The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism

A House in the Mountains

From the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Village of Secrets, comes the extraordinary story of four courageous women who helped form the Italian Resistance during WW2

Moorehead paints a wonderfully vivid and moving portrait of the women of the Italian Resistance…an excellent book… She depicts a tragic fate that is timeless, of dreams forged in adversity, shattered by collisions with practical politics

Brilliantly and subtly told… The narrative is told with such verve that I frequently had goosebumps: the men and women known from much drier history books come alive… a riveting read

A sensitive and perceptive book founded on an appreciation of the role women play in any society, at any times. It is sober and serious, but still an easy read… Moorehead is not afraid to show how these women used their femininity to become more effective partisans

The moving finale of a quartet of books on resistance to fascism... Moorehead conveys the terror with understated power; she is equally good at conjuring the blurred morality of civil conflict...[and] the valleys and wild flowers in technicolour detail

In the best book she has so far written, Moorehead corrects this imbalance with a narrative whose coherence perfectly matches its author’s admiration for her subjects’ redemptive idealism… Moorehead needs to be read by Italians themselves. Over here, meanwhile, she deserves every prize going

This brilliant book restores women to the heart of the Italian resistance story, making clear that they performed all the same activities as the men, while facing precisely the same dangers… This, at last, is their powerful story

ambitious... a comprehensive, lucid and thoughtful account of a complicated conflict.

Moorehead’s quartet of heroines all… left the diaries, the letters, the documents and the family memories that have allowed her to tell their eye-opening and spirit-lifting stories so powerfully

A brilliant overview of the war in Italy from the perspective of the female partisans

Moorehead skilfully weaves…threads of individual stories together to create a web of interconnected lives… broad narrative is dotted with flashes of detail; the colour of a piece of clothing, the wording of a letter… Moorehead captures a sense of hope and vitality among the women of the Resistance, fighting with courage and determination for a future they believed in

Moorehead … takes up the story of four friends in Turin who decided passive resistance was no longer enough [against Mussolini’s reign] and joined a growing partisan movement based in the remote valleys of Piedmont. This is a bittersweet tale, not of betrayal, exactly, but of subtle excision from the script

A House in the Mountains is a page-turner… This book is to be welcomed as a highly readable story in its own right, and as an accessible introduction to the role of women in the Resistenza

A deeply-researched, fast-paced account of the Italian Resistance, a story not widely known to the general reader

This is a highly satisfying conclusion to the author's series. Excellent, well-presented evidence of the incalculable strengths and abilities of women to create and run a country

[A] moving finale of a quartet of books on resistance to fascism

Caroline Moorehead is a bestselling and prize-winning author, and the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo, Madame de la Tour du Pin and Martha Gellhorn. Her recent books – a quartet focussed on resistance to dictatorship, particularly in Italy – were shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Orwell Prize and the Costa Biography Award. She lives in London.

'Moorehead paints a wonderfully vivid and moving portrait of the women of the Italian Resistance' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES 
 
The extraordinary story of the courageous women who spearheaded the Italian Resistance during the Second World War 
 
In the late summer of 1943, in the midst of German occupation, the Italian Resistance was born. 
 
Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca were four young women who signed up. Living in the mountains surrounding Turin their contribution was invaluable. They carried messages and weapons, provided safe houses and took prisoners. As thousands of Italians rose up, they fought to liberate their country. 
 
With its corruption, greed and anti-Semitism, the fall of Fascist Italy was unrelentingly violent, but for the partisan women it was also a time of camaraderie and equality, pride and optimism. Through the stories of these four exceptional women, the resolve, tenacity and, above all, courage of the Italian Resistance is laid bare. 
 
A Spectator Book of the Year

The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini

A Bold and Dangerous Family

One Family’s Fight Against Italian Fascism

Following two bestselling books on the French Resistance, including the Samuel Johnson-shortlisted Village of Secrets, Caroline Moorehead turns her attention to the anti-fascist movement in Italy.

