Dan Snow's History Hit - England and Italy. The History.

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

The history of Italy and England stretches back thousands of years well before Italy and England even existed as nations. As the two will meet in the European Championship final this Sunday it seemed like the perfect time to explore the shared history of these two people. From the Romans to the medieval period, the Renaissance, and through to the tumult of the 20th Century. Dan is joined by Francesco da Mosto and Valentina Caldari to explore what draws Italy and England together and to predict who will triumph in the European Championship final.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. It's happening, it's happening. England are in the final of Euro 2020, taking place in the summer of 2021. That fact is going to be so contested in a massive Twitter spat in a hundred years' time. I'm almost sad I won't be alive to watch it play out. But England, after many years of waiting, are in the final of a major football tournament. We could not let that moment pass without doing another podcast. And what could be more appropriate, given that England will face Italy in that final, than to do a history of these two great nations and their interactions with each other

that stretch back, obviously, thousands of years. The first description of England we have, after all, is that of an Italian out of Julius Caesar when Caesar crossed the channel in August 55 BC and found that the British of course by the way obviously this is all anachronistic England didn't exist back then the English didn't exist but you know nor did the Italians but for the sake of this podcast and for the sake of the festive spirit the next few days let's just go with it he found that the inhabitants were lining the cliffs waiting for Caesar's invasion now remarkably this I think in 2,000 years and many many many invasions of England and Britain this is the only one that was contested on the beach where there

was fighting on the beach as the amphibious assault came ashore. Caesar describes how his Romans, his Italians, let's call them, were reluctant to jump off their ships into the shallows, and it required the standard bearer of the 10th legion to jump ashore and dare his comrades to follow him or risk losing their eagle, losing their standard. Caesar left pretty quickly after that. It was more an expedition than a full invasion. Although he returned the following year, obviously Italians did not return until the 30s AD, when under the Emperor Claudius, Rome invaded Britain again. This time they were staying for much longer. Anyway, we talk all about the rich historical resonance this fixtured with two Italians. Who else? I've got the very wonderful Valentina Caldari. She's a professor at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge. Check this out. She studied in Rome.

She studied in Canterbury. She studied in Oxford. Now she's at Cambridge. She's really picked it all off. If anyone can tell us about the Italians and the English, it is her. She's now the Director of Studies and History at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge. But I've also got an old friend and colleague from my BBC days, Francesco D'Amosta. He is an architect. He's an author. He's a historian. He's a filmmaker and TV presenter. He's descended from one of the great aristocratic families of Venice. He's as Italian as it gets. So I've got these two wonderful Italians. They're going to be talking me through it. But let me just say again, clearly, the funny thing about this episode is that England and Italy have never existed as sovereign nations at the same time. So let's not get carried away. England ceased to exist as a sovereign state when it was

absorbed into Great Britain in 1707. And Italy has only existed as a country rather than a geographical expression, an idea, a dream, since about the early 1870s, 1871, I think. So, you know, don't get too upset. It's all meant in the spirit of fun. That day I was determined to do this. I was hoping Italy would reach the final because I visited a Roman villa in the New Forest. Some wonderful mosaics were uncovered in the 1930s, And I learned at that place, I didn't know this, that pheasants and rabbits were both introduced into this country by the Romans. I had no idea. Pheasants and rabbits, extraordinary. And then now that I think about it, several other things like central heating, but that is quite interesting. And then both of

our countries have been shaped by the interaction between the two of us. As you'll hear in this podcast, the one that most people may think of was Henry VIII, that almost archetypal king of England. He was made defender of the faith by the Italian-born Pope, Pope Leo X, whose real name was the fantastic Giovanni di Lorenzo de Medici. And then, of course, famously, Henry VIII then asked for his marriage to be annulled. He wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. He needed to conceive of a son, and Caspar Vagan was not producing any sons. There was another Medici, another Italian pope, Pope Clement VII, who refused to allow that annulment and drove Henry to break with the Church of Rome. A big deal, folks, a big deal. Another important, I think, Rome. A big deal, folks, a big deal. Another important, I think, Anglo-Italian moment was Nelson after the Battle of Nile. He sails into Naples in 1798 after winning the Battle of Nile.

