“What makes R.J.B Bosworth’s new book so captivating is not just the picture he paints of their affair, based on diaries, letters and police reports, but also the light he throws on the corrupt, greedy, scheming world of the Fascist leadership… Bosworth, the author of some twenty books on the Mussolini years, is one of the finest historians of modern Italy, and his deep knowledge and understanding, as well as his formidable research, inform every page of this enjoyable biography.”—Caroline Moorhead, Literary Review, 10th February 2017.
~Caroline Moorhead, Literary Review
“Readers are fortunate that the Australian-born historian is the first English-language specialist to make extensive use of this material… He writes with erudition, perceptiveness and humour about Claretta and Mussolini — she called him Ben, and he called her Clara —and about the light cast by their affair on the dictator’s personality, his style of rule and Italian social conditions during his 1922-43 spell as national leader.”—Tony Barber, Financial Times
~Tony Barber, Financial Times
“That fateful first encounter and the passionate, but doomed affair that followed between Claretta and her ‘Ben’ is detailed in a riveting new biography of Petacci by historian Richard Bosworth.”—Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
~Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
“Most of the world – as Richard Bosworth points out at the start of this scrupulously forensic examination of a woman for whom his own sympathy is discreetly scant – has forgotten about Claretta Petacci… Xenophobic, anti-Semitic, ruthless, amoral and idle, she is fortunate to have fallen into the hands of a calm, kind and fair-minded biographer, one who balances Petacci’s vices against the fact that her life ended with humiliation, hardship and a shameful death.”—Miranda Seymour, Daily Telegraph
~Miranda Seymour, Daily Telegraph
“Bosworth ably demonstrates how histories of amorous adventurism can be used to explore central themes of modern political history to great effect.”—Neil Gregor, THES
~Neil Gregor, THES
“Claretta: Mussolini’s Last Lover is a book that casts a new light on Mussolini as a failed leader. For readers interested in World War II and the path upon which its leaders trod, this is informative and interesting.”—New York Journal of Books
~New York Journal of Books
“Gripping and scholarly”—Bee Wilson, London Review of Books, 16 March 2017.
“RJB Bosworth draws on rarely consulted papers that Petacci kept of their nine-year relationship. One of the finest historians of modern Italy, Bosworth has written both a love story, full of passion and jealousy, and a vivid portrait of Italy under a man who dreamt of recreating the Roman empire . . . Claretta is an extremely enjoyable read.”—Caroline Moorehead, Financial Times
~Caroline Moorhead, Financial Times
“A worthy companion to Bosworth’s previous biography of Mussolini, this study is more Borgia than bunga bunga, an illuminating history of a folie a deux which could have been sub-titled ‘Fifty Shades of Fascism’.”—Robert Carver, The Tablet
~Robert Carver, The Tablet
