“Read this letter as if it were my love testament,” wrote pert Clara Petacci to her paramour, “because it is the last one that you will get … If sometimes I felt in me the desperate attempt to free ...

He was deposed by the Grand Council of Fascism, arrested by the Italian king, and had just escaped imprisonment with the help of German special forces. Mussolini was headed north with his mistress, ...

A number of classified letters written by Italy's 20th century dictator, Benito Mussolini, to his mistress have disappeared from the nation's state archives. The documents, dating from 1937, are part ...

At dawn on 19 April 1945 Clara Petacci, aged 33, travelled to Milan from Lake Garda to join her lover of more than a decade as he made plans for his endgame. The Allies had effectively won the war and ...