A Chill in the Air

Written by Iris Origo

Narrated by Hilary Bockham

'Origo's diaries, trenchantly and pithily written, are a glory' Spectator

Iris Origo, one of the twentieth century's great diarists, was born in England in 1902. As a child, she moved between England, Ireland, Italy and America, never quite belonging anywhere. It was only when she married an Italian man that she came to rest in one country. Fifteen years later, that country would be at war with her own.
With piercing insight, Origo documents the grim absurdities that her adopted Italy underwent as war became more and more unavoidable. Connected to everyone, from the peasants on her estate to the US ambassador, she writes of the turmoil, the danger, and the dreadful bleakness of Italy in 1939-1940.

A Chill in the Air is the account of the awful inevitability of Italy's stumble into a conflict for which its people were ill prepared. With an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, the award-winning author of The Pike, and an afterword by Katia Lysy, granddaughter of Iris Origo./br>

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Release date: Oct 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781782277439

Iris Origo

Iris Origo (1902–1988) was a British- born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy at her Tuscan estate at La Foce, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy’s fascist regime. Pushkin Press also publishes her bestselling diary, War in Val d’Orcia, which covers the years 1943-1944, as well as her memoir, Images and Shadows, and two of her biographies, A Study in Solitude and The Last Attachment.

Reviews for A Chill in the Air

[Sonalee Majumdar · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

NO.

I don’t expect a lot from an obscenely pampered member of the international aristocratic elite.

However, the unadulterated apologia for fascism in the introduction is appalling and unforgivable. This Hughs-Hallett asks us not to rethink the simplistic hagiography of Winston Churchill and other prominent conservatives throughout the 20s and 30s who were initially dazzled by Mussolini, but instead to rethink and soften our impressions of fascism!

Fascism rose in Italy with mass mob violence against workers and farm laborers striking for the most basic rights. It started with the destruction of the free press, murder and brutalization of political opponents, and grotesque atrocities and genocide in Libya and Ethiopia.

There was NEVER a single moment when fascism was serene and peaceful. It’s just that horrible rich insulated conservatives like Origo and this bint thought it was great when it was those other people getting their heads bashed in. They only changed their minds when the black shirts came for them too.

This BS that the Italians weren’t that bad like the Germans is a lie. Read Natalia Ginsburg. Read Giorgio Bassani. Actual Jewish Italian people who suffered from rank antisemitism long before, during and after wwii. Also read The Perfect Fascist by actual scholar Victoria de Grazia. Don’t read this garbage rewriting of history.

Appalling.