He receives adulation, fame. He's given a peerage by the British government. He's decorated by the Russian as the Ottomans. He is the man of the moment, and there he meets and falls in love with Emma Hamilton, who's the wife of the British resident in Naples, the kingdom of Naples. It was sort of the southern Italian kingdom. And then Nelson goes off on a bit of a limb there. A falls in love with Lady Emma Hamilton. B encourages the King of Naples to invade French-held central Italy, including Rome. And he supports that invading army with his fleet. The army then fall apart and Nelson has to evacuate the Neapolitan royal family to Sicily. So that all goes a bit crazy. In this episode, you'll be hearing lots of other wonderful examples. You'll be hearing about Shakespeare's

obsession with Italy, international banking, all that kind of stuff. And if you wish to listen to past episodes of this podcast without the ads, no advertisements at all, you can go to historyhit.tv. I've started a new history channel. It's like Netflix, but just for history. In fact, it's got audio on as well. So it's better than Netflix in many ways. You get all the audio from these podcasts, but you also get hundreds of hours of documentaries, history documentaries from ancient history right up to the present day. So please go and check that out on historyhit.tv. You get a month for free if you sign up today. So head over there and do that. In the meantime, everyone, please enjoy this podcast with Valentina and Francesco. And above all, enjoy the big match

on Sunday. Enjoy the final. It'll be a difficult match for the Snow family because my brother is married to an Italian. My two nephews, Damiano and Lorenzo, or as we call them, Damo and Larry, will be in a bit of a tight spot. So they won't be listening to this podcast, they never do, but I hope they're supporting England. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy this pod. Francesco, thank you for coming on the podcast. Oh, good morning. Thank you. So it's the big game, Italy versus England. Now, the history is so fascinating. You know more about Italy than anybody else. You've traveled from top to bottom, making great TV shows and writing books. First of all, tell me about Italy.

Like it's existed for so long as geography, as a people, as a language, but not as a political entity. What is the real Italy? You are completely right. Italy, it exists physically from a long time, but politically is just something like 100 years. But I think that the spirit of Italy is this, all different kinds of people, they feel to be all together. Like I'm half from Venice and my mother is from Sicily. So from the top to the bottom. Like I'm half from Venice and my mother is from Sicily. So from the top to the bottom.

But it's quite interesting because every time you move from one little village to another one, there is new things, but there is always a connection between them. From the cooking, from the way of being. You have people from Naples, they are very open, and people in the north are quite close. They are shy sometimes. Well, listen, Italian shy is charismatic English. Let me tell you something.

That's nice. And what about historically? I mean, Italy was for so many centuries at the heart of Christendom, of Western European life. Do you think English were an important part of Italian history? I think so. Now we can speak a little about Venice. I'm from Venice. But the relationship between Venice and England, they come from a long time. Because both the nation, Venice and England, they were navigators.

They were sailing all around the world to main market. So there was a direct connection between the sailors of different countries. And one of the places was Portsmouth, where all the merchandise from Venice were going, passing in the Atlantic and going to the north and arriving to the ports of England. And it's quite interesting, but also sometimes there were a lot of fights in the Mediterranean between English and Venetians. And your ancestors were presumably at the heart of all those fights. It's quite curious because some years ago I received a phone call. They told me if I was interested

about an old 15th century map done by a D'Amosto guy. And I thought, wow, I heard a legend in the family that one map was stolen by the family. And in fact, I found out that there was an ancestor that in the period of Queen Elizabeth

has been attacked by British pirates and they attack and they've stolen everything and maybe also the map. Do you know what, Francesco? I think here in England, we call those guys heroic freedom fighters. Yes, these ones were the Shirley brothers. Shakespeare put them in the Twelfth Night as two characters very tough. Yeah, not just the Shirley Brothers, but Italy is constantly in Shakespeare's plays. The tragedies, the comedies, it just shows what Italy or the idea of Italy meant to people in England at the end of the 16th, early 17th centuries. It was the place for romance, great political drama, like the way that my generation thinks of New York as the ultimate film set. So tell me now, let's go all the way back. Do Italians think about the English? Do they bother their heads with the English? What do

