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Written by Jasper Ridley - Audio book narrated by Nadia May - Unabridged Nonfiction - 11 CASSETTES - 16.5 hours

Publisher, Blackstone Audiobooks (October 1999)

This biography of Benito Mussolini describes his upbringing in the violent society of nineteenth-century Italy and the revolutionary traditions of Italian Socialism; his suspension from school for attacking other boys with knives; his imprisonment in Switzerland as an Anarchist tramp. He had numerous love affairs, and developed into a brilliant orator and journalist. He founded the Fascist Party, and ordered his squads to burn down the party offices of the Communists and Socialists during four years of virtual civil war. Becoming Prime Minister and dictator after the March on Rome, he showed his true colors as an empire-builder and eventually a racist and persecutor of the Jews.

Mussolini was not the ridiculous buffoon that he is often depicted, but a very able politician who knew how to ride two horses at the same time, and while inculcating into the Italians the glories of war, cooperated peacefully with foreign governments. He won the esteem of many statesmen and writers and fascinated their wives.

His one great mistake was to enter the Second World War on the losing side; his last stand was on Lake Garda where he was not a beaten, pathetic figure, but fought like a wild animal at bay. he was executed by Communist partisans in 1945.

Jasper Ridley, well-known historian and biographer, has written a gripping life of a man who is regarded as one of the arch villains of the twentieth century.