Until 2013, the name Gabriele D’Annunzio was known only to students of Italian history, devotees of Decadent poetry and fashionistas with an interest in turn-of-the-century menswear. Now the name of this repulsive yet compelling man rings many more bells, thanks to the thrilling Samuel Johnson prize-winning biography The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett.
She details D’Annunzio’s evolution from an idealistic poet who allied himself with the Romantic aesthetic to an instigator of radical right-wing revolt against democratic authority, who eventually declared himself the Commandante of the city of Fiume in modern-day Croatia, intending to establish the utopian modern state upon his muddled fascist and artistic ideals and create a social paradigm for the rest of the world. Read more…
Gabriele d’Annunzio –poet, dictator and proto-fascist – wasn’t good to his women. He was a serial seducer who wrote to one of his numerous mistresses ‘Your beauty is spiritualised by illness… when you are dead you will reach the supreme light of beauty.’ He ruined women financially. He disgraced and abandoned them and drove them mad. But he chose well. Most of his longer term relationships were with women who were variously rich, grand or brilliantly talented. Here is what four of them said to, or about, him. Read more…
We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett last night won the Samuel Johnson Prize 2013 – the UK’s most prestigious award for non-fiction.
