19 June

NEW - Luca Pacioli - mathematician and geometrist 

Friar who became known as ‘Father of Accounting’

Luca Pacioli, the Franciscan friar and mathematician who would become known as the ‘Father of Accounting’, died on this day in 1517 in Sansepolcro, a town in eastern Tuscany in the province of Arezzo.  Taking advantage of the development of the printing press, Pacioli is thought to have published at least 10 mathematical textbooks, of which the best known is his Summa de arithmetica, geometria, Proportioni et proportionalita - usually known as simply Summa.  Published in Venice in 1494, it was a comprehensive treatise of every aspect of mathematical knowledge that had been explored to that date and the first to include a printed description of the double-entry bookkeeping system, widely used by Venetian merchants. The principals he outlined in Summa still influence business practices today.  Pacioli, who taught mathematics in several Italian cities and was appointed the first chair in mathematics at the University of Perugia, was a figure of influence in the arts world as well as commerce, having possibly been a student of Piero della Francesca and later a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci. Read more…

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Francesco Moser - Giro d’Italia winner

Only two riders have won more road races

The cycling champion Francesco Moser, winner of the 1984 Giro d’Italia and the 1977 World road racing championship among 273 road victories in his career, was born on this day in 1951 in Palù di Giovo, a village about 10km (6 miles) north of Trento in northern Italy.  Only the great Belgians Eddy Merckx (525) and Rik Van Looy (379) won more road races than Moser, who was at his peak during the late 1970s and early 1980s.  One of his proudest achievements was to break Merckx’s record for the greatest distance covered in one hour.  He became renowned as a specialist in the so-called Monuments, the five road races among what are generally termed the Classics considered to be the oldest, hardest and most prestigious one-day events in cycling.  Of those events, Moser won the Paris-Roubaix three times, the Giro di Lombardia twice and the Milan-San Remo once.  Moser attributed his cycling prowess to growing up on the family farm in Val di Cembra, working in steep-sided vineyards in an era when most of the work was carried out by hand, rather than machinery.  Family members used bicycles to move around the estate.  Read more…

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Pier Angeli - Hollywood star

Actress hailed for talent and beauty died tragically young

The actress Pier Angeli, a Hollywood star in the 1950s and 60s, was born on this day in 1932 in Cagliari, Sardinia.  She won awards in Italy and in America at the start of her career, when she was likened by some critics to the Swedish-born star Greta Garbo.  Described by the actor Paul Newman as "the most beautiful Italian actress of the century", Angeli was also a fixture in the gossip columns.  Linked romantically with a number of Hollywood's leading male actors, she dated Kirk Douglas and became close to the celebrated 'rebel' James Dean before marrying another star, the Italian-American actor and singer, Vic Damone.  It would be the first of two marriages.  She had a son, Perry, with Damone but they divorced after four years.  A second marriage, to the Italian composer, Armando Trovaioli, produced another son, Andrew, but they also divorced.  Born Anna Maria Pierangeli, the daughter of an architect, she had a twin sister, Maria Luisa, who would also become an actress.  Her mother, Enrica, used to dress the girls to resemble the American child star, Shirley Temple. The family moved to Rome when she was three.  Read more…

Marisa Pavan - actress

Twin sister of tragic star Pier Angeli

The actress Marisa Pavan, whose twin sister Pier Angeli was a Hollywood star in the 1950s and 1960s, was born on this day in 1932 as Maria Luisa Pierangeli in Cagliari, Sardinia.  Pavan’s career ran parallel with that of her sister, who was born 20 minutes before her, but she rejected the re-invention as an ultra-glamorous starlet that Pier Angeli underwent within the Hollywood studio system.  She turned roles down when she felt they did not have enough substance and did not hesitate to sack agents if she felt they were putting her forward for unsuitable parts.  She refused to sign up to any one studio.  Her biggest success was The Rose Tattoo, the 1955 film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play in which she played the daughter of the central character, played by Anna Magnani - with whom she is pictured - one of postwar Italian cinema’s most respected actresses.  Magnani won an Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow, with Pavan receiving a nomination for best supporting actress at the Academy Awards and although that award went to someone else she did have the substantial compensation of winning a Golden Globe for the role.  Read more…

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Francesco Baracca – flying ace

