Mussolini and the British

By Richard Lamb

Initially, Mussolini disliked Hitler and despised his anti-semitism.

This revisionist account of Mussolini’s relations with Britain shows that, apart from his atrocious bombardment of Corfu in 1923, Mussolini aligned his foreign policy with that of Britain until the Abyssinian crisis of 1935. However, once the British Cabinet felt obliged to take a lead in economic sanctions against Italy, Mussolini, surprised and antagonized, halted his efforts to stop German remilitarization and aligned Italy with the Nazis.

Drawing on a wide range of British and Italian sources, including captured documents of Mussolini himself, and new research into the influence of Margherita Sarfatti, the Jewish intellectual who was for several years Mussolini’s mistress, Mussolini and the British casts an interesting new light on British diplomatic handling of the threat of war.

Richard Lamb was a journalist, broadcaster, soldier and writer.