they think about these wild men and women of the Northwest? I think Italians do not think about the English in football terms, that's for sure. We don't think of them as great rivals, it's fair to say, but I might regret this. There is lots of admiration. We think of the English for their accents. We think most English people have posh accents and we do enjoy English being spoken in movies. We're not used to it much, you see, because Italians dub everything. So listening to someone speak in English is always very exciting. What about history? Maybe go back all the way to the start in a second. But in the 19th century, Britain was enjoying a period of dominance. It was critical to the Italian unification project. Is any of that remembered? Is there a historical memory?

Britain sent lots of troops to assist Italy in the First World War and then fought against Britain in the next war. Is there anything like that that is remembered? Or is most Italians' attitude towards the Brits and the English current, made up of contemporary cultural things? I think we have the tendency to sort of forget the bits of history where Italy doesn't come out very well. And therefore you can put in that much of the 20th century really so in that sense I think if you asked academics or people who are perhaps most aware of Italian participation in first and second world war they would absolutely have a sense

that the British were crucial to us coming up perhaps less badly that we could have but I think otherwise Italians think about the good bits. So they think about the Renaissance and they think about, you know, moments when Italy was at the top as opposed to needing help, of which we needed much. Now, the big problem with Italy and the big problem with England, of course, is their geographical, their historic terms. It's not super easy because what is Rome's relationship with Italy? Because Rome conquers what is now mostly England,

most of Wales in the first century AD. Is that an Anglo-Italian moment or is that distinct from Italy? That is a million dollar question. And being someone who is from Rome, I like to think that Rome and Italy are synonyms much before they actually are post 1870. So I don't know. I don't know how easy this is to see the Roman Empire as a sort of, you know, a synonym as equivalent, you know, so shorthand for Italy. I think loads of Italy didn't feel that way for a long time. a long time. But I think if we think about the long history of Anglo-Italian relations, there are moments, you know, Boudicca, moments where you see, you know, the fight against the Roman Empire being won between sort of the intellect and the barbarians. Not in the way that it might seem, of course, you know, Tacitus, historians of the Roman Empire would say the barbarians being the corrupt Romans and Boudicica being an example of bravery and uncorrupted

free woman and that stays the idea for a long time even in a moment where you have perhaps a bigger sense of the italian peninsula that passed between england and italy is remembered that's interesting so as you say tastas talks about buddhica roman historians talk about keratikus you can say that what would become the english the inhabitants of the southern part of you say, Tastus talks about Boudicca, Roman historians talk about Caraticus. You could say that what would become the English, the inhabitants of the southern part of the island that we're now speaking on, their first job in Italy, if you like, was sort of holding a mirror up to Roman corruption or lack of virtue. Absolutely. And this is not just the case for England and the British Isles. It's the case for German lands. You know, if you read anyone from Caesar to indeed Tacitus, Cassius Dio, the idea is very

much that you have perhaps an outward facade of Roman superiority. But if you dig not even that much deeper, you see that what they are most angry about is, you know, the corrupt nature of the Roman Empire. The fact that having been wealthy and a great period of territorial expansion for such a long time, they are now stagnating and customs and behaviours are worsening as a consequence. So they go back to the origin, to what's purer in that sense. And then I guess the Italians, the Romans abandoned this island when there are other parts of the empire more valuable, more important to defend. But then

there's this other wave of Christianization. You get Italian Pope Gregory. He sends the Italian Augustine who comes to Canterbury and reintroduces Christianity. This is difficult territory here to the south and eastern parts of the island. Obviously, the Irish, before anyone sends me messages, also had a proselytizing mission in some parts of this archipelago as well. So the Italians could have come back, but this time not as conquerors, but as, well, representatives of Christianity. I mean, is Italy the beating heart of Western Christendom at this time? This is definitely the case. It's definitely the perception. And I think you don't have a period like this one where Rome and Italy are at the forefront of proselytizing

