Galeazzo ciano

Wednesday

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Was Mussolini’s wilful daughter his éminence grise?

In 1930, when she was 19 years old, Edda Mussolini married Galeazzo Ciano. His father was a loyal minister in her father’s government: it was a suitable match. Five hundred wedding invitations went out to the Roman nobility, to diplomats from more than 30 countries and to all the senior fascists, the gerarchi. After the ceremony the newlyweds left for Capri, Edda driving her own white Alfa Romeo, with servants and luggage following in another car and bodyguards in a third. They set off at top speed. Then Edda came to a sudden halt. She had noticed a fourth car behind them. She might have supposed that as a married woman she was about to get out from under the massive shadow of her father – but no.

Thursday

Taki

I miss life before Big Tech

Do any of you remember the time when everything took place on the terraces and in outdoor cafés? Before everyone retreated into laptops and mobile telephones and Twitter? When the streets thrummed with possibility and the potential for new encounters was everywhere? Well, that’s all gone now, thanks to some pretty ugly-looking fellows with names such as Dorsey and Zuckerberg. But we’re the ones who adopted their useless inventions and live by them as if they were the Sermon on the Mount. The social consequences have been devastating — the young make noises instead of articulating speech — and had Cassandra been around 20 or so years ago she would have warned us against the tech companies that have the power to change our way of life. Never mind.