Mussolini's Favourite Daughter

In the midst of the most hostile period in Scottish history, comes a passionate lesbian love story.Set against post-Reformation Scotland, with Mary Queen of Scots on the throne, is Marie Maitland whose erotic lesbian poetry gives us a rare and significant insight into same-sex lo ...  Show more

The Romans have gone down as some of the greatest perverts of all time. But what really went on inside a Roman orgy? Joining Kate to get behind the bacchanalia is fan-favourite Emma Southon whose new book is Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire.This episode was edited by Tim ...  Show more

September 1943, and German troops have just landed in gliders to rescue Benito Mussolini from the mountain resort where he was being held. “I knew my friend Adolf Hitler would not desert me,” he said later. But Mussolini died before the end of the war, shot and then strung up ...

Exactly a century after the 1922 March on Rome which brought fascist dictator Benito Mussolini to power, the far-right party Brothers of Italy have been voted into government.Fratelli d'Italia (FDL), which has its roots in Italy’s post-war Neo-fascist social movement, is lead by ...  Show more

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss the 'first' fascist, Gabriele D'Annunzio, with historian Lucy Hughes-Hallett. D'Annunzio was a key figure in Italian literature before becoming a political figure later in his life. Although never personally identifying with fascism, his ...  Show more

We begin at the end… in 1945, with a pile of bodies dumped in Milan then strung up for all to see. Among them, the most powerful man in Italy. One of the most significant figures in modern history. How did it come to this? In this episode, we scroll back to follow the start of Be ...  Show more