22 January

NEW - The Battle of Anzio

Key moment in World War II brought heavy casualties

British and American troops landed on the beach at Anzio, a coastal town south of Rome in the region of Lazio, in the early hours of the morning on this day in 1944.  The Allies were planning to dislodge German troops blocking the route to Rome and to liberate the capital city quickly, but the Battle of Anzio was to last for many months and cause the deaths of thousands of soldiers on both sides.  Operation Shingle, the name for the complex amphibious landing, had been the idea of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, as he lay in bed recovering from pneumonia in December 1943. His concept was to land two divisions of men at Anzio, and nearby Nettuno, bypassing the German forces entrenched across the Gustav Line in central Italy, to enable the Allies to take Rome.  But the operation was opposed by German troops, as well as forces from the newly-created Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, or RSI) - the Nazi puppet state in northern Italy - who were located in the area.  Operation Shingle was originally commanded by Major General John Lucas of the US Army.  Its success depended on the element of surprise and the swiftness with which the invading soldiers moved inland. Read more…

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Carlo Orelli – soldier

The last trench infantryman

Carlo Orelli, the last surviving Italian soldier to have served at the start of Italy's involvement in the First World War, died on this day in 2005 at the age of 110.  Orelli had signed up for active duty at the age of 21 and joined the Austro-Hungarian front after Italy joined the war on the side of Britain, France and Russia in May 1915.  He took part in combat operations near Trieste, experiencing the brutality of trench warfare and seeing many of his friends die violent deaths, but after receiving injuries to his leg and ear he spent the rest of the war in hospital.  Orelli was born in Perugia in 1894, but his family moved to Rome, where he was to spend most of the rest of his life living in the Garbatella district.  He came from a military background and had a grandfather who had helped to defend Perugia against Austrian mercenaries in 1849. His father had served in the Italian Abyssinian campaign in the 1880s and his elder brother had fought in Libya during the war between Italy and Turkey in 1911.  The wounds Orelli suffered during a confrontation with Austrian soldiers ended his military career and he spent the rest of the war recovering from an infection in hospital.  Read more…

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Frankie Yale - gang boss

Mobster who employed a young Al Capone

The gang boss who gave Al Capone one of his first jobs was born on this day in 1893 in Longobucco in Calabria.  Francesco Ioele, who would later become known as Frankie Yale, moved to the United States in around 1900, his family settling into the lower Manhattan area of New York City.  Growing up, Ioele was befriended by another southern Italian immigrant, John Torrio, who introduced him to the Five Points Gang, which was one of the most dominant street gangs in New York in the early part of the 20th century.  In time, Ioele graduated from petty street crime and violent gang fights to racketeering, changing his name to Yale to make him sound more American and taking control of the ice delivery trade in Brooklyn.  With the profits Yale opened a waterfront bar on Coney Island, which was called the Harvard Inn. It was there that he took on a young Capone as a bouncer and in a fight there that Capone acquired the facial scars that would stay with him for life.  Capone worked for Yale for two years until Torrio, by then based in Chicago, recruited him to his organisation, and Capone moved to the city with which his criminal activities would become associated.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Musolino - brigand

Vengeful killer who became an unlikely folk hero

Giuseppe Musolini, the Calabrian bandit whose fight for justice after a wrongful conviction turned him into a folk hero despite the multiple murders he committed in a quest for vengeance, died on this day in 1956 in a psychiatric hospital in Reggio Calabria.  He was 79 years old when he passed away, having been just 22 when he was sentenced to 21 years in prison for an attempted murder he swore he did not commit, with the evidence against him no better than circumstantial.  He escaped after just three months and embarked upon a killing spree in which he may have murdered as many as nine individuals and attempted the murder of several others, all of whom had played a part in what he saw as a corrupt trial.  The revenge killings took place during his two years and nine months on the run, during which Calabrians had taken to him as a symbolic figure, representing the people of an impoverished region against a state system rigged against them.  His story captured the imagination of not only Italians - southern Italians in particular - but of the wider world, with readers of newspapers in Europe and the United States eagerly awaiting the next update.  Read more…

