Mazzini, Giuseppe (1805-1872)
Autograph letter signed
2 pp., with conjugate blank, 11.1 x 8.8cm, to an unidentified recipient, in English, concerning 17th-century Italian thought etc., bookseller's pencilled annotation, single transverse crease, conjugate blank with remnants of mount verso
William Brown (Edinburgh bookseller), catalogue 288 (1935), item 695 (in annotated envelope), from whom acquired by Ion Smeaton Munro (1883-1970), Scottish army officer and journalist. Munro was Rome correspondent of Glasgow's Morning Post from 1922 to 1937, becoming press attaché at the British embassy in 1938, and head of the Italian section at the Ministry of Information on the declaration of war in 1939, before rejoining the army (having served with the Glasgow Territorials in the Great War) in 1941. ‘When the invasion of Italy was being prepared he flew to North Africa, later entering Rome with the liberating army in June 1944. He was a chief press officer during the Italian campaign’ , and when demobilised he became press liaison officer in the Foreign Office conference department specially concerned with UN affairs in London. In the 1946 New Year honours list Lieutenant-Colonel Munro was awarded the OBE (Military) for “gallant and distinguished service in Italy”’ (Duncan Beaton, ‘The Notable Descendants of John Munro’, in A. O. M. Clark, ed., The Kist: The Magazine of the Natural History & Antiquarian Society of Mid-Argyll, no. 45 (Spring 1993), pp. 6-7). Ion Smeaton Munro wrote two books on his Italian experiences, Through Fascism to World Power: A History of the Revolution in Italy (1933), and Beyond the Alps (1934).