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Alessandro Magri MacMahon (1895-1981)

Alessandro Magri MacMahon (1895-1981) - An Album of the Life of an Interesting Hiberno Italian. clothbound album, 100pp 24 by 30cm., 9.5 by 12in. Dr. Alessandro Magri MacMahon (1895-1981) was born in Crema, Lombardy, the son of an Italian barrister and a Anglo Irish mother, who was the daughter of Major-General Alexander MacMahon (Magri added the maternal surname of MacMahon by deed poll in 1920). During the First World War he served in England and in Italy. In 1927 he went to live permanently in England & from 1929-1940 he taught at the City Literary Institute. From 1940-43 he was engaged in war work with the BBC Italian Service. Afterward he taught at Morley & Bedford Colleges. He wrote a book on Italian history & another on fishing titled Fishlore (1946). He was a founder member & a Vice President of the British Italian Society (which pre war was called the Friends of Free Italy). In 1958, through his interest in fishing and his Irish connections he went to live at Summermore, Kinsale, Co. Cork This album begins with a record of a duck hunting trip in Italy in 1914 followed by a neat mss. record of the nature of his employment while in the war & a mss. letter from his mother - in it she mentions that her grandfather & great grandfather were both born in Dublin and buried at Killeshin, near Carlow, in Ireland. She mentions that her mother's father "Old General Carthew used to live at Denton Lodge." Another letter confirms that the MacMahon family lived for at least a century at Hollymount near Carlow. The album has numerous photographs 1880s on. There are also documents in Italian, including various Italian passports, identity cards as well as photos of Magri as a child, in uniform in WW1, in civilian life, as well as holiday photos & pictures of other social and field activities as well as his home in Summercove, Cork in the 1950s & 60s. Some of his papers were given to Cork University.

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