This volume of essays is published in honour of Denis Mack Smith and in acknowledgement of the unique role that he has played in promoting the study and understanding of Italian history in this country. In a career that already spans more than four decades, Denis Mack Smith has written more widely and influentially on contemporary Italian history than any other non-Italian. In so doing he has established an unparalleled reputation both in Italy and in the Englishspeaking world.

The breadth of his reputation owes much to the fact that he has the gift of writing original, serious, and scrupulously researched history which none the less remains accessible and attractive to the nonspecialist – a rare talent that has won him recognition as one of the finest historical biographers writing in English today. This ability to reach out beyond the confines of academic audiences has enabled him to play a critically important role in first reviving and then stimulating and widening an interest in Italian history. His works have inspired younger generations of professional historians of Italy, as well as being very well received by university students, school-teachers, and the general reading public.

That is not to say that his work has been uncontroversial, and indeed another of his talents as a historian has always been to provoke. When his first major book, Cavour and Garibaldi, was published in 1954, A.J.P.Taylor commented: ‘with brilliant, though well-founded perversity, Mr Mack Smith turns things upside down’.