in what's felt to be the frontiers at that point. Because when you're thinking now, after Council of Trent becomes the overseas empires, at this point, Britain feels very much like the frontier. Perhaps the most interesting bit is the physical, right? The building of churches and monasteries and the attempt at converting the top of society. Augustine goes and converting kings and queens

in the hope that everyone else would follow. Tell me, why was Northern Italy, we know the Roman Empire, of course, and its enormous extent across much of Europe and North Africa and the Near East. But after that, the wealth of Northern Italy, we know the Roman Empire, of course, and its enormous extent across much of Europe and North Africa and the Near East. But after that, the wealth of Northern Italy, what is it about Northern Italy? Why was this area around Italy, around Venice, around Milan, Genoa, why was it so wealthy in the Middle Ages? In the Middle Ages, the most important thing was the market with the Easter. important thing was the market with the east because in that period there was very important there was all the spices all these merchandise that were coming from the east that they could

buy for not a lot of money and to resell in all europe so the venetian and also the genoese they created the trading marketplaces in all the Mediterranean. And from there, they could have places where they could buy things directly. The moment in which arrived the decline is when Vasco da Gama went around Africa. And Florentine, with the help of the, I think, the money of the british crown they could arrive directly to the india to get the spices directly there they cut out the middleman the northern italian middleman got cut out exactly and it's quite interesting because one of my ancestors another one opened the route to go down in africa because it was the 1450 and he was going to sell his merchandise to Flanders and then England.

But then he met Henry the Navigator and he had the chance to have a caravaggio and to go down in Africa and to explore the south of Africa. That's what's so interesting about the Italians is the Italian states didn't get a piece of the new world, but Italians, Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, they were at the forefront of opening up these new trading routes, weren't they? Yeah, I agree. There was a moment in which Venice, in the moment that Columbus discovered the new world, there was a moment in which Venice was thinking about what to do about

the new world. But the problem was that first Venice didn't have trade place from where to start the ships in the Atlantic. So to go all through there, to do all the Mediterranean, and then they have to use the same kind of ships to arrive to America. And the ships inside the Mediterranean were completely different from the ships you needed to go to the other side of the Atlantic. That is the conundrum. That's the advantage that the men of Bristol had and Plymouth, they could just sail straight out. Banking, even our words for banking,

bankrupt and all these things, they come from these wealthy northern Italian families, don't they, from the 13th and 14th centuries. It was the birth of, well, as we understand it, banking today, wasn't it? Yeah, they were the Florentine. And in Venice, they think that there is now is a bar, it's called Banco Giro. It seems to be the first bank in the world, it's near Rialto. Now it's a bar where you can drink wine. But at that time it was very important, the Venetians in that period invented, it's like something, a credit card, because if you have to buy something in a place in Alexandria of Egypt, there were trading posts of different Venetian families where you can say, OK, I borrow the money from you in Alexandria. I pay a percent. So I don't have to send all the

gold to buy the things. So that was just the paper as money. But they didn't have to send all the gold because there were all the pirates. And that was the danger. And then these families, they would have been as far as London, right? You had all these children and you spread them out across Amsterdam, Rotterdam, London, and then you could have a secure family bank. Yeah, they were going around all the Mediterranean. And very often all the different families that were helping each other, creating different groups in every town

because the Italian ambassador, they were at the same time merchants. So it was very important for them to have good relationships in different countries but at the same time create a market that could be useful also for the other families of the Republic. Every family was working for the republic so all the connection were in a certain way public between all the family of the venetian aristocracy and then i always love the story about edward the third of england who just

refused to pay his debts i think it was 600 florins or something to the Peruzzi family, and they went bankrupt. I mean, never lend money to the English. Yeah, I remember that. That was a big problem. And what does bankrupt mean in Italian? Bancarotta. When you lose all the money.