Italy’s most successful First World War fighter pilot

Italy’s top fighter pilot of the First World War, Francesco Baracca, died in action on this day in 1918.  He had been flying a strafing mission against Austro-Hungarian ground troops in support of an Italian attack on the Montello Hill, about 17km (11 miles) north of Treviso in the Veneto, on which he was accompanied by a rookie pilot, Tenente Franco Osnago.  They split from one another after being hit by ground fire but a few minutes later, Osnago saw a burning plane falling from the sky.  Witnesses on the ground saw it too. Osnago flew back to his base but Baracca never returned.  Only when the Austro-Hungarian troops were driven back was the wreckage of Baracca’s Spad VII aircraft found in a valley.  His body was discovered a few metres away.  A monument in his memory was later built on the site. Osnago, fellow pilot Ferruccio Ranza and a journalist recovered his body. It was taken back to his home town of Lugo in the province of Ravenna, where a large funeral was held.  It is thought that Baracca was seeking to provide Osnago with cover from above as he swooped on enemy trenches when he was attacked by an Austrian plane.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Piero della Francesca, by Carlo Bertelli 

Piero della Francesca has long been admired as one of the greatest of all Renaissance painters. Much archival and technical work has been done concerning him and his work (including the restoration of his great fresco cycle in Arezzo and of many of his other paintings and frescoes). Carlo Bertelli, presents both a synthesis of recent documentary and scientific research and the reflections of his own lifetime's study of Piero's work. The book incorporates a full-scale biography of the artist, which locates Piero's work in relation to that of his contemporaries, and goes on to analyse each of his surviving paintings. It concludes with a full catalogue of his works, and is illustrated in colour throughout with reproductions of the newly restored panels and frescoes.

Carlo Bertelli is an Italian art historian, a former civil servant in Italy’s Ministry of Culture and later a professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, specialising in medieval art.

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Luca Pacioli - mathematician and geometrist

Friar who became known as ‘Father of Accounting’

Jacopo de' Barbari's portrait of Luca Pacioli with
an unknown geometry student attending

Luca Pacioli, the Franciscan friar and mathematician who would become known as the ‘Father of Accounting’, died on this day in 1517 in Sansepolcro, a town in eastern Tuscany in the province of Arezzo.

Taking advantage of the development of the printing press, Pacioli is thought to have published at least 10 mathematical textbooks, of which the best known is his Summa de arithmetica, geometria, Proportioni et proportionalita - usually known as simply Summa.

Published in Venice in 1494, it was a comprehensive treatise of every aspect of mathematical knowledge that had been explored to that time and the first book to include a description of the double-entry book-keeping system, widely used by Venetian merchants. The principals he outlined in Summa still influence business practices today.

Pacioli, who taught mathematics in several Italian cities and was appointed the first chair in mathematics at the University of Perugia, was a figure of influence in the arts world as well as commerce.

Having possibly been a student of Piero della Francesca, a pioneer of the use of geometry and perspective in painting and, like Pacioli, a native of Sansepolcro, he later became a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci’s drawings illustrated another of his notable works, Divina proportione, an exploration of mathematical and artistic proportion, focussing especially on the so-called golden ratio of proportionality and its application in architecture.

The title page of a 1523 edition of
Pacioli's Summa, his greatest work

Pacioli was around 70 years old when he died, having been born between 1446 and 1448. He received an education based around maths and commerce in Sansepolcro, before moving to Venice in around 1464, continuing his studies there and being appointed tutor to the three sons of a wealthy merchant, Antonio Rompiasi.

From Venice, he moved to Rome, where he became friends with the architect, artist and mathematician Leon Battista Alberti, before returning to Sansepolcro to enter the Franciscan Order in 1470. In the following years, he taught mathematics in Perugia, Florence, Venice, Milan, Pisa, Bologna and Rome. 

After the publication of Summa in 1494, he accepted an invitation from Duke Ludovico Sforza to work in Milan. There he met and taught Leonardo da Vinci, for a time living with the polymath as a house guest. Da Vinci acquired his knowledge of geometry and its applications in art and architecture from his association with Pacioli.

Pacioli might have remained in Milan longer had the city not been overrun by Louis XII of France at the start of the Second Italian War. Ludovico Sforza fled the city, as did Pacioli and da Vinci, first to Mantua, and then Venice.  