A gripping tale of intrigue… I was enormously moved

Expertly alternating vivid domestic detail with lucid exposition of the gradual evolution of totalitarianism… It feels like the book she was born to write

The creepy description by the author of the naivety of the good and the seductive powers of the bad touches a nerve. A Bold and Dangerous Family is a haunting reminder of the fragility of liberty and the dangers of complaisance

Moorehead’s book, written with sensitivity, erudition and balance, is a fine tribute to the Rosselli family

Much has been written about life under fascist rule… But the study of a nation can never be as emotionally compelling as the study of a family… Expertly alternating vivid domestic detail with lucid exposition of the gradual evolution of totalitarianism, Caroline Moorehead allows her readers not only to know, but also to feel, how it was to endure fascist oppression… A prolific author who has always combined seriousness of purpose with a warm, human touch, she is drawn to good-hearted troublemakers… A Bold and Dangerous Family is animated by the evident admiration and affection she feels for her subjects. It feels like the book she was born to write

Italy’s resistance to fascism and totalitarian rule was more widespread and well organised than in any other European country… Foremost among the opposition to fascism, there were two portly, bookish, Jewish brothers… Lucid, readable and superbly titled biography of the brothers… The fact that this was a family that cared about words gives Moorehead’s book a richness and poise that’s rare in a political biography, more novel-like than journalistic… It’s hard not to feel regular little shivers of horrified contemporary recognition oat the rise of the populist demagogue Mussolini… At once a political history of pre-second world war Italy, a literary portrait of two brave young men, and a gripping tale of intrigue… I finished it impressed, breathless and enormously moved

Caroline Moorehead… tells the story of the Rosselli brothers and their mother Amelia, a playwright, with sensitivity, erudition and balance… Her account of the final years of Carlo’s life is moving. The Mussolini regime became more radical, invading Abyssinia, intervening in the Spanish civil war and aligning itself with Hitler… Moorehead’s book is a fine tribute to the Rossellis, and particularly to Carlo, who might have turned into one of Italy’s greatest 20th-century statesmen

Carefully, and with considerable skill, Moorehead juxtaposes the growth into maturity of the intelligent Florentines, Carlo and Nello, with a vivid account of the turbulent conditions that enabled Fascism to take root

A Bold and Dangerous Family represents a major contribution to the study of anti-Fascism, further enriched by Caroline Moorehead’s vivid portrayal of interwar Italy and Europe

A professional historian of modern Italy might… think it about time thay we had a clear and genuine account of the Rosselli’s story in English. This is what Caroline Moorehead provides in her engrossing new book

It’s a shocking and very powerful story, and can hardly avoid putting the question — what would you do in these circumstances?

Spellbinding… A poignant reminder of the high price of freedom.

A fine book… Sound scholarship is wedded to an elegant and captivating narrative style.

Caroline Moorehead is the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo and Martha Gellhorn. Her biography of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Dancing to the Precipice, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award in 2009 and her most recent book Village of Secrets was a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 
 
Mussolini was not only ruthless: he was subtle and manipulative. Black-shirted thugs did his dirty work for him: arson, murder, destruction of homes and offices, bribes and intimidation. His opponents – including editors, union representatives, lawyers and judges – were beaten into submission. But the tide turned in 1924 when his assassins went too far, horror spread across Italy, and antifascist resistance was born. Among those whose disgust hardened into bold and uncompromising resistance was a family from Florence: Amelia, Carlo and Nello Rosselli. Caroline Moorehead draws readers into the lives of this remarkable family – their loves, their loyalties, their laughter and their ultimate sacrifice.

Human Cargo

A Journey among Refugees

A Journey with Refugees - a new edition of this seminal book, now with a new introduction by the author on the current crisis

A shattering book, meticulously researched, humane and utterly heartbreaking

This is one of those books that will sooner or later change the future

Strong in its condemnations and unflinching in its gaze, Human Cargo is also, mercifully, rich in humanity and examples of the indomitable nature of the human spirit

Caroline Moorehead knows how to grip the reader’s attention and haunt their dreams

Compelling...a deft mixture of history, travelogue and reportage. A powerful, heartfelt and important book

Her ability to tell stories gives this book its power

Caroline Moorehead knows how to grip the reader's attention and haunt their dreams

A new edition of this seminal book, now with a new introduction by the author on the current crisis 
 
How can society cope with the diaspora of the twenty-first century? 
 
Is there a difference between ‘good’ asylum seekers and ‘bad’ economic migrants? 
 
What happens to those whose applications are turned down? 
 
Caroline Moorehead has visited war zones, camps and prisons from Guinea and Afghanistan to Australia and Italy. She has interviewed emigration officials and members of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees while investigating the fates of the millions of people currently displaced from their homes. Human Cargo is both a remarkable exploration into the current crisis and a celebration of the courage of ordinary people.

Defying the Nazis in Vichy France

Village of Secrets

From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the extraordinary story of a French village that helped save thousands who were pursued by the Gestapo during World War II.