There is a funny story. It's real, this. When a person in Venice was going bankrupt, he had to stay for a week on a stage on a square of Venice, just only his pants. And all the people could see him attached to this stage so the people can laugh at him. Apart from the problems of the prison, he had to stay there for a week, just his pants. You're listening to Dan Snow's History.

We're talking about England and Italy. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Italy is famously disunited. It's almost like a byword for a geographical entity that can never put aside its differences and become one. Is that what in a way gives its energy, its vitality, do you think, curiously? It's absolutely the case for a long time. So anyone studying Renaissance Italy or looking at the city-states, it's absolutely the case that

it's very division, it's very sort of political piecemeal organization is what makes it competitive. They're competing with each other. They want to be better than their next door neighbor. And you attract intellectuals, painters, those who are writing the histories of this or that city state. And Milan is better and has a longer history of Venice and Florence and the next citystate. So it's absolutely the case that the division does help for a long time, arguably not so much in the 19th century, but until then is what makes it. And, you know, the importance of individual families, of wanting to leave a legacy.

Think about families like the Medici family or, you know, Sforza, any name, Este. And as we're going back to thinking, you know, you're often mentioning examples that are the north of italy or you know central italy you've got paper states so they're rich for different reasons but i think what's making the north rich and famous and a great place for grand tours and the like is definitely the positive intellectual competition that comes with political distance. Well, it's the perfect storm of highly evolved cities

in which the latest technology and people from all over the world are gathering and trading and talking. It's kind of an exciting place to be, but also close to the wellspring of Christianity and then surrounded by these epic epic gigantic ruins of this empire that everybody looks back to as a sort of ideal form of polity so like it's pretty heady stuff if you're coming from the rainy archipelago in the west of the known world it's pretty exciting to go to Italy that's right and if you read reasons why people go to Italy I mean first of all I think we should

never forget there is a societal expectation right doing the grand Tour is not just something you do for your own knowledge, for knowledge's sake or for your own bettering. It's also because you can then go back home and say you've done the Grand Tour. So there is an expectation there that your friends would be impressed, so to speak. But it's definitely the case that Italy has lots of attractive qualities, including health, right? The idea that big, lengthy coast can help with health worries. Loads of Englishmen and people who come from countries full of rain and cold go to Italy for the weather and the food. And it's definitely

the case. I mean, especially if you think about romantics, there is a fascination with ruins, with the idea of a past that is there and yet somewhat intangible. You can write poems about it and it doesn't have the negatives that you have and you seen in your contemporary your current circumstances it's still the case now if you ask people why they go to Italy is always the weather and the food and the history perhaps a bit less religion now why do Brits get so hot for that architecture and being in those spaces do Italians have the same thing I think it depends where you're from in Italy, perhaps. Because I'm from Rome, it's fair to say I don't get particularly fussed by ruins because, you know, I grew up with it and I would meet my

friends in front of the Colosseum because it was an easy place. It's quite big and it's easily recognisable. But I think it depends if you're from a city or from the countryside, much like in many other countries. I think the British, you know, culturally, you are attracted by something you don't have much of in your own country. And perhaps, you know, post-reformation thinking about churches, which are rather more somber and bare, entering a Roman church or churches across Italy, which are, you know, Baroque, full of gold. Oh my God. I'm a sucker for a baroque i just go into a baroque church and i have like a nervous breakdown i can't cope it's quite something it's a bit much but if you're not used to it it's obviously an experience put it that way overwhelming i don't

know it's like the food the weather the built environment and the churches the religious heritage are all overwhelming if you're British. Like we just go and eat too much and panic and drink too much and get overwhelmed in art galleries and then get too hot. Everything is just... We do think the Brits often get too drunk and they get very red, red face, because as you say, it's a combination of perhaps too much drink

and the sun. Because people keep going to Italy in August when it's way too hot and most Italians actually leave Italy because it's too hot. So it's an amusing issue. But it's also funny you say about food. I mean, the love affair of the English

with Italian food is obviously, you know, long, historically a really interesting topic and a couple of books have actually come out quite recently about it. And there, famously in the diary of Samuel Pepys. You have him hiding his wheel of Parmesan cheese in his garden when the fire of London is woken up in the night by his servant telling him that the fire has started. There is a fire in the city. And what he does is takes his money and his important belongings away.

