Edda Mussolini was Benito's favourite daughter: spoilt venal uneducated but clever faithless
but flamboyant a brilliant diplomat wild but brave and ultimately strong and loyal. She was
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. From her early
twenties she was effectively first lady of Italy. She married Galeazzo Ciano who would become
the youngest Foreign Secretary in Italian history and they were the most celebrated and
glamorous couple in elegant vulgar Roman fascist 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. And we see Fascist Italy with all its glamour
decadence and political intrigue and the turbulence before its violent end.