Antonio Todde - supercentenarian

Sardinian shepherd holds record as oldest Italian man in history

Antonio Todde, who was the oldest living man in the world before he died at the age of 112 years 346 days in 2002 and remains the oldest Italian man in history, was born on this day in 1889 in Tiana, a mountain village in Sardinia.  There are 19 other Italians who have attained a higher age, but all are women. Maria Giuseppa Robucci, from Apulia, died in 2019 at the age of 116 years 90 days. Emma Morano, from Piedmont, who died in 2017 aged 117 years 137 days, remains the oldest Italian of all time.  Todde was the world’s most senior male centenarian from the death of the American John Painter on March 1, 2001 until his own death 10 months later.  He was born to a poor shepherd family in Tiana, about 140km (87 miles) north of Cagliari in the Gennargentu mountains, about 55km (34 miles) southwest of the provincial capital, Nuoro.  The area historically has a high number of centenarians and there was longevity in Todde’s family. His father Francesco lived to be 90 years old, and his mother Francesca 98. His sister Maria Agostina - one of 11 siblings - was still alive at the age of 97 at the time of his death and herself lived to be 102.  Read more…

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Papal Swiss Guard

Colourful uniforms camouflage highly trained security professionals

The Pope’s Swiss Guard was founded on this day in Vatican City in 1506.  A contingent of guards from Switzerland has continued to guard the Pope from that day to present times and it is one of the oldest military units still in existence.  The Swiss had been producing mercenary soldiers for hundreds of years with a reputation for loyalty and good discipline.  In the 15th century they were known for their good battle tactics and were employed by many European armies.  Pope Julius II ordered the first Swiss troops to guard the Vatican and they arrived in Rome on 22 January, 1506, the official date now given for the foundation of the Papal Swiss Guard.  The Pope later gave them the title ‘Defenders of the Church’s freedom’.  Recruits to the Pope’s Swiss Guard unit have to be Catholic men of Swiss nationality who have completed military training and can produce evidence of their good conduct.  Since the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, the Guards have received training in unarmed combat and in the use of modern weapons.  They are a colourful sight on ceremonial occasions at the Vatican in their blue, red, orange and yellow uniforms of Renaissance design.  Read more…

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Book of the Day:  Anzio: The Friction of War, by Lloyd Clark

This is the story of the Anglo-American amphibious assault and subsequent battle on the Italian west coast at Anzio which was launched in January 1944 in a bold attempt to outflank the formidable German defences known as the 'Gustav Line'. Anzio: The Friction Of War outlines the strategic background to the offensive before detailing the landing, the development of an Allied defensive position, the battles in and around the perimeter, the stalemate, the breakout and the capture of Rome on 4 June 1944. While assessing the events at Anzio with the eye of an experienced military historian, evaluating the costly mistakes that cost thousands of lives, Lloyd Clark also examines in detail the human response to the battle from high command to foot soldier. He also emphasises for the first time the German story.

Lloyd Clark is Director of Research at the Centre for Army Leadership at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and Professor of Modern War Studies and Contemporary Military History at the University of Buckingham. 

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The Battle of Anzio

Key moment in World War II brought heavy casualties

A British landing craft unloads tanks and troop
carriers on to the beach at the start of the assault

British and American troops landed on the beach at Anzio, a coastal town south of Rome in the region of Lazio, in the early hours of the morning on this day in 1944.

The Allies were planning to dislodge German troops blocking the route to Rome and to liberate the capital city quickly, but the Battle of Anzio was to last for many months and cause the deaths of thousands of soldiers on both sides.

Operation Shingle, the name for the complex amphibious landing, had been the idea of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, as he lay in bed recovering from pneumonia in December 1943. His concept was to land two divisions of men at Anzio, and nearby Nettuno, bypassing the German forces entrenched across the Gustav Line in central Italy, to enable the Allies to take Rome.

But the operation was opposed by German troops, as well as forces from the newly-created Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, or RSI) - the Nazi puppet state in northern Italy - who were located in the area.

Operation Shingle was originally commanded by Major General John Lucas of the US Army. 

Allied troops and vehicles at first faced little
opposition as they made their way ashore

Its success depended on the element of surprise and the swiftness with which the invading soldiers moved inland. The location was reclaimed marshland and it was surrounded by mountains. Any delay could result in the mountains being occupied by the German and Italian troops and result in the Allied soldiers becoming trapped.