And then he digs a hole in the garden and he puts his wine and his wheel of parmesan cheese so you know parmesan cheese was valuable then and is valuable now it's very lots of money to parmesan cheese and it was a diplomatic gift so the pope gave wheels of parmesan cheese to Henry VIII and to Mary Tudor so great gift. Listen if someone gives me a wheel of parmesan I'll be a happy man. The early modern period, which is your speciality, like what happens in the Mediterranean world when they start to see these otherwise slightly historically peripheral people, the British and Irish, but arguably the Dutch as well, seizing the opportunities provided by the discovery of the Western hemisphere, a new global trade, shipping technology. Is it surprising? Do Italians

and Spanish in particular have to go, we need to pay some attention to these weirdos now? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look at one of the major developments across early modernity, it's definitely that loss of centrality of the Mediterranean, which was absolutely central, you know, the Mediterranean base into commerce had been for a long time. And if you look at highly populated cities, you would look at the south of Italy, you would look at Spain. And then just a couple of centuries later, you have London and Paris and Amsterdam. So everything shifts to the Atlantic and the North Sea. I mean, I have to say, I think the Spanish are taking more notice of this than the Italians in the sense that there isn't really a unified Italy, obviously, at this point and for a long

time. And therefore, there is not really a sense that Italy can do much about it. I mean, Italy had the republics, they had Pisa in general, places with access to the sea and they were important for trade, but it was very much sort of ad hoc. It was individual cities. Was Spain as a longer standing entity? What is the problem? I'm saying Spain unproblematically. Obviously, there wasn't such thing as Spain as such. But the Iberian powers, Spain and Portugal,

would have been so prominent in their dealings with empires and obviously the first to get to the New World, to circumnavigate Africa. They're now having to deal with the commercial companies of the English and the Dutch, which are incredibly more dynamic, more profitable, faster, better financed, being joint stock companies. And they try to copy. So there is a sense that the commercial companies of the Protestant countries being so profitable and successful, they might try to copy and they don't really manage to do it all that well. Financing is still coming very much top down.

Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week and then it's interesting in the 19th century you get disraeli's parents emigrated to england from italy you know they're not the only ones. You get a big Italian migration.

Lots of my friends in South Wales have got Italian names and pasts. Is that just looking for work? Is that just the nature of economic migration? Yeah, I would think that's absolutely the case. I mean, if you think about lots of places now where you see Italian communities, there are lots of sort of second,

third generation Italian immigrants. You mentioned Wales. There's plenty in Peterborough, close to Cambridge. We're thinking about economic migration and partly it's food related industries since very early on. So ice cream and some would tell you fish and chips

was actually perhaps an Italian invention. Oh my goodness, Valentina, you can't come on the podcast and say that. What are you talking about? But it's definitely also factories, brickmaking, for example. You want people who can withstand the heat, and Italians are quite good at it. So Southern Italians, very often from the islands, Sicily and Sardinia, very common. Why was it so hard to unify?

What do Italians think about why there was not Italian unity? Why it was too often the tilt yard, the battlefield for other empires, be they Spanish, Habsburg, French. What did Italians make of that? It's a strange century for Italy, the 19th century. You feel like it's a never-ending struggle. And there is not much sense until very late that there is lots of support within Italy so to stick with Anglo-Italian you think about the support

that Garibaldi gets from parliament you know public support that he gets from Britain and you know his cause is embraced one might discuss the motivation right the idea of a stable state is always better in political and economic terms but there isn't that much sense within italy that garibaldi or that his cause is accepted or acceptable to a lot of people he himself of course he starts as a republican you know someone who wants a republic and instead what ends up happening is obviously a kingdom, right? In 1861, what's unified is a kingdom. So he himself, you see him sort of pragmatically and instrumentally swapping the ideas of someone like Mazzini, Giuseppe Mazzini, who was in favour of a republic, for those of someone who was perhaps, shall we say, more sort of politically minded, like the

