Edited by Gianni Scipione Rossi , who also wrote his biography, Attilio Tamaro 's unpublished diary , preserved in the archives of the Ugo Spirito and Renzo De Felice Foundation, is now available in bookstores. The volume is published by Rubbettino Editore , with the support of the Foundation.

The book

A Triestino of Istrian origin, journalist, historian, diplomat, Attilio Tamaro (1884-1956) was one of the leading figures of Julian irredentism. A prolific author of historical and political essays, he left his private diary unpublished, which develops from the Austro-Hungarian Trieste of 1911 to the war won, through fascism to overcome the end of the regime and face the civil war and reconstruction. A large and intense fresco - without filters - of almost forty years of Italian and European history.
Of national-patriotic culture, monarchist, volunteer in the Great War, theoretician of nationalism, he joined fascism in 1922. Opposed to anti-Semitism, he was expelled from the PNF in 1943, did not join the RSI and as a neo-irredentist he returned to defend the Italian nature of Trieste and the Adriatic lands.
In the diary his analyses, political background and meetings with hundreds of people, from Giolitti to Salandra, from D'Annunzio to Mussolini, from Grandi to Federzoni, from Balbo to Bottai. And again, intellectuals, politicians and diplomats crossed in his wanderings between Trieste, Rome, the Balkans, Vienna, Paris, London, Fiume, Hamburg, Helsinki, Moscow, Leningrad and Bern.
The diary is introduced by a biography based on the examination of documents and correspondence, present in various archive funds. The complex and tormented personality of a man of great culture, capable of dialogue across the board, emerges. Margherita Sarfatti dedicates her Dux to him as follows: «To Attilio Tamaro, very Italian son of Trieste, in the name of Trieste, mother of my mother, offers with friendship». «I have read – writes Tamaro to Umberto Saba – the three poems with equal pleasure: “The Prayer of the Guardian Angel” seems wonderful to me, where the episode is remembered with pure art and is then elevated to a vast meaning. I eagerly await the announced volume of poetry».
Tamaro was in contact with all the protagonists of the irredentism of Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia, in particular Camillo Ara, Mario Alberti, Giorgio Pitacco, Salvatore Segré Sartorio, Fulvio Suvich, Francesco Salata. His relationships were intense with Eugenio Balzan, Camillo Castiglioni, Francesco Coppola, Mario Missiroli, Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata. His criticisms of Galeazzo Ciano – «oriental satrap» – and of Mussolini were ferocious, who, after having admired him, when the RSI was born, defined him as «the raving man from up there».
The biography also features the figure of Tamaro's son, Tullio, who in 1942 joined the clandestine PCI in Milan and, together with Emilio Sereni, represented the party in the regional CLN of Lombardy.

Gianni Scipione Rossi, Attilio Tamaro: The Diary of an Italian (1911-1949) , Rubbettino Editore, Soveria Mannelli 2021, pp. 1066, €49,00 (ISBN 978-88-498-6613-1)

The volume will be presented on June 24, 2021 , at 6:30 pm , at the Casa delle Associazioni Regionali – UNAR , at Via Ulisse Aldovrandi, 16 in Rome. In addition to the curator and Attilio Tamaro's grandchildren, Alessandro Campi , full professor of History of Political Doctrines at the University of Perugia and director of the “Rivista di Politica”, Enrico Morbelli , journalist and president of the Association of Piedmontese in Rome – Famija Piemontèisa, and Giuseppe Parlato , full professor of Contemporary History at UNINT in Rome and president of the Ugo Spirito and Renzo De Felice Foundation, will participate.