Although Pacioli left a significant intellectual legacy in the fields of accounting and mathematics, he was effectively accused of plagiarism by 16th-century artist and historian Giorgio Vasari.

Vasari was critical of the inclusion in Divina proportione - without credit - of the translated text of della Francesca’s book, originally written in Latin, De quinque corporibus regularibus, about the geometry of polyhedra - solid objects with polygonal faces, such as pyramids. Other scholars, though, argue that the edition of Divina proportione that Vasari read may have been appended to include della Francesca’s work after Pacioli’s death.

Pacioli’s final university teaching post is thought to have been in Rome during 1514 and 1515, before returning to Sansepolcro as his health began to decline.

Piero della Francesca's painting, The Resurrection,
which may have spared Sansepolcro a WW2 attack

Travel tip:

Sansepolcro, a town nestled in the Valtiberina valley at the foot of the Apennines, has a rich artistic and cultural heritage. As well as being the home town of Luca Pacioli,  it is known as the birthplace of Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, whose brilliant painting, The Resurrection, is housed in the Museo Civico di Sansepolcro. The presence of the painting probably saved the town from destruction in World War Two after Tony Clarke, an art-loving British Royal Horse Artillery officer who, halted a planned  Allied artillery attack. Another treasure, a 12th-century polychrome wooden crucifix known as the Volto Santo, can be seen in the town’s beautiful Romanesque duomo, the Cattedrale di San Giovanni Evangelista. Look out also for The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, by the Mannerist painter Rosso Fiorentino, in the church of San Lorenzo. Other museums include the Aboca Museum, dedicated to the history of medicinal herbs, featuring antique books, laboratory tools, and botanical collections, as well as the Bernardini-Fatti Museum of Antique Windows, the world’s first museum dedicated to stained glass windows. Sansepolcro’s medieval streets, fortified walls, and historic palazzos make it a delightful place to explore. 

One of Arezzo's notable sights is its sharply
sloping medieval main square, Piazza Grande

Travel tip:

Arezzo is one of the wealthiest cities in Tuscany. It is situated about 80km (50 miles) southeast of Florence, at the confluence of four valleys - Tiberina, Casentino, Valdarno and Valdichiana. Its medieval centre suffered massive damage during the Second World War yet the Basilica di San Francesco, with its beautiful frescoes by Piero della Francesca, the central Piazza Grande, with its sloping pavement in red brick, and the Medici Fortress, the duomo and a Roman amphitheatre survived, among other historic sights.  Arezzo’s original cathedral was built on the nearby Pionta Hill, over the burial place of Donatus of Arezzo, who was martyred in 363. In 1203 Pope Innocent III had the cathedral moved within the city's walls, to the current site in another elevated position a short walk from Piazza Grande.  The interior contains several notable artworks, including a relief by Donatello, entitled Baptism of Christ, and a cenotaph to Guido Tarlati, lord of Arezzo until 1327, said to be designed by Giotto, near to which is Piero della Francesca's Mary Magdalene.  The wooden choir of the Grand Chapel was designed by Giorgio Vasari, who was born in Arezzo. The city is home to an annual medieval festival called the Giostra del Saracino (Saracen Joust), in which "knights" on horseback representing different areas of the town charge at a wooden target attached to a carving of a Saracen king and score points according to accuracy. Arezzo had a starring role in Roberto Benigni's film Life Is Beautiful, which won three Academy Awards, as the place in which the main characters live before they are shipped off to a Nazi concentration camp.

Also on this day:

1918: The death in action of WW1 fighter pilot Francesco Baracca

1932: The birth of actress twin sisters Pier Angeli and Marisa Pavan

1951: The birth of Giro d’Italia-winning cyclist Francesco Moser

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18 June

Fabio Capello - football manager

Won Champions League and five Serie A titles 

Fabio Capello, one of European club football's most successful managers, was born on this day in 1946 in San Canzian d'Isonzo, close to the border of Italy and Slovenia.  Capello won five Serie A titles as a coach and four as a player, plus two La Liga titles as manager of Real Madrid, and the Champions League with AC Milan. He coached the national teams of both England and Russia.  At the time of his birth, San Canzian d'Isonzo was in an area occupied by Allied forces after the end of the Second World War.  His uncle, Mario Tortul, who was from the same village near Trieste, had been a professional footballer, playing in Serie A with Sampdoria, Triestina and Padova and making one appearance for the Italian national team.  Capello began his playing career at the Ferrara-based SPAL club and went on to represent Roma, Juventus and AC Milan.  A midfielder with an eye for goal, he was a Serie A champion three times with Juventus and once with Milan, also winning the Coppa Italia with Roma and Milan.  He represented Italy 32 times, playing at the 1974 World Cup finals in West Germany.  He scored the only goal against England in 1973 as Italy won at Wembley for the first time in their history. Read more…