Count of Cavour, Camillo Benso. So arguably, you know, the end result isn't perhaps what Garibaldi would have initially envisioned. And the problem is certainly that no one knows what Italy is going to be like, that Italy has never been a unified country, that the north and the south have always been ruled by often foreign powers and in very different manners. They have developed differently in both political terms and economic ones. If you think historically, the South having been a place where you get expert, you still do, obviously, you know, the lemons and the oranges, they all come from the South of Italy, while the North has developed and will continue to do so with English help as well into a more industrial manufacturing power. And arguably, the Italy that comes post 1861 is one that one can call it the kingdom of Italy,

but it's perhaps a continuation of Piedmont. That kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia has a very clear identity that is demonstrated by the fact that the king of Italy doesn't even change his numbering. He's not the first as the king of Italy, but he's still coming from having been the king of Piedmont and Sardinia. So it's still experimental. It's still very early on. And the lengths at which different characters go to unify it, to fight, you know, the civil wars and the civil strife starting 1840s and continuing throughout the 19th century is telling that there isn't a unified agenda, perhaps, for a very long time.

And of course, in 1861, Rome isn't even part of the Kingdom of Italy, considering now how much we think of it as the centre. We think of it, I mean, as a Roman, we think of it as the centre of it all. It wasn't there in 1861, and it won't be there until 1870. Yeah, you mentioned Garibaldi, and he was acting on behalf of the King of Piedmont, which was a kingdom in Northern Italy. And he went on the Piedmont, the steamship, and he was escorted by the Royal Navy on his expedition to Sicily to take on the Bourbon kings of the south of Italy. So that was at least a kind of pretty essential part of British involvement in Italy in the 19th century, the unification project.

Absolutely. I mean, I think the English were very excited about the Risorgimento, partly perhaps the romanticised version of it. And secondly, because it's a time where a foreign power holding sway over Italy is problematic for others, right? You don't want France or Spain or Austria to have too much power. And that sort of love affair that starts with the Risorgimento and really means that the English are very supportive of Garibaldi and that project and they are very quick to recognize the new kingdom once it's created in 1861 does continue for a little while there is some sort of what looks like cooperation in Africa at the expense of African countries that are divided among European powers but obviously it's not long lasting because you because we only have to wait 1882

for Italy to join the Triple Alliance and things going wrong for a bit after that. You mentioned you're from Venice, you're a fan of Venice. What does unification mean for you guys? I mean, was it a painful process for Venetians to give up their sovereignty and join with other Italians?

Obviously there was some trauma involved with Austrian rule and stuff. But do Venetians today think Italy itself is worse, having given up that freedom for? There are different points of view. At that time, we have to remember that Venice fell down with Napoleon. They accepted him to enter. And then was a ping pong between Austria and France inside Venice. So in a certain way,

Venice became part of Italy in 1866, later than the other part of Italy. But anyway, there was a situation of Venice was very low because there was before the French, then the Austrian, it was very poor. So they hoped that joining to Italy, there was a chance to come back in a way that they were more accepted and they were owners of their land. Even if the point of view of my mother from Sicily, the unification with Garibaldi was a big problem for the South. Because at that time, the South where Nelson was going all the time, because he was going to Palermo and to Naples, they were very rich. And when there was the unification with Savoia, they lost a lot of money.

So maybe for that, we have to say that the South of Italy is a little poorer because they have lost a lot in that period. Italy was aligned with the central powers, if you like, Germany and Austria-Hungary before the First World War, but then the Brits managed to tempt Italy onto their side with the French and the Russians. The First World War, I mean, people are going to be used to hearing descriptions of the trenches in France and Belgium, but I think the worst stories of any that I've read from the First World War are the Italian front in Northern Italy. I mean, it's just hideous, hideous casualties fighting at higher than anyone ever fought to

that point in human history. No particular benefit to any side, just awful. I think not that one should play a game or compete in what was worse, but between the first and the second world war, I think Italy is very often sort of a, perhaps a forgotten frontier because people focus on other places, but it absolutely is dreadful and is also incredibly frustrating for Italy, where of course, you know, swapped sides early enough at this point, as you mentioned, the Treaty of London. But the Triple Alliance was joined in the first place because Italy wanted the Italian-speaking territories

on the Adriatic coast. And he thought that was the way to get them from Austria, Hungary. And when they realized that that wasn't going to happen, they of course relied on the English really to promise that that would be the outcome if Italy contributed to the war effort on the right side. And that wasn't the case.