The landing was initially a success with seemingly no opposition from the Germans, but Lucas, perhaps not fully appreciating the importance of moving on from the beach quickly and wanting to be cautious, delayed the advance until he felt that the position of his troops was fully consolidated.

Meanwhile, the commander of the German troops, Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, moved every unit he could spare into a defensive ring around the beachhead. The Germans also stopped the drainage pumps and flooded the reclaimed marshland with salt water, planning to trap the Allied soldiers there and expose them to a malaria epidemic spread by the area's mosquitos. 

For weeks, shells rained on to the beach, harbour, and marshland, and anything else that the Germans could see from their position above.

After a month of fighting, Lucas was relieved of his command and sent home. He was replaced by Major General Lucian Truscott.

British troops had to take cover in shallow trenches
as they came under heavy German bombardment

By May, the Allies had managed to break out of the area, but instead of moving inland to cut the lines of communication of the German units fighting at Monte Cassino in the south of Lazio, which was Truscott’s first instinct, he was ordered to turn his troops north west to Rome.

As a result, German troops fighting at Monte Cassino were able to withdraw and join Kesselring’s forces north of Rome, where they regrouped and fought back against the Allies.

They were aiming to defend the next major position on what was then known as the Gothic Line, the last major line of defence for the German troops.

The surprise landings at Anzio and Nettuno on January 22 finally achieved their goal when the Allies captured Rome on June 4, 1944. 

But the Battle of Anzio had resulted in 24,000 US, and 10,000 British, casualties, men who were either killed, wounded, or reported missing. There were also about 40,000 casualties among the German and Italian troops.

Around 300,000 troops, together with their weapons, had fought with intensity along just a 16-mile stretch of coastline. The Germans were able to observe the battlefield from above and pummel the Allies, who were tightly packed on the beachhead and fought back ferociously, knowing they could not afford to be pushed back into the sea.

Even Churchill, and the other supporters of Operation Shingle, had not expected the intense months of fighting that were to eventually take place.

Anzio today is a seaside resort and fishing port and
a departure point for ferries to the Pontine Islands

Travel tip:

The town of Anzio is about 51 kilometres, or 32 miles, to the south of Rome in the region of Lazio. It is also a fishing port and a departure point for ferries to the Pontine Islands in the Tyrrhenian sea of Ponza, Palmarola, and Ventotene. Anzio was known as Antium in Roman times and its symbol remains to this day the goddess Fortuna. At the end of the 17th century, the Popes Innocent XII and Clement XI had the port rebuilt and also restored the harbour. In 1925, Anzio became the Station for the first submarine telecommunications cable connected to New York. The Commonwealth Anzio War cemetery and Beachhead War Cemetery are both located in Anzio. Along the coastline are the remains of many Roman villas, one of which has been identified as a former home of the Emperor Nero.

A staircase in the mediæval
part of the town of Nettuno

Travel tip:

The nearby town of Nettuno is now a tourist resort and has a harbour and a yacht club. Nettuno is also a centre for production of the white wine, Cacchione, which has been awarded DOC status. Nettuno has a well preserved Borgo Medievale with mediæval streets and squares and early in the 16th century the Forte Sangallo was built by the architect Antonio Sangallo the Elder to protect the town from the sea. Gabriele d’Annunzio wrote his opera, La Figlia di Iorio, while he was a guest in Nettuno with the actress Eleonora Duse, and Luigi Pirandello wrote a novel, Va Bene, set in Nettuno in 1904. After their landing during World War II, American soldiers taught the people of Nettuno to play baseball and Nettuno Baseball Club is now one of the most important Italian baseball teams. The footballer and manager Bruno Conti was born in Nettuno in 1955.

