Mark Gilbert in conversation with The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize

How does it feel to be shortlisted for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize?

I was taken aback (and of course delighted). I truly had not expected such attention for my book. Italy Reborn is a scholarly work that might easily have been published by a university press. I am very glad Penguin / Allen Lane decided to publish it instead. I’m also glad it has had a degree of recognition, which is all the more welcome for being unexpected.

What drew you to the subject of post-war Italian politics?

I have lived in Italy for much of my adult life. My first book was about the collapse of Italian democracy in the early 1990s. Italian politics has been one of the two main themes in my scholarship throughout my career (the other being the history of European integration). I also think that Italy has been a mostly successful democracy, despite its obvious flaws, though that is not how it is perceived by the British, or the Americans (those in glass houses….). I wanted to show that Italy had a postwar political rebirth and had overcome immense odds to establish a democracy that has endured, despite some big bumps on the way.

How did you plan, research and write Italy Reborn?

The genesis of the book was the 2016 referendum on constitutional reform, when the Italians voted 60/40 not to change their constitution. The debate surrounding the election was of extremely high level, much higher, say, than the debate over Brexit. It catalysed my long-held belief, mentioned above, that Italy was a much more successful democracy than British writers gave it credit for. In 2018, I chaired the jury of the Cundill Prize, which was a terrific experience and gave me the confidence to think that I could myself write a book that would explain and recount Italy’s history for a non-academic audience. It was an idea that I had been toying with for a long time.

Chairing the Cundill Prize also led to an agent, Zoe Pagnamenta, getting in touch with me. She encouraged me to think that the book might have potential beyond a narrow academic audience and made me write and rewrite the book proposal until we had something that really worked. It was a lesson in professionalism that I have not forgotten. When Stuart Proffitt at Penguin picked up on the book I swiftly got some more lessons in how to structure the book and make it more accessible. It has been a pleasure to work with him, both professionally and personally. Whatever the book’s flaws, it was planned meticulously, both by me and by those who advised me.

It was a Covid book. I will not forget working in the archives in Rome, July 2021, wearing special plastic gloves, with sweat pouring down my arms and gathering in the fingertips of the gloves. There was no A/C and it was 41C. Italian libraries and archives stayed open in all but the worst pandemic months, but it was necessary to book seats months in advance, and generally be well-organized, which is not my strong suit. The pandemic did restrict the book’s scope. I concentrated from necessity on the archives of the Christian Democrats and the Communists and downplayed the Socialists. There were only so many archive visits I could make. The book is weaker on the PSI than it is on the other two big parties as a result.

Research for the book was based rigorously on original Italian sources – as the footnotes show. I was determined to use contemporary documents, so my protagonists could speak for themselves. I read a truly enormous number of pamphlets, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as diaries, personal papers and party publications. The book is a mattone (brick) as Italians say, but it wears its scholarship lightly, believe it or not.

Writing was the easy bit. The book flowed from the start, though it was expertly tweaked by Stuart. Between September 2022 and April 2023, when the first draft was delivered, I wrote the last five and a half chapters (over 90,000 words) despite having a full teaching load. It is for others to decide if what I wrote is any good, but the words surged out. I think the book’s careful planning helped that happen.

What were the surprises you encountered along the way?

Discovering just how appalling Fascism had been. Of course, as a historian of Italy, intellectually I knew that, but immersing myself in documents from the time gave me a visceral sense of how humiliated the Italians were by Fascism’s colossal failures. I think Italians have been mostly inoculated against Fascism as a result, which is why I’m less worried about Giorgia Meloni’s government than many others, though I naturally don’t like it.

A second surprise was the figure of De Gasperi. He emerged as the ‘hero’ of the book: its central protagonist, at any rate in the book’s second half. One or two reviewers have accused me of over-dramatizing his role, but all I can say is that the ‘buck stopped with him’. There were certain very big decisions that had to be taken by him alone (his daughter’s memoir of him is called ‘De Gasperi Uomo Solo’) since the other party leaders would have fudged them, and in almost every case he seems to me to have made the right call. His ideas on what democracy is are very interesting: I almost wish I had written a mini-essay within one of the later chapters on the subject. He was a thinker, not just a pragmatic, and at times rather ruthless, politician – though Italians should be grateful for his toughness.

A third surprise was how vivid some of the original documents were (I think this is one reason why the writing process was so easy). The minutes of the steering committee, or direzione, of the Communist Party, for instance, which I expected to be dry summaries, are in fact often extremely lively. If you have any imagination, you can visualize the clashes and the arguments between the protagonists. Personalities are very clear.

Tell us how Italy Reborn can be seen as a continuation or a departure from your earlier books.

It was meant to be a partial departure and ended up as a substantial continuation. I have had a tendency throughout my career to write old-fashioned ‘great man’ history, if the term can be pardoned. I wanted to dedicate more space to the social history of Italy’s democracy, but the book was ballooning in size and we chose (rightly) to focus on the political drama. If I have the chance to publish a second edition, I would like to include a chapter on how ordinary Italians ‘lived’ their democracy and on how intellectuals and artists commented upon it.

What advice would you give a writer of non-fiction starting out today, given the current publishing climate?

Get a reasonably well-paid main job and write in your spare time. If you are an academic, make sure you have a sabbatical during the proof-reading and editorial production process. I found this much harder work than the writing and more difficult to reconcile with my many and various academic responsibilities.

What’s next for you as an author?

I have signed a contract, again with Penguin, to write a general history of Italy (not just a political history) from ‘Mussolini to Meloni’, i.e. from Piazzale Loreto in April 1945, when the Duce’s corpse was stomped by hysterical crowds, to the Italy of today. On the way, the book will deal with terrorism, corruption, political chaos, the transformation of a poor, deeply Catholic country into a still prosperous multicultural one, and Italy’s remarkable cultural achievements during this period. Among other things. In effect, a medium-length (150,000 words) portrait of a nation. I can’t wait to start writing.