrait of two brave young men, and a gripping tale of intrigue, espionage and escape.... I finished it impressed, breathless and enormously moved.

Alex Preston

A major contribution to the study of anti-Fascism, further enriched by Caroline Moorehead’s vivid portrayal of interwar Italy and Europe.

Jonathan Keates

Moorehead, a distinguished biographer and historian, tells the story of the Rosselli brothers and their mother Amelia, a playwright, with sensitivity, erudition, and balance.... A fine tribute.

Tony Barber

Carefully, and with considerable skill, Moorehead juxtaposes the growth into maturity of the intelligent Florentines, Carlo and Nello, with a vivid account of the turbulent conditions that enabled Fascism to take root.”  

Miranda Seymour

Much has been written about life under fascist rule.... But the study of a nation can never be as emotionally compelling as the study of a family. Expertly alternating vivid domestic detail with lucid exposition of the gradual evolution of totalitarianism, Caroline Moorehead allows her readers not only to know, but also to feel, how it was to endure fascist oppression.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Making judicious use of thousands of letters, Moorehead paints an intimate family portrait…[She] writes engagingly about domestic matters, the tension inherent in the underground resistance and even the dreary monotony of life in confino on the remote penal islands…Moorehead has done us a great service in restoring the humanity of the Rosselli family. She reminds us that these anti-fascists "regarded morality—truth, integrity, honesty, as opposed to fascist venality and bullying—as lying at the heart of their anti-fascism." It's the most complete portrait we have in English of this extraordinary family fighting—each in his or her own way—the most pernicious ideology of the last century.

The New York Times Book Review - Stanislao G. Pugliese

09/11/2017
Overshadowed by the traumas of the world wars and less cinematic than the Spanish Civil War, the long struggle against fascism in Italy remains obscure and its major figures on both sides unfamiliar. Historian Moorehead (Priam’s Gold) shines light on the Rosselli family—the ill-fated brothers Carlo and Nello and their pioneering feminist mother, Amelia—to illuminate the treacherous and contradictory nature of life in Il Duce’s Italy. As Mussolini gained power, Nello, the activist firebrand, and Carlo, the reflective intellectual, became antifascists committed to “saving Italy from violent, unprincipled rule.” Interweaving the Rossellis’ personal lives with discussion of Italian political movements, intellectual currents, and the machinations of the fascists, Moorehead explores the psyche of a nation, and a family, under siege. Moorehead contends that, in the early days, “had they been united and strong, the forces of democracy might have proved a match for the fascists,” but the left was badly fractured and ill-prepared to confront squads of club-wielding goons who seemingly sprang up from nowhere. These squadristi, composed largely of “people accustomed to solving problems with violence,” took up “punitive expeditions against left-wing rallies, institutions, newspapers, and factories they considered ‘nests of subversion.’ ” As well versed in Italian socialism as she is in spy-novel tropes, Moorehead combines intellectual rigor with immersive storytelling that will appeal to specialists and casual readers alike. B+w photos. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

This account of a patriotic Italian-Jewish family at the forefront of the resistance to Mussolini’s regime follows the brothers.... But the center of the book is their mother, Amelia, a prominent playwright and feminist to whom they wrote frequently. Moorehead draws extensively on their letters, giving the reader an intimate sense of the everyday depredations of life under Fascism.

New Yorker

Offers a neat capsule history of Italy in the first half of the century, particularly Mussolini’s rise to power…. Hit[s] home… in its inescapable parallels to our current situation. Ms. Moorehead never makes the point explicitly, and she doesn’t have to.

Wall Street Journal

Much has been written about life under fascist rule.... But the study of a nation can never be as emotionally compelling as the study of a family. Expertly alternating vivid domestic detail with lucid exposition of the gradual evolution of totalitarianism, Caroline Moorehead allows her readers not only to know, but also to feel, how it was to endure fascist oppression.

The Guardian

A haunting reminder of the fragility of liberty and the dangers of complaisance.

The Times (London)

★ 09/01/2017
In the third book of her "Resistance" trilogy (after A Train in Winter and Village of Secrets), historian Moorehead turns her attentive eye to the earliest resisters of Italy's National Fascist Party, led by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini from 1922 to 1943. The Rosellis, including matriarch Amelia and sons Nello and Carlo, belonged to the Italian aristocracy, making their fortune from stocks in mercury mines. The family's opposition to fascism stemmed from Amelia's deep national pride, formed in her childhood years following Italian unification. This dedication to her country, combined with an ingrained sense of integrity, honesty, and morality contributed to Amelia and her sons becoming fierce and unrelenting critics of the regime, which ultimately led to the deaths of Carlo and Nello at the hands of a French far-right group at the behest of the Fascists. Based in part on letters preserved by the family and secret police files, Moorehead's account tells an extremely personal and engaging story about the price one family paid for its political resistance. VERDICT A must-read for fans of the author's previous works and those interested in World War II and resistance movements. [See Prepub Alert, 5/1/17.]—Chad E. Statler, Lakeland Comm. Coll., Kirtland, OH

Library Journal

2017-07-04
A history of the Italian family who mounted an intrepid campaign against Mussolini.After World War I, fascism took hold in war-torn Italy, culminating in the rise of 39-year-old Mussolini as the nation's youngest prime minister. In 1922, supported by the royal family, the Vatican, and about 25,000 well-trained Blackshirts, Mussolini, demanding "full powers" to lead, faced weak opposition by socialists, communists, and liberals. In an absorbing, well-documented narrative, historian Moorehead (Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France, 2014, etc.) focuses on the Rosselli family—brothers Carlo and Nello and their mother, Amelia—who became tireless leaders of an anti-fascist movement that grew in strength as Mussolini's reign of terror intensified. "Fascism," writes the author, "quickly spread its tentacles over the fabric of Italian life. The army, the aristocracy, the Church and industry, all were rallying to defend the rights of a usurper." Drawing on thousands of family letters as well as biographies of Mussolini and histories of the period, Moorehead powerfully depicts the family's anger and despair as Italy succumbed to what Carlo called "an enormous black plague." Although at first some anti-fascists hoped that Mussolini, who was "boastful, vain, cruel and erratic," would fail on his own, it soon became clear that they needed to wage a real battle. By 1927, Mussolini had abolished elections and installed himself as minister "of foreign affairs, of the interior, of war, of the navy and air force, and of corporations." Textbooks were rewritten and journalists fired if they showed "aversion" to fascism. Anti-fascists grew stronger, with Carlo standing as "the most prominent leader of the non-communist anti-fascist opposition." The author chronicles the efforts by Carlo and Nello that led to repeated arrests and incarcerations on Italy's prison islands. When he was released, Carlo took up a frantic pace of writing and speeches, traveling to Paris, London, and, during the Spanish Civil War, Spain. Constantly in Mussolini's cross hairs, the brothers finally were assassinated: 200,000 people followed their funeral procession. A vivid portrait of resistance in dark, perilous times that is not without contemporary relevance.

Kirkus Reviews

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