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Isabella Rossellini - actress and model

Daughter of ‘cinema royalty’ who became star in her own right 

The actress and model Isabella Rossellini, famed for her roles in the David Lynch-directed mystery Blue Velvet and the Oscar-winning black comedy Death Becomes Her and for 14 years the face of luxury perfume brand Lancôme, was born on this day in 1952 in Rome. Her parents were the Swedish triple Academy Award-winning actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian director Roberto Rossellini, one of the pioneers of the neorealism movement that spawned some of Italy’s finest films. She is the eldest by 34 minutes of twin girls. Resident in the United States since 1979, when she married the American director Martin Scorsese, she has a home on Long Island, New York, where she keeps a number of animals. An active campaigner for various wildlife conservation causes, Rossellini has a MA in Animal Behaviour & Conservation after studying the subject at Hunter College, New York. Although her acting career continues, she moved in a less conventional direction by writing, directing and appearing in a series of short documentary films about sexual and reproductive behaviour in animals entitled Green Porno. Read more…

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Bartolomeo Ammannati – sculptor and architect

Florentine artist created masterpieces for his home city

Bartolomeo Ammannati, whose buildings in Italy marked the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque style, was born on this day in 1511 at Settignano near Florence.  Ammannati began his career as a sculptor, carving statues in a number of Italian cities during the 1530s.  He trained first under Baccio Bandinelli and then under Jacopo Sansovino in Venice, working with him on the Library of St Mark - the Biblioteca Marciana -  in the Piazzetta.  Pope Julius III called Ammannati to Rome in 1550 on the advice of architect and art historian Giorgio Vasari. Ammannati then worked with Vasari and Giacomo da Vignola on the Villa Giulia, which belonged to the Pope.  In the same year, Ammannati married the poet Laura Battiferri and they spent the early years of their marriage in Rome.  Cosimo I de' Medici brought Ammannati back to Florence in 1555, and it was where he was to spend the rest of his career.  His first job was to finish the Laurentian Library begun by Michelangelo. He interpreted a clay model sent to him by Michelangelo to produce the impressive staircase leading from the vestibule into the library.   Read more…

Raffaella Carrà - entertainer and TV presenter

Much-loved star with long and varied career

Raffaella Carrà, the singer, dancer, television presenter and actress often simply known as la Carrà or Raffaella, was born in Bologna on this day in 1943.  Carrà has become a familiar face on Italian TV screens as the host of many variety shows and, more recently, as a judge on the talent show The Voice of Italy.  She has also enjoyed a recording career spanning 45 years and was a film actress for the best part of 25 years, having made her debut at the age of nine.  Her best-known screen role outside Italy was alongside Frank Sinatra in the hit American wartime drama, Von Ryan’s Express.  Carrà was born Raffaella Maria Roberta Pelloni. Shew grew up in the Adriatic resort of Bellaria-Igea Marina, just north of Rimini, where her father ran a bar and her maternal grandfather an ice cream parlour.  At the age of eight, she won a place at the National Dance Academy in Rome and from there moved to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy’s oldest film school.  Her film career was never more than modestly successful. Although she has a long list of credits, she was cast mainly in small parts.   Read more…

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Franco Modigliani – economist

Writer and professor developed theories about spending and saving

Nobel prize winner Franco Modigliani, who was an originator of the economic life-cycle hypothesis that attempts to explain the level of spending in the economy, was born on this day in 1918 in Rome.  He wrote several books outlining his economic theories, became a professor at three American universities, and received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1985.   Modigliani also formulated the Modigliani-Miller theorem for corporate finances, which is based on the idea that the value of a private firm is not affected by whether it is financed by equity or by debt.  Born and brought up in a Jewish family, Modigliani enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the Sapienza University of Rome at the age of 17. In his second year at Sapienza, his entry in a national economics contest won first prize and he was presented with it by the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.  Modigliani went on to write essays for the Fascist magazine Lo Stato, displaying an inclination for the fascist ideals that were critical of liberalism at the time.  He argued the case for socialism in an article for the magazine about the organisation and management of production in a socialist economy.  Read more…

