26 November

Charles Forte - businessman and hotelier

Multi-billion pound empire started with a single café

Businessman Charles Forte - later Sir Charles and then Baron Forte of Ripley - was born Carmine Forte in the hamlet of Mortale in the Frosinone province of southern Lazio on this day in 1908.  Forte was most famous for his hotels empire, which once numbered more than 800 properties ranging from Travelodge motels to the high-end luxury of the Grosvenor House in London and the George V in Paris.  Starting with a single milk bar in London, opened in 1935, he grew a business that became so vast that, when it changed hands 61 years later, it was valued at £3.9 billion.  Charles Forte was brought up largely in Scotland, where his family emigrated in 1911 after his father, Rocco, decided to follow the lead of his brother by abandoning farming in his impoverished homeland to try his luck in the catering business abroad. Read more…

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Amelita Galli-Curci - soprano

Singer’s beautiful voice lives on thanks to early recordings

Amelita Galli-Curci, one of the most popular Italian opera singers and recording artists of the early 20th century, died on this day in 1963.  Galli-Curci was a ‘coloratura’ soprano and her voice has been described as ‘florid, vibrant, agile and able to perform trills.’  Although she was largely self-taught her voice was much admired and it has been claimed she was encouraged to become an opera singer by composer Pietro Mascagni, who was a family friend.  She was born Amelita Galli in Milan in 1881 and studied the piano at the Milan Conservatory, which is in the centre of the city close to the Duomo. She made her stage debut as a soprano at Trani in 1906, singing Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto. She was widely acclaimed and her career took off from there.  In 1908 she married an Italian nobleman, the Marchese Luigi Curci and she subsequently attached his surname to hers. Read more…

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Giorgio Cini - heroic entrepreneur

Name lives on in cultural life of Venice

Giorgio Cini, the man whose name was given to a major cultural institution on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, was born on this day in 1918 in Rome.  The eldest child of Vittorio Cini, who in the early 20th century was one of Italy’s wealthiest industrialists, and the celebrated silent movie actress Lyda Borelli, Giorgio took on an entrepreneurial role in his father’s businesses, which encompassed a broad range of interests, in the financial and insurance sector, steel and electrical, maritime and tourism. Vittorio was born in Ferrara and owned a castle in Monselice near Padua, but adopted Venice as his home and devoted much of his energy to enhancing the wealth of the city. A key figure in the development of the port of Marghera, he was a close friend and business partner of Giuseppe Volpi, the businessman and politician who founded the Venice Film Festival. Read more…

Irma Marchiani - partisan

Resistance heroine honoured with medal for valour

Irma Marchiani, who was one of only a small number of women to achieve promotion to a leadership role in the Italian Resistance movement in WW2, died on this day in 1944 in the town of Pavullo nel Frignano in the Apennine mountains, about 50km (31 miles) south of the city of Modena.  Along with three other partisans, Marchiani was shot dead by a firing squad, having a few days earlier been captured by a German patrol as they tried to cross enemy lines. She was 33 years old. Posthumously awarded a Gold Medal for Military Valour by the postwar Italian government, she wrote a poignant letter to his sister, Palmyra, shortly before she was killed, in which she said she would die ‘sure that I have done everything possible for freedom to triumph’.  Marchiani was born in Florence, on February 6, 1911. Her father Adamberto was a railway worker with strong anti-Fascist views.  Read more…

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Letizia Moratti – politician and businesswoman

First woman to be Mayor of Milan and head of Rai

Letizia Moratti, one of Europe’s best-known businesswomen and a successful politician, was born on this day in 1949 in Milan.  Married to the oil magnate Gianmarco Moratti, she was chair of the state television network Rai between 1994 and 1996, a minister in former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s second and third administrations, and Mayor of Milan between 2006 and 2011.  Born Letizia Maria Brichetto Arnaboldi, her antecedents are the Brichetto family from Genoa, who founded the first insurance brokerage company in Italy, and the noble Arnaboldi family from Milan.  Her grandmother, Mimona Brichetto Arnaboldi, was a society hostess in the 1930s and an outspoken opponent of Fascism.  Letizia attended a private school in Milan and had classical dance classes at the Carla Strauss Academy in the Brera district.  Read more…

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Enrico Bombieri – mathematician

Brilliant professor who won top award in his field at just 34

The mathematician Enrico Bombieri, one of the world’s leading authorities on number theory and analysis, which has practical application in the world of encryption and data transmission, was born on this day in 1940 in Milan.  Bombieri, who is also an accomplished painter, won the Fields Medal, an international award for outstanding discoveries in mathematics regarded in the field of mathematical sciences as equivalent to a Nobel Prize, when he was a 34-year-old professor at the University of Pisa in 1974.  As well as analytic number theory, he has become renowned for his expertise in other areas of highly advanced mathematics including algebraic geometry, univalent functions, theory of several complex variables, partial differential equations of minimal surfaces, and the theory of finite groups.  Mathematics textbooks now refer to several discoveries named after him. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Forte: The Autobiography of Charles Forte, by Charles Forte

Sir Charles Forte was a pioneering hotelier and caterer, transforming the British hospitality industry in the 20th century.  His autobiography, Forte, is not just a business memoir but also a cultural snapshot of post-war Britain, showing how leisure and dining evolved. It is a valuable narrative that blends personal legacy with craftsmanship in service and design. The book covers his early life as Carmine Forte, born in Italy and raised in Scotland, and the founding and expansion of the Forte Group, which became a major force in hotels, restaurants, and leisure services across the UK and internationally. Sir Charles offers his reflections on business philosophy, leadership, and the challenges of building a hospitality empire, and writes about his family and their role in taking the business forward, including his son Rocco Forte and daughter Olga Polizzi, who continued the family’s hotel legacy.

Charles Forte’s autobiography includes a foreword by Lord Thorneycroft, who as Peter Thorneycroft was President of the Board of Trade in the postwar governments of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden and then Chancellor of the Exchequer under Harold Macmillan, later being made Chairman of the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher. 

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