Brilliant… It is refreshing to read a book that so confidently abandons the rhetoric of heroism and tries to see its subjects for who they were… Moorehead has had to master a huge amount of background material, and she pulls it off with skill and a remarkable lightness of touch

Riven with complexity… Stories of this weight could occupy several volumes and would still disorientate with all the possibilities – both altruistic and malevolent – of human nature

Vivid...an unsparing yet balanced account of the Vichy years...we need books like this to make it impossible for us to forget.

An especially poignant story… enthralling and meticulous book… amidst the horror of the Holocaust – and such horror is painfully evident in the lives of those left behind – this book shows that human kindness endured undimmed by the propaganda, the threats of violence and the vast rewards on offer for submitting to the will of Nazis

Moorehead draws vivid portraits of those who helped…The emotional heart of the book beats in the children’s stories…The story does not end with Liberation. Moorehead, a biographer and historian, scrupulously records the emotional fallout from the children’s experiences

A lot is known about the authors of this unhuman cruelty, the Nazi overlords and their villainous Vichy accomplices. Less well-documented are the heroes, the ordinary, decent people, who put their lives at risk by hiding and saving Jews from death camps. Village of Secrets is an impressive attempt to set straight the record, an uplifting tale of courage and morality…Moorehead travelled the world interviewing survivors and had access to archives that few have seen

Compelling and authoritative…latterly, Moorehead writes, there has been an emphasis on 'minimising collaborators and celebrating resisters'. She sets that record straight

Moorehead is not the first to have written of this remarkable safe enclave, but she has investigated the most thoroughly, tracking down survivors among the protectors and among the children...this is an inspiring book

A tremendously well-written and important book and a testament to the qualities Camus lent La Peste's hero: 'humane, optimistic, tolerant, free-thinking, ever alive to injustice and acts of  inhumanity'

Caroline Moorehead’s remarkable book is in essence the story of how a community, or rather group of communities, survived the travails of war with dignity. It is also a tale that gives a larger meaning to Hemingway’s macho phrase, 'grace under pressure'… Moorehead is wary of attempts to simplify history and ignore the complications of memory… What, as the last memories dim, was the truth? Moorehead’s question is implicit: is there such a thing? The reader is left with another question, equally difficult: 'what would I have done?’

Powerful and ultimately uplifting book … a far more nuanced account of courage - in which some Catholics did indeed help, and the links with neutral Switzerland were occasionally helpful - than previously recounted about Le Chambon

Fascinating and heartening story… Thorough, objective and readable… captivating

Elegant style

Brilliantly captures the actions of an astonishing, taciturn wartime community

A story of courage and determination, of heroic individuals…and of what can be done when people come together to oppose tyranny

A unique story of courage and determination

Moorehead’s account makes for frequently moving and, at times, harrowing reading… Fascinating

[Moorehead is a] brilliant investigative journalist

A work of remembrance and a moving tribute

Moorehead skillfully intersperses layer after layer of historical fact with narratives of deeply human stories

Moorehead does an expert job in pulling together testimonies from survivors to filter myths and memories from fact to retell an extraordinary tale

Story of courage and determination, of a small number of heroic individuals who risked their lives to save others, and of what can be done when people come together to oppose tyranny

Village of Secrets is crammed full of stories from survivors, tales of courage, betrayal, failure, success, hope, despair. It is a helter-skelter ride through the most extreme of human experiences

A SUNDAY TIMES TOP FIVE BESTSELLER 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2014 
 
From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the extraordinary story of a French village that helped save thousands who were pursued by the Gestapo during World War II. 
 
High up in the mountains of the southern Massif Central in France lies a cluster of tiny, remote villages united by a long and particular history. During the Nazi occupation, the inhabitants of the Plateau Vivarais Lignon saved several thousand people from the concentration camps. As the victims of Nazi persecution flooded in – resisters, freemasons, communists and Jews, many of them children – the villagers united to keep them safe. 
 
 The story of why and how these villages came to save so many people has never been fully told. But several of the remarkable architects of the mission are still alive, as are a number of those they saved. Caroline Moorehead has sought out and interviewed many of the people involved in this extraordinary undertaking, and brings us their unforgettable testimonies. It is a story of courage and determination, of a small number of heroic individuals who risked their lives to save others, and of what can be done when people come together to oppose tyranny.

A Story of Resistance, Friendship and Survival in Auschwitz

A Train in Winter

A moving and extraordinary book about courage and survival, friendship and endurance - a portrait of ordinary women who faced the horror of war together.