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Ottaviano dei Petrucci – music printer

Pioneer in printing who worked for a Doge and a Pope

Ottaviano dei Petrucci, who was the first person to print a book of polyphonic music from movable type, was born on this day in 1466 in Fossombrone near Ancona.  It is thought that Petrucci was educated at Urbino, possibly at the humanist court of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who was Duke of Urbino apart from a brief period from 1482 until his death in 1508.  To learn the art of printing, in 1490 Petrucci went to Venice, then the most advanced centre for printing in Italy.  In 1498, Petrucci petitioned the Doge, Agostino Barbarigo, for the exclusive right to print music for the next 20 years, which was granted. There are no examples of printed music produced by other Venetian printers until 1520.  Over the years, he continued to refine his technique and he held music printing monopolies in Venice until 1511. He produced books of printed music at the rate of a new book every few months.  His collection of 96 chansons, secular songs under the title of Harmonice Musices Odhecaton - One Hundred Songs of Harmonic Music - published in Venice in 1501, was the first book of polyphonic music to be printed from movable type.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Capello: The Man Behind England's World Cup Dream, by Gabriele Marcotti

Fabio Capello is a born winner. As a midfielder with Roma, Juventus and Milan, he won four Italian league championships and two cups, and played for his country 32 times, scoring a goal at Wembley in 1973 in Italy's first ever win in England. As a manager, Capello's fierce determination has seen him win championships - nine of them in 16 years - with every club he has taken charge of, from the great Milan team he helped create in the early 1990s to Real Madrid with David Beckham in 2007. Next he took on what he regarded as his greatest challenge - to restore England to the top of the world football tree, to take his adopted country to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, and to win it.  Award-winning writer Gabriele Marcotti travels from Capello's early days in Italy to his first months in his new job at Soho Square to tell the story of the man behind the steely glare, the method behind the sometimes manic behaviour. Capello's drive for success at any cost has seen him make more than a few enemies, and Marcotti spoke to them all, as well as his closest associates. Capello: The Man Behind England’s World Cup Dream is the story not just of a remarkable career, but of the life of a truly extraordinary man.

Gabriele Marcotti is an Italian sports journalist, sports author, radio and television presenter.  Born in Italy and now based in London, he was raised in the United States, Poland, Germany and Japan.

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17 June

Rinaldo ‘Dindo’ Capello - endurance racing driver

Three times winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours 

Rinaldo ‘Dindo’ Capello, one of Italy’s most successful endurance racing drivers, was born on this day in 1964 in Asti, in Piedmont.  During a period between 1997 and 2008 in which there was an Italian winning driver in all bar two years, Capello won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the most prestigious endurance race on the calendar, three times.  Only Emanuele Pirro, his sometime Audi teammate and rival during that period, has more victories in the race among Italian drivers, with five. Pirro won in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006 and 2007, Capello in 2003, 2004 and 2008.  Capello’s career record also includes two championship wins in the American Le Mans Series and five victories in the 12 Hours of Sebring. He is also the record holder for most wins at Petit Le Mans, the race run annually at Atlanta, Georgia to Le Mans rules, with five.  Alongside teammates Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish, he was regarded as the quiet man of the all-conquering Audi sports car team, although his contribution was every bit as impressive.   Capello’s ambitions when he began his single-seater career were the same as other young drivers - to work his way up to Formula One.  Read more…

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Giovanni Paolo Panini – artist

Painter who preserved scenes of Rome

Giovanni Paolo Panini, an artist mainly known for his views of Rome, was born on this day in 1691 in Piacenza, in Emilia-Romagna.  He is particularly remembered for his view of the interior of the Pantheon, commissioned by the Venetian collector, Francesco Algarotti, in around 1734.  The Pantheon was as much a tourist attraction in Panini’s day as it is today and Panini manipulated the proportions and perspective to include more of the interior that is actually visible from any one vantage point.  Indeed, many of his works, especially those of ruins, have slightly unreal embellishment. He sought to meet the needs of visitors for painted postcards depicting scenes of Italy and his clients were often happy with minor distortions of reality if it meant they could show off a unique picture.   As a young man, Panini trained in Piacenza but then moved to Rome where he studied drawing. His work was to influence other painters, such as Canaletto, who resolved to do for Venice what Panini had done for Rome and, of course, enjoyed enormous fame and success.  Much in demand, Panini also became famous as the decorator of Roman palaces.  Read more…