Also on this day:

1506: The founding of the Papal Swiss Guard

1889: The birth of supercentenarian Antonio Todde

1893: The birth of gang boss Frankie Yale

1956: The death of brigand and folk hero Giuseppe Musolino

2005: The death of double World War veteran Carlo Orelli

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21 January

Giuseppe Savoldi - footballer

The world’s first £1 million player

Giuseppe Savoldi, whose transfer from Bologna to Napoli in 1975 made him the first footballer in the world to be bought for £1 million, was born on this day in 1947 in Gorlago, a municipality a short distance from the city of Bergamo in Lombardy.  A prolific striker, Savoldi’s big-money deal came four years ahead of the much heralded £1 million transfer of another striker, Trevor Francis, from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest, which made him the first player in Britain to move for a seven-figure sum.  Napoli, who saw Savoldi as the last component in what they hoped would be a title-winning team, paid 1.4 billion lire in cash, plus two players, Sergio Clerici and Romario Rampanti, to secure his signature. The two players were valued at 600 million lire in total, which valued Savoldi at 2 billion lire, the equivalent at the time of about £1.2 million.  But where Francis, who later spent five seasons playing in Serie A, won two European Cups with Nottingham Forest, scoring the winning goal in the final in 1979, Savoldi’s move did not yield anything like the same kind of success.  Napoli had finished third and then second in Serie A in the seasons before Savoldi’s arrival but were unable to maintain their momentum. Read more…

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Gennaro Contaldo – chef

TV cook is passionate about Amalfi’s speciality dishes

Celebrity chef Gennaro Contaldo was born on this day in 1949 in Minori in Campania.  Contaldo has made many appearances on British television alongside chefs such as the late Antonio Carluccio, Jamie Oliver and James Martin and he has also brought out several cook books.  It is well documented that he is the man responsible for inspiring Jamie Oliver’s interest in Italian food.  Contaldo grew up in the small seaside town of Minori near Amalfi and is a passionate advocate of the style of cooking in the area, cucina amalfitana.  From an early age he was interested in dishes cooked with local produce, going out to collect wild herbs for his mother, and he began helping out in local restaurants at the age of eight.  Contaldo moved to Britain in the late 1960s and travelled around the country working in village restaurants and studying the food growing wild in each area, such as herbs and mushrooms. He eventually went to London and worked in several restaurants, including Antonio Carluccio’s establishment in Neal Street.  Read more…

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Antonio Janigro - conductor and cellist

Musician who found ‘accidental’ fame in Yugoslavia

The conductor and cellist Antonio Janigro, who spent more than two decades as an orchestra leader in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, was born on this day in 1918 in Milan.  An accomplished cello soloist in Italy, his adventure in Yugoslavia happened by accident, in a way.  He was on holiday there in 1939 when the Second World War began, leaving him stranded with no prospect of returning home.  Happily, Zagreb Conservatory offered Janigro a job as professor of cello and chamber music. This turned out to be a providential turn of fate and he was to remain in Yugoslavia for much of his life.  He founded the school of modern cello playing in Yugoslavia, formed the exemplary chamber orchestra I Solisti di Zagreb with Dragutin Hrdjok in 1954 and for 10 years led the Radio Zagreb symphony orchestra. Raised in a house on the Via Guido d’Arezzo in Milan, Janigro was born in a musical family, although his father’s dream of becoming a concert pianist had to be abandoned, sadly, when he lost his arm after being shot in the First World War.  Janigro himself studied piano from the age of six, and then began playing the cello in 1926, when he was eight years old.  Read more…

Pietro Rava - World Cup winner

Defender was the last survivor from Azzurri of 1938

Pietro Rava, who was the last survivor of Italy's 1938 World Cup-winning football team when he died in December 2006, was born on this day in 1916 at Cassine in Piedmont.  A powerful defender who could play at full back or in a central position, Rava won 30 caps for the national team between 1935 and 1946, finishing on the losing side only once and being made captain in 1940.  He was also a member of the Italy team that won the gold medal in the football competition at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  At club level, he spent most of his career with Juventus, forming a formidable defensive partnership with Alfredo Foni, alongside whom he also lined up in the national side.  Rava won a Championship medal in 1949-50, his final season at Juventus, although by then he had fallen out of favour with Jesse Carver, the Turin club's English coach, and made only six appearances, moving to Novara the following year.  At the time of his birth, Rava's family were living in Cassine, a small town near Alessandria, about 100km (62 miles) south-east of Turin, because of his father's job with a railway company.  Read more…