After an awful and lengthy French war in 1918, the Treaty of Versailles doesn't give Italy much of what they hoped to gain from it. The Brits promised a lot of people a lot of territory during the darkest days of the First World War. The Arabs, the Jews, the Italians, the Japanese japanese and many of them walked away profoundly disenchanted and in the case the italians obviously pushed italy into taking the opposite side in the next great european and world war indeed you know it seems sort of a an easy connection to make but as it

often happens in history it was very complicated if you, there is an obvious sort of anti-English sentiment after the end of the First World War coming from the fact that Italians felt they weren't given what they were promised. But also, Mussolini tried to redress that at the beginning.

You know, he thinks that in order for Italy to be sort of a superpower on the war stage, which he never manages, but, you know, his hope is to actually create a better relationship with England

at the beginning, for a little while, until that falls apart because the sort of expansionist policies of Mussolini and fascism and more generally inevitably clash with Britain trying to maintain the League of Nations, attempt at maintaining global security. The Second World War obviously was actually very hard fought, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean, but eventually it would see British American Canadian troops land in Italy and advance up the peninsula. What is the memory of that period where the fighting was on the Italian

homeland? And again, what is the reputation of the Brits? Because I've heard very negative things when I've been visited Italy about sexual assault and criminality, of course, which we Brits would never hear about in the way we tell those stories about our past. I have to say, not being obviously an expert on this, I think you have to be very interested in military history or go to the places where you have trenches or massacres happen because I think it's quite hard.

I mean, if you ask most people, generationally, we don't have a memory. We don't really pass it on in a way that obviously we should. My feeling of what is visible in Italy of Second World War is very much, as I said, going to places like Pinca, places where Germans have committed massacres, you know, small towns which have been completely destroyed and whose population has been killed, burned and terrible atrocities have been committed. And you see that memorialised, you see museums and you learn the stories, but you have to be looking quite carefully. There is no sense that this is a past that we want to remember. And that obviously conflicts with what you see in places like Rome, where you have

obelisks and even the football stadium where Mussolini is everywhere. So fascism is everywhere. And yet to learn about the trenches or the foreign help in liberating cities, you have to dig pretty deep, which seems the wrong way around. So is Italy having the same debates over its history as we are here in the UK today? I wish that were the case, but no, I don't think so. I mean, I live in the UK for 10 years, so perhaps I'm not in the best place to answer this question, but I don't think we are. I think it's very sort of piecemeal. Sometimes politicians use history in a way that is very unhelpful and clearly sort of instrumental to a political agenda. But I don't think that Italy is discussing its past in a way

that, for example, Germany does or has done and Britain is doing in terms of, say, empire or race. Italy is a strange combination where the past is everywhere from obviously the Colosseum and the Forum, but also, you know, fascist buildings where the very recognisable font is there or obelisks with the dukes are there and places that have been built by fascism are still standing. If you think about the very iconic balcony with Piazza Venezia from which Mussolini would give speeches was there and historians might know but the majority of the population just passes without thinking much so maybe the time will

come when Italy thinks about its past in a more critical and historical terms but I don't think we're there yet Well Valentina thank you very much for coming on this podcast it is not a big chapter of Anglo-Italian history about to be written but it's been written. But who's going to win the game?

Are you asking me? Italy, of course. Francesco, the big game is coming up. Italy are playing England. Who is going to win? Wow. I hope England, I have to say. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I saw the other day the game that they did with the four goals. Wow. It will be interesting. So we will have a look between the two different ways of playing of Italy and England. I feel we have the history on our shoulders.

All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of another episode. Hope you're still awake.

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