Sergio Marchionne - business leader

Man who saved Fiat divides opinions in Italy

Controversial business leader Sergio Marchionne was born on this day in 1952 in the city of Chieti in the Abruzzo region of Italy.  The former chief executive of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, who died in 2018, was credited with saving the iconic Italian motor manufacturer from potential extinction in 2004, when Fiat was on the verge of being taken into the ownership of the banks that were keeping it afloat.  It had suffered cumulative losses of more than $8 billion over the previous two years and a strategic alliance with General Motors had failed. Its share of the European car market had shrunk to an historic low of just 5.8 per cent.  Yet after the little known Marchionne was appointed chief executive at the company's Turin headquarters it took him only just over a year to bring Fiat back into profit.  When Fiat opened a new assembly line at the Mirafiori plant outside Turin in 2006, Marchionne was hailed as a hero.  The inauguration celebrations were attended by politicians of all parties and trade union leaders.  Soon, the new Fiat 500 was launched, tapping into Italian nostalgia by reprising the name that was synonymous with the optimistic years of the 1950s and ‘60s.  Read more…

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Saint Joseph of Copertino

Flying friar now protects aviators

Saint Joseph, a Franciscan friar who became famous for his miraculous levitation, was born Giuseppe Maria Desa on this day in 1603 in Copertino, a village in Puglia that was then part of the Kingdom of Naples.  Joseph was canonised in 1767, more than 100 years after his death, by Pope Clement XIII and he is now the patron saint for astronauts and aviation.  Joseph’s father, Felice Desa, had died before his birth leaving large debts. After the family home was seized to settle what was owed, his mother, Francesca Panara, was forced to give birth to him in a stable.  Joseph experienced ecstatic visions as a child at school. When he was scorned by other children he had outbursts of anger.  He was apprenticed to a shoemaker but when he applied to join the Franciscan friars he was rejected because of his lack of education.  He was accepted in 1620 as a lay brother by the Capuchin friars only to be dismissed because his constant ecstasies made him unfit to carry out his required duties.  Forced to return home he pleaded with the Franciscan friars near Copertino to be allowed to work in their stables.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: 24 Hours: 100 Years of Le Mans, by Richard Williams

The Le Mans 24 Hours race was created by a group of Frenchmen in 1923 and remains uniquely compelling to spectators, to the major motor manufacturers who continue to see it as an opportunity for priceless publicity, as well as to drivers hoping to add their names to its distinguished roll of honour. Between the wars, those manufacturers included Bugatti, Bentley and Alfa Romeo. Subsequently, Ferrari, Jaguar, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Ford, Porsche, Audi and Toyota have all been serial winners, guaranteeing the continuation of ferocious inter-marque rivalry.  Over the decades the race acquired a rich folklore, including stories of leaking petrol tanks being sealed with chewing gum, one competitor making his last pit-stop for a fill-up and a glass of champagne, or the woman who drove her MG through the night wearing a fur coat. Competitors have included princes, debutantes, drug smugglers and a Nazi spy. Leading Hollywood film-makers lured to the romance of the race include Steve McQueen, who conceived and starred in Le Mans in 1971, and James Mangold, who made Le Mans ’66 in 2019. But in 1955 it had also been the scene of the greatest tragedy ever to befall motor racing, when 82 people were killed by a competing car, an accident that for a while threatened the sport’s entire future. From the Bentley Boys of the 1920s, through record-breaking multiple winners Jacky Ickx and Tom Kristensen to modern stars such as Allan McNish, 24 Hours: 100 Years of Le Mans celebrates the skill, courage and technical brilliance of the men and women who gave the race its worldwide renown.

Richard Williams was chief sportswriter for the Guardian from 1995 to 2012, having previously worked for The Times and the Independent. He was the original presenter of BBC2's The Old Grey Whistle Test and was the artistic director of the Berlin Jazz Festival from 2015-17. Among his previous books are The Death of Ayrton Senna (1995), The Last Road Race (2004) and A Race with Love and Death (2020). 

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