Edda Mussolini was Benito’s favourite daughter: spoilt, clever, faithless, flamboyant, venal, a brilliant diplomat. Her father’s confidante during 20 years of Fascist rule she acted as first lady, helping steer Italy to join forces with Hitler, and with husband Galeazzo Ciano was part of Italy’s most celebrated couple. In a dramatic story that takes in her father’s fall and her husband’s execution, Caroline Moorehead paints a vivid portrait of a complicated and determined woman, not just as a witness but a key player in some of the century’s defining moments. In conversation with historian Clare Mulley.

Caroline Moorehead is a bestselling and prizewinner author, and the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo, Madame de la Tour du Pin and Martha Gellhorn. Her recent books – a quartet focussed on resistance to dictatorship, particularly in Italy – were shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Orwell Prize and the Costa Biography Award. She lives in London.

Clare Mulley is an award-winning author and broadcaster, primarily focused on female experience during the Second World War. She is currently working on a biography of the only woman in the Polish special forces, Agent Zo: Woman on a Mission.

Clare writes for various papers, reviews for the Spectator and TLS, and has twice been chair of the judges for the Historical Writers Association non-fiction prize. Clare and is a recipient of the Bene Merito cultural honour of the Republic of Poland, and the Daily Mail Biographers Club.