This serious and heartfelt book does deliver on its promise of a tale of how female friendship "can make the difference between living and dying"... Profound

A harrowing but also uplifting shared story of friendship, courage and endurance

A story of stunning courage, generosity and hope. They risked their lives to defeat Fascism, by printing subversive literature, hiding Jewish friends or, in the case of one girl, simply insulting a French youth because he had decided to co-operate with the Nazis. The price they paid for their bravery was terrible. A Train in Winter could have been a sad, almost morbid book. In Moorehead's expert hands it is a triumphant one

Compassionate, meticulous and compulsively enthralling... This book is essential reading. The litany of names at the end, with their brief biographies (Yolande, Cecile, Poupette, Mitzy, Lucie...) reminds us weeping is not enough. It bears witness - and warns

Moorehead tells her appalling story in measured prose that sets off perfectly the reader's growing sense of wonder that such heroism is possible

A boom which contains a wealth of historical information as well as some brilliant if horrific storytelling

A pitch-perfect study of human depravity, and of the heroism it can inspire

A multiple biography and a detailed anatomy of the nature of friendship... A Train in Winter is a powerful and moving book; its significance is in bringing to a wider, non-French readership the particular and terrible fate of a group of women whose only crime was to love their country and to wish to do something to defend it, at a time when its government chose craven obedience to the occupier, with terrible consequences for so many of its people

This is a clear-sighted, distressing and unforgettable book

A harrowing but also uplifting story of shared story of friendship, courage and endurance

It is an exceptional achievement on the author's part to have reconstructed these obscure lives that so often ended in sordid misery and to have restored their dignity and honour

An outstanding and important book, compelling and deeply troubling

A hybrid of history and multiple biography, movingly chronicles the women's ordeal... [it] bears eloquent witness to the moral and material ruin of collaborationist in France

A remarkable achievement of biographical and oral research and with a brilliant narrative and description

A hugely important book documenting female suffering during WWII and the solidarity that help some of them survive in the most brutal conditions

Caroline Moorehead is the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo and Martha Gellhorn. Well known for her work in human rights, she has published a history of the Red Cross and a book about refugees, Human Cargo. Her most recent book, Dancing to the Precipice, a biography of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, was shorlisted for the Costa Biography Award in 2009. Caroline lives in London.

A moving and extraordinary book about courage and survival, friendship and endurance – a portrait of ordinary women who faced the horror of the holocaust together. 
 
On an icy morning in Paris in January 1943, a group of 230 French women resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent on a train to Auschwitz – the only train, in the four years of German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp. Of the group, only 49 survivors would return to France. 
 
 Here is the story of these women – told for the first time. A Train in Winter is a portrait of ordinary people, of their bravery and endurance, and of the friendships that kept so many of them alive. 
 
 ‘A story of stunning courage, generosity and hope’ Mail on Sunday 
 
‘Serious and heartfelt...profound’ Sunday Times

Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution

Dancing to the Precipice

Lucie de la Tour du Pin was the Pepys of her generation: her diaries provide a vivid picture of Versailles, the French Revolution and Napoleon. This richly textured, highly enjoyable and evocative biography shows us an extraordinary woman in the midst of her extraordinary times.

Utterly captivating... brings to life both Lucie and the glorious and terrible years through which she lived with a novelistic vividness, full of sights and sounds and flavours

A scintillating biography...Moorehead succeeds triumphantly [and] brings an assured grip on contemporary politics and a colourful sense of place

A rich and satisfying book which not only adds to our appreciation of Madame de la Tour du Pin's story but brings the whole tumultuous period and its characters to life

Lucie de la Tour de Pin has found a biographer worthy of her own storytelling skills. With a light-handed touch, Moorehead sets Lucie's story in its wider social and historical context, sketching the complicated political twists and turns in a way that makes them memorable without ever dumbing down

Never less than a gripping story of an extraordinary life

Here is the latest from Caroline Moorhead whose work is never less than rigorously and beautifully composed

Moorehead has an eye for the detail... The book sparkles with gems about life at the court of Marie-Antoinette

romantic adventure, staged in colourful historical settings...moral tale

The attraction of Moorehead's biography lies in her seamless fusion of Lucie's warm subjectivity with a broad historical canvas of bitter turmoil.

