Denis Mack Smith CBE FBA

FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elec ...

(3 March 1920 – 11 July 2017) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

who specialized in the

history of Italy The history of Italy covers the ancient period, the Middle Ages, and the modern era. Since classical antiquity, ancient Etruscans, various Italic peoples (such as the Latins, Samnites, and Umbri), Celts, ''Magna Graecia'' colonists, and other a ...

from the Risorgimento onwards. He is best known for his biographies of

Garibaldi Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi ( , ;In his native Ligurian language, he is known as ''Gioxeppe Gaibado''. In his particular Niçard dialect of Ligurian, he was known as ''Jousé'' or ''Josep''. 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, pat ...

, Cavour and

Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until Fall of the Fascist re ...

, and for his single-volume ''Modern Italy: A Political History''. He was named Grand Official of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1996.

Early life

Denis Mack Smith was born in

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the London Borough o ...

(north London), the son of tax inspector Wilfrid Mack Smith (1891–1975) and Altiora Edith Gauntlett (1888–1969), and was educated at

St Paul's Cathedral Choir School St. Paul's Choir School is a Catholic Church, Catholic List of choir schools, choir school located at The Church of St. Paul (Harvard Square), St. Paul’s Church, Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1963, by Theodore Marier, th ...

and

Haileybury College Haileybury may refer to: Australia * Haileybury (Melbourne), a school in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia **Haileybury Rendall School, an offshoot in Berrimah, North Territory, Australia China * Haileybury International School, an international ...

. He earned a degree in

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

Peterhouse, Cambridge Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite ...

, and following his graduation, he was a fellow there for the next 15 years (1947–62).

Career

A Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford from 1962 to 1987, and then an Emeritus Fellow until his death, Mack Smith has been considered the world's leading scholar on Italian history for the English world. He belonged to the post-World War II generation of Cambridge historians, many based at Peterhouse, who learned to appreciate the primacy of documentary evidence. He was an Honorary Fellow of

Wolfson College, Oxford Wolfson College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Located in north Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson is an all-graduate college with around sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research a ...

, and of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He received the Presidential Medal of Italy in 1984. Though his work on Italian history has been criticized by Italian academics, including

Rosario Romeo Rosario Romeo (11 October 1924 – 16 March 1987) was a leading historian of the Italian Risorgimento and of Italian modern history more generally. His best-known work is probably the wide-ranging and substantial (3 volume) biography of Cavour ...

and

Renzo De Felice Renzo De Felice (8 April 1929 – 25 May 1996) was an Italian historian, who specialized in the Fascist era, writing, among other works, a 6000-page biography of Mussolini (4 volumes, 1965–1997). He argued that Mussolini was a revolutionary m ...

, since their first translations were published in the 1950s, Mack Smith remains the second best-selling author on Italian history after Indro Montanelli. Other Italian academics were outraged over Mack Smith's refusal "to regard Italian fascism and the rise of Benito Mussolini as an aberration".William Grimes, "Denis Mack Smith, Chronicler of Modern Italy, Dies at 97", ''The New York Times'', 2 August 2017 Mack Smith contended that one of the causes of Italian fascism was the structural weaknesses that existed in the Italian political system, a lasting "legacy of the Risorgimento".

Bibliography

* ''Cavour and Garibaldi, 1860: A Study in Political Conflict'', 1954. * ''Garibaldi: A Great Life in Brief'', 1956. * ''Italy: A Modern History'', 1958, revised 1969, completely revised and reprinted as ''Modern Italy: A Political History'', 1997. * ''A History of Sicily'', with Moses Finley, in two volumes, ''Medieval Sicily 800-1713'' and ''Modern Sicily after 1713'', 1968; abridged and reprinted as the single volume ''A History of Sicily'' with Moses Finley and

Christopher Duggan Christopher John Hesketh Duggan (4 November 1957 – 2 November 2015) was a British historian and academic. He specialised in the political, social and cultural history of modern Italy. He began his career as a research fellow at Wolfson Coll ...

, 1986. * ''The Making of Italy, 1796-1870'', 1968 (editor), reprinted as ''The Making of Italy, 1796-1866'', 1988. * ''Great Lives Observed: Garibaldi'', 1969 (editor). * ''Victor Emanuel, Cavour and the Risorgimento'', 1971. * ''Vittorio Emanuele II'', 1975. * ''Mussolini's Roman Empire'' (''Le guerre del Duce''), 1976. * ''Mussolini'', 1981. * ''Cavour'', 1985. * ''Il Risorgimento italiano. Storia e testi'', 1987. * ''Italy and Its Monarchy'', 1989. * ''Mazzini'', 1994. * ''La storia manipolata'', 1998.

With others

*John Anthony Davis and Paul Ginsborg, eds. ''Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento: Essays in Honour of Denis Mack Smith''. (Ten essays, including "Francesco De Sanctis: the politics of a literary critic," by Denis Mack Smith.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Early life

Career

Bibliography

With others

References

Further reading