Ducal days
Sir: In his very interesting article (`Tagli- atelle alla Mussolini', 8 August) Nicholas Farrell tells of his visit to the small Apen- nine town where the Duce was born and where his son Vittorio's widow holds an annual service in memory of her deceased father-in-law. The story reminded me of a ridiculous incident that occurred at Christ- mas 1936 when I was a guest of some Ital- ian friends at the Duchi d'Aosta hotel in Sestriere.
It was a two-week skiing holiday, and Vit- torio and his younger brother Bruno were also members of the party. On New Year's Eve everyone got a bit drunk and in the course of the evening my Italian girlfriend asked Vittorio to autograph the starched front of my dress-shirt, which he did. She then cut it out with some scissors that she produced from somewhere and pasted it in her autograph album. I was 28 at the time, and I should guess that Vittorio was 26 and Bruno a year or so younger. They were both good skiers but very arrogant, and I did not find either of them attractive. Nor did my girlfriend.
Farrell tells us that Vittorio died last year. Bruno joined the Italian air force and I think he was shot down during the war. Their sister Edda was married to Count Ciano, who was Mussolini's foreign minis- ter, and after he was executed she went to live in Capri, where she remained until she died some years ago.
I never met the Duce personally, but I twice heard him make one of his ranting political speeches from the little balcony of the Palazzo Venezia, where he had his grandiose office. When it was announced that he was going to make a speech, the beautiful Piazza di Venezia would be filled with vast crowds hours before he was due to appear, and during this time the Italian air force would fly over dropping thousands of slips of paper bearing the words Twiva il Duce' or else `Ewiva il Re'. It was said that slips in favour of the Duce outnum- bered those for the King in the ratio of ten to one and certainly there were always a lot more of them.
Gordon Richdale
Inanda Park, Inanda, Sandton, South Africa
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