7th November

Benito Mussolini became leader of the National Fascist Party in Italy today in 1921. You've got to hand it to dictators - they have a great line in titles. Mussolini became Il Duce; Hitler was Der Fuhrer, Franco was El Caudillo. Even our own home grown Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector. And what have we got now? Minister for Sport, for the Environment and Without Portfolio.

In other news ...
Helen Suzman, the anti-apartheid campaigner was born today in 1917. I just loved her in Nicholas and Alexandra.

For anyone fortunate enough to live in the Isle of Wight, pop your wellies on tonight and get on down to the Riverside Centre in Newport, where my old mate M J Trow is giving a talk on crime. It is somewhat of a sideline of his - the plan is he gives the talks and then his accomplice, Joe 'the Horse' Bomparini nips round everyone's houses and cleans out their jewellery. Well, it beats working for a living.

3rd May

Margaret Mitchell won a Pulitzer prize for her first novel today in 1937. It was a sprawling Civil War epic called Gone With the Wind and was later turned into the Worst Film in History (and I am including John Carter and Titanic in the list) starring Clark Gable.

Bad luck, Maggie; you can't win 'em all.

In other news ...
Niccolo Machiavelli was born today in 1469, one of the most misunderstood Italians of all time (see Benito Mussolini, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Silvio Berlusconi etc etc). His book Il Principe (The Prince) written in 1515 is a brilliant description of the realpolitik of his day, a time when nobody's virtue was overnice. His works were banned in most European universities and he himself equated with the Devil - 'Old Nick' - which is incredibly unfair. He was, after all, telling it like it was.

He has achieved a kind of immortality though - of all the names of the 16th century Italian political scene, which one has come down to us as an adjective? His!

28th April

This was the day when the Allies got it wrong at Versailles in 1919. Britain, the USA and especially France demanded that Germany (who wasn't even called to the negotiating table) pay £6,600 million for having started World War One. Four things to note:

1. Germany didn't start World War One - Gavrilo Princip did.
2. Germany was broke and couldn't afford to pay reparations.
3. Woodrow Wilson the American President and John Maynard Keynes the economist wanted a much more affordable reparation settlement. They were ignored.
4. Georges Clemenceau - 'the tiger' - was a vengeful reprobate who consigned his own country to defeat and occupation twenty years later.

In other news ...
Benito Mussolini became yet another in a long line of dictators - Julius Caesar, Maximilien Robespierre, the Ceausescus, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Simon Cowell  (oops - typo! sorry!) - to meet their end stickily. It was 28 April 1945 and Il Duce and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were shot, kicked, spat at and hanged upside down for the benefit of the Italian mob and the cameras.