An excellent, lively biography, full of background detail

Moorehead's biography, drawing on a trove of previously unpublished correspondence, captures the rhythm of the radical contrasts in her subject's like

This utterly captivating biography brings to life, with novelistic vividness, both Lucie [de la Tour du Pin] and the glorious and terrible years through which she lived

It's not uncommon to enjoy a novel and want to read more novels by that author; it's less common to think the same about a biography, but after reading Dancing to the Precipice, I definitely want to read more biographies by Moorhead

It is in describing Lucie's world in this biography so admirably succeeds

Enthralling look at the sharp-eyed 19th-century memoirist Lucie de la Tour du Pin.

Caroline Moorehead is the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo and Martha Gellhorn. Well known for her work in human rights, she has published a history of the Red Cross and a book about refugees, Human Cargo and most recently, A Train in Winter. Caroline lives in London.

Lucie de la Tour du Pin was the Pepys of her generation. She witnessed, participated in, and wrote diaries detailing one of the most tumultuous periods of history. From life in the Court of Versailles, through the French Revolution to Napoleon's rule, Lucie survived extraordinary times with great spirit. She recorded people, politics and intrigue, alongside the intriguing minutia of everyday life: food, work, illness, children, manners and clothes. 
 
Caroline Moorehead's richly novelistic biography sets Lucy and her dairies in their wider context, illuminating a remarkable period of history. 
 
Dancing to the Precipice was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2009.

Caroline Moorehead

It's testament to Moorehead's precise, empathic prose that Edda emerges not as the Duce's devilish scion, but as a wounded, fragile being... It makes for a profoundly satisfying, albeit wistful, read and - give the recent victory of Giorgia Meloni in the Italian elections - a worryingly relevant one

Interesting and original... Moorehead is a fine writer and a conscientious historian

[Moorehead] brilliantly sketches the background of Mussolini and his regime

Painstakingly researched and vividly told, this engrossing history turns the spotlight on the deeply conflicted Edda Mussolini, brilliantly balancing the big picture with a wealth of telling detail

CLARE MULLEY, author of The Women Who Flew for Hitler

Caroline Moorehead writes with her characteristic elegance, eye for detail and authoritative knowledge about a monster and a survivor. The story of Mussolini's glamorous daughter is certainly a fascinating one

MIRANDA SEYMOUR, author of I Used to Live Here Once

Wide-ranging and compelling... this book will take a leading place in all studies of the reality of Fascism and all authoritarianism

RICHARD BOSWORTH, author of Mussolini and the Eclipse of Italian Fascism

The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe

A thrilling biography of Benito Mussolini's favourite daughter, and a heart-stopping account of the unravelling of the Fascist dream in Italy 
 
'Engrossing... Moorehead has a spirited turn of phrase, a keen eye for the telling detail and pungent quote, and a gift for marshaling complex material' Jenny Uglow, New York Times Book Review 
 
Edda Mussolini was Benito's favourite daughter: spoilt, venal and uneducated but also clever, brave, and ultimately loyal. She was her father's confidante during the 20 years of Fascist rule and married Foreign Secretary Galeazzo Ciano, making them the most celebrated couple in Roman fascist society. 
 
Their fortunes turned in 1943, when Ciano voted against Mussolini in a plot to bring him down. In a dramatic story that takes in hidden diaries, her father's fall and her husband's execution, 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. 
 
'Vividly told, engrossing history' CLARE MULLEY, author of The Women Who Flew for Hitler 
 
'Precise, empathic . . . a profoundly satisfying, albeit wistful, read and . . . a worryingly relevant one' GUARDIAN

Caroline Moorehead

Praise for Edda Mussolini

It's testament to Moorehead's precise, empathic prose that Edda emerges not as the Duce's devilish scion, but as a wounded, fragile being... It makes for a profoundly satisfying, albeit wistful, read a ...

Interesting and original... Moorehead is a fine writer and a conscientious historian

[Moorehead] brilliantly sketches the background of Mussolini and his regime

It's testament to Moorehead's precise, empathic prose that Edda emerges not as the Duce's devilish scion, but as a wounded, fragile being... It makes for a profoundly satisfying, albeit wistful, read a ...

Interesting and original... Moorehead is a fine writer and a conscientious historian

[Moorehead] brilliantly sketches the background of Mussolini and his regime

It's testament to Moorehead's precise, empathic prose that Edda emerges not as the Duce's devilish scion, but as a wounded, fragile being... It makes for a profoundly satisfying, albeit wistful, read a ...

Interesting and original... Moorehead is a fine writer and a conscientious historian

[Moorehead] brilliantly sketches the background of Mussolini and his regime

Books by Caroline Moorehead

Series by Caroline Moorehead

The Resistance Quartet

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