Monday 31 October, 6pm

A thrilling biography of Edda Mussolini – Benito Mussolini's favourite daughter – and a heart-stopping account of the unravelling of the Fascist dream in Italy, from award-winning historian and biographer Caroline Moorehead.

The author will be in conversation with historian Richard Bosworth.

Edda Mussolini was Benito's favourite daughter, her father's confidante during the 20 years of Fascist rule, acting as envoy to both Germany and Britain, and playing a part in steering Italy to join forces with Hitler. She married Galeazzo Ciano, who would become the youngest Foreign Secretary in Italian history, and they were the most celebrated and glamorous couple in Roman society. Their fortunes turned in 1943, when Ciano voted against Mussolini in a plot to bring him down, and his father-in-law did not forgive him. In a dramatic story that takes in hidden diaries, her father's fall and her husband's execution, an escape into Switzerland and a period in exile, we come to know a complicated, bold and determined woman who emerges not just as a witness but as a key player in some of the twentieth century's defining moments. This is the first dedicated biography of Edda Mussolini, in English, and celebrated historian Caroline Moorehead draws on seldom consulted Italian archives, on memoirs, documents, papers and letters and on a number of interviews with the descendants of the Mussolini and Ciano families. This book paints a picture not only of the formidable Edda, but also of twenty years of fascism with all its glamour, decadence, political intrigue, and turbulence before its violent end.