When Italy’s newspapers reported the death of Indro Montanelli not only was it front-page news, but it dominated all the newspapers for days. This attention would have been a great tribute for any man. It was extraordinary considering the man so celebrated was a journalist.

From the mid-1930s until his final article, just three weeks before his death on 22 July 2001, Indro Montanelli reported on every aspect of Italian life. His was the opinion that everyone read in Il Corriere della Sera on any event, wheter of internal politics or international events.

Montanelli was present at many of the crucial events of the 20th century. He reported on the Spanish Civil War (with the result that his objective reporting led to his expulsion from the Italian Order of Journalists by the Fascist Party), the German invasion of Poland, the Albanian Campaign, the Russo-Finnish War, the division of India and Pakistan, the Russian invasion of Hungary, and other major events.

Often his writing irritated the powers of Italian politics. Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi both had reason to rue Montanelli’s columns. During World War II he was sentenced to death by the German occupiers and was only saved by the Catholic Cardinal of Milan, a German. His experiences in the death cell led to his writing of the book Il Generale Della Rovere, which became a famous film by Roberto Rossellini, winner of the Venice Film Festival in 1959.

In 1999, Montanelli was named a Hero of the World of Journalism. In the course of his work, Montanelli met with many of the central characters of these events, and the portraits he paints with his words make these characters real, and not just actors in history books.

Montanelli was also the author of a large number of books on historical subjects, notably his twenty-four-volume history of Italy, covering the peninsula’s history from Greek times to the modern day. These books have all been best-sellers in Italy. Indro Montanelli: Witness to a Century is a tribute to a great journalist virtually unknown to the English-language public, and a book sure to interest students of 20th-century international affairs.