9 December

Sonia Gandhi - Indian politician

Widow of ex-PM Rajiv born in pre-Alps of Veneto

Sonia Gandhi, an Italian who married into a famous political dynasty and became the most powerful woman in India, was born on this day in 1946 in a small town near Vicenza. In 1965, in a restaurant in Cambridge, England, where she was attending a language school, she met an engineering student from the University of Cambridge. They began dating and three years later were married. His name was Rajiv Gandhi, the eldest son of the future Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. They were married in a Hindu ceremony, Sonia moved into her mother-in-law’s house and from then on lived as an Indian. Rajiv became an airline pilot while Sonia looked after their two children, Rahul and Priyanka. Everything changed when Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh nationalists in 1984, a year after Sonia had been granted Indian citizenship. Read more…

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Bruno Ruffo - motorcycle racer

Italy's first world champion on two wheels

Motorcycle racer Bruno Ruffo, winner of the inaugural 250cc World Championship in 1949, was born on this day in 1920 in Colognola ai Colli, a village in the province of Verona.  He shares with Nello Pagani the distinction of being Italy's first world champion motorcyclist, Pagani having won the first world title in the 125cc class in the same year.  Ruffo wanted to race from the age of eight, having become fascinated with the motorcycles and cars that his father repaired in his workshop.  He was able to drive a car at the age of 10 and was given his first motorcycle by his father as a 16th birthday present.  He entered a race for the first time the following year at Montagnana near Padua and won. The minimum age for participants was 18 and it later transpired he had falsified his identity papers to take part.  Read more…

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Baldassare Ferri – singer

Male soprano was admired by the crowned heads of Europe

Castrato singer Baldassare Ferri was born on this day in 1610 in Perugia in the region of Umbria.  He is said to have possessed a beautiful soprano voice that was praised by other musicians and by much of the aristocracy of Europe.  The Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who was a great patron of music and himself a composer, is believed to have become so enchanted with Ferri that he had a portrait of the singer hung in his bedroom with the inscription, Baldassare Ferri, Re dei Musici (King of Musicians).  By the age of 11, Ferri was a chorister serving Cardinal Crescenzi in Orvieto. He then studied music in Naples and in Rome, where he was taught by Vincenzo Ugolini of Perugia, who was maestro of the Cappella Giulia.  Prince Wladislaus of Poland then secured Ferri’s services for the court of King Sigismund III at Warsaw, where the singer took part in dramas set to music. Read more…

Teofilo Folengo – poet

Style of writer’s verses took its name from the dumpling

Teofilo Folengo, who is remembered as one of the principal Italian ‘macaronic’ poets, died on this day in 1544 in the monastery of Santa Croce in Campese, a district of Bassano del Grappa in Veneto.  Folengo published, under the pseudonym Merlin Cocaio, a macaronic narrative poem entitled Baldo, which was a humorous send-up of ancient epic and Renaissance chivalric romance.  Writing in verse that mixed vernacular language with Latin became known as macaronic verse, the word deriving from the Latin macaronicus and the Italian maccarone, which meant dumpling, fare mixed crudely from different ingredients that at the time was regarded as a coarse, peasant food. It is presumed to be the origin of the modern Italian word maccheroni.  Folengo was a runaway Benedictine monk who satirised the monastic life using an invented, comic language that blended Latin with various Italian dialects.  Read more…

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Carlo Azeglio Ciampi - prime minister and president

The politician who took Italy into the euro

The politician and banker, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was born on this day in 1920 in Livorno.  He was the 49th prime minister of Italy between 1993 and 1994 and the tenth president, in office from 1999 to 2006.  Ciampi studied ancient Greek literature in Pisa, before being called up to do military duty, but in 1943 he refused to stay with the Fascists and took refuge in Abruzzo.  He managed to get to Bari, where he joined the Italian resistance movement.  After the war, he gained a doctorate in law from Pisa University and began working at the Banca d’Italia. He went on to become Governor of the bank and then President of the National Bureau de Change.  Ciampi was the first-non parliamentarian prime minister of Italy for more than 100 years, appointed by the President, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, to oversee a technical government.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Sonia Gandhi: An Extraordinary Life, an Indian Destiny, by Rani Singh

Sonia Gandhi's story represents the greatest transformational journey made by any world leader in the last four decades. Circumstance and tragedy, rather than ambition, paved her path to power. Born into a traditional, middle-class Italian family, Sonia met and fell in love with Rajiv Gandhi, son of future Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, while studying English in Cambridge. Cruelly tested by the assassinations of her mother-in-law and of her husband, she grew into a strong, authoritative but always private figure, president of a coalition ruling over a billion people in the world's largest democracy. Through exclusive interviews with members of her party, political opponents and family friends, Sonia Gandhi: An Extraordinary Life casts her in a new light. In the first mainstream biography of this inspirational figure, the author’s compelling narrative retraces the path of a brave leader, examining what her life and legacy mean for India.

Rani Singh is a London-based journalist who has worked extensively with BBC television and radio for over 15 years, and has also commented on South Asian affairs for CNN and NBC News. Her biography of Sonia Gandhi was endorsed by notable figures such as Henry Kissinger and Jon Snow.

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