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Camillo Golgi – neuroscientist

Nobel prize winner whose name lives on in medical science

Camillo Golgi, who is recognised as the greatest neuroscientist and biologist of his time, died on this day in 1926 in Pavia.  He was well known for his research into the central nervous system and discovering a staining technique for studying tissue, sometimes called Golgi’s method, or Golgi’s staining.  In 1906, Golgi and a Spanish biologist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system.  Golgi was born in 1843 in Corteno, a village in the province of Brescia in Lombardy. The village was later renamed Corteno Golgi in his honour.  In 1860 Golgi went to the University of Pavia to study medicine. After graduating in 1865 he worked in a hospital for the Italian army and as part of a team investigating a cholera epidemic in the area around Pavia.  He resumed his academic studies under the supervision of Cesare Lombroso, an expert in medical psychology, and wrote a thesis about mental disorders. As he became more and more interested in experimental medicine he started attending the Institute of General Pathology headed by Giulio Bizzozero, who was to influence Golgi’s research publications.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Winning at All Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer, by John Foot

(Also published as Calcio: A History of Italian Football)

The 2006 World Cup final between Italy and France was a down-and-dirty game, marred by French superstar Zidane's head-butting of Italian defender Materazzi. But viewers were also exposed to the poetry, force, and excellence of the Italian game as operatic as Verdi and as cunning as Machiavelli, it seemed to open a window into the Italian soul. John Foot's epic history shows what makes Italian soccer so unique. Mixing serious analysis and comic storytelling, Foot describes its humble origins in northern Italy in the 1890s to its present day incarnation where soccer is the national civic religion. A story that is reminiscent of Gangs of New York and A Clockwork Orange, Foot shows how the Italian game, like its political culture, has been overshadowed by big business, violence, conspiracy, and tragedy, how demagogues like Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi have used the game to further their own political ambitions. But Winning at All Costs also celebrates the sweet moments , the four World Cup victories, the success of Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, the role soccer played in the resistance to Nazism, and the great managers and players who show that Italian soccer is as irresistible as Italy itself.

John Foot is Professor of Modern Italian History at the University of Bristol. He has written a number of books on Italian politics, history and sport.

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20 January

Marco Simoncelli - motorcycle world champion

Young rider whose career ended in tragedy

The motorcycle racer Marco Simoncelli, who is part of an illustrious roll call of Italian world champions headed by Giacomo Agostini and Valentino Rossi, was born on this day in 1987 in Cattolica on the Adriatic coast.  Simoncelli, who was European 125cc champion in 2002 in only his second year of senior competition, became 250cc world champion in 2008 when he won six races riding for Gilera.  He had dreams of emulating Rossi, winner of the 250cc world title in 1999, in going on to be a force in the premier MotoGP category, in which the latter has been world champion seven times, just one fewer than Agostini's record eight titles.  But after stepping up to MotoGP in 2010, Simoncelli suffered a fatal crash at the Malaysian Grand Prix in October the following year, killed at the age of just 24.  On only the second lap of the Sepang circuit, he lost control of his Honda at a corner and appeared to be heading for the gravel run-off area but suddenly veered back across the congested track.  With the bike almost on its side, Simoncelli was struck by two other competitors.  One of them, with chilling irony, was Rossi, who was entirely blameless but unable to prevent his front wheel from striking his compatriot's head.  Read more…

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Ennio Porrino - composer

Premature death robbed Italian music of great talent

The composer Ennio Porrino, best known for his symphonic poem, Sardegna, and his opera, I Shardana, was born on this day in 1910 in Cagliari.  Porrino was critically acclaimed, his operas earning comparisons with the great Giacomo Puccini, although to some his reputation has been tarnished by his association with Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime. He was only 49 when he died in Rome.  His 1941 opera, Gli Orazi, has been interpreted as a ‘hymn to fascism’ by some critics, while his piece, The March of the Volunteer, was used by Mussolini’s short-lived Italian Social Republic as its anthem.  Little is known of Porrino’s early years. It is thought that his family moved to Rome when he was a small child and most accounts of his life begin with his studies at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, which he attended from the age of 17 and where he graduated in 1932.  He also studied with the composer Ottorino Respighi, who was keen to see his potential realised.  Respighi would be a significant influence on Porrino’s own work.  Porrino was not slow to make an impact in Roman musical circles. In 1931 he won an opera competition organised by the Giornale d'Italia newspaper.  Read more…

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Franca Sozzani – magazine editor

Risk taker who turned Vogue Italia into a major voice

Franca Sozzani, the journalist who was editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of Vogue magazine for 28 years, was born on this day in 1950 in Mantua.  Under her stewardship, Vogue Italia was transformed from what she saw as little more than a characterless clothing catalogue for the Milan fashion giants to one of the edgiest publications the style shelves of the newsstands had ever seen.  Sozzani used high-end fashion and the catwalk stars to make bold and sometimes outrageous statements on the world issues she cared about, creating shockwaves through the industry but often selling so many copies that editions sometimes sold out even on second or third reprints.  It meant that advertisers who backed off in horror in the early days of her tenure clamoured to buy space again, particularly when the magazine began to attract a following even outside Italy.  She gave photographers and stylists a level of creative freedom they enjoyed nowhere else, encouraging them to express themselves through their photoshoots, particularly if they could deliver a message at the same time.  She encouraged her writers, too, not to shy away from issues she thought were important, and not to regard fashion as an insular world.  Read more…

Federico Fellini – film director

The cinematic legacy of Rimini’s most famous son

Federico Fellini, one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century, was born on this day in Rimini in 1920.  He had a career lasting almost 50 years and his films were nominated for 12 Academy Awards. He won four Oscars, each for Best Foreign Language Film, with La strada, Nights of Cabiria, 8½ and Amarcord.  Fellini initially went to Rome to study Law at university but ended up working as a journalist instead.  His assignments for a magazine gave him the opportunity to meet people involved in show business and he eventually got work as a script writer for films and radio.  Fellini worked as both a screenwriter and assistant director on Roberto Rossellini films as well as producing and directing for other filmmakers. He began work on his first solo film, The White Sheik, in 1951. It received mixed reviews but in 1953 his film, I vitelloni, pleased both the public and the critics.  He won his first Academy Award with Nights of Cabiria, starring his wife, Giulietta Masini, in 1953.  Fellini’s film La dolce vita, starring Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni and set in Rome, broke all box office records in 1960 and won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. It is one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time.  Read more…

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Rafael Bombelli – mathematician

First person to explain algebra in simple language

Rafael Bombelli, the mathematician regarded as the inventor of complex numbers, was baptised and was also probably born on this day in 1526 near Bologna.  He wrote a book about algebra in simple language that could be understood by everyone, giving a comprehensive account of what was known about the subject at the time. The first three volumes, published in 1572, were the first European texts to explain how to perform computations with negative numbers.  Rafael Bombelli was the eldest son of Antonio Mazzoli, a wool merchant, who had changed his name to Bombelli to disassociate himself from the reputation of his family. His grandfather had taken part in a failed attempt to seize Bologna on behalf of the Bentivoglio family but had been caught and executed. Antonio Mazzoli was able to return to Bologna only after changing his name to Bombelli.  It is thought that Rafael Bombelli did not attend university but was taught by an engineer-architect named Pier Francesco Clementi.  He followed Clementi into the profession and acquired a patron, Alessandro Rufini. His patron was given the right to reclaim marsh land in the Val di Chiana by the Pope and Bombelli worked on this project until 1555.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Marco Simoncelli: The Tribute Book, by Paolo Simoncelli and Rossella Simoncelli

Marco Simoncelli: The Tribute Book is a compelling celebration of the life of Marco Simoncelli, the maverick motorcycle racer who lost his life in the 2011 Malaysian MotoGP race. Written by his parents, Rossella and Paolo, this book paints an intimate portrait of a rising star. Simoncelli's final lap was as adrenaline-fuelled as the rest of his career, which was on the way up - the two races before his last were arguably two of his best. Marco's eventful paddock life, signature 'afro' and close friendship with Valentino Rossi are all captured here by the words of his parents, and in 200 unique photographs of life on and off the track.

Paolo Beltramo, an Italian television journalist who specialises in motorsports, assisted the Simocellis with the writing of their tribute book. 

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