Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain: Time, Transnational Identities and Hybridity 3031354370, 9783031354373

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Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain Time, Transnational Identities and Hybridity Manuela D‘Amore

Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain

Manuela D’Amore

Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain Time, Transnational Identities and Hybridity

Manuela D’Amore University of Catania Catania, Italy

ISBN 978-3-031-35437-3    ISBN 978-3-031-35438-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Francesco

Acknowledgements

This volume has represented a challenge. I have to thank many for their help and support, but I will commence with the students following the Master’s of Comparative English Literature of the University of Catania (Italy). Their enthusiastic response to the first authors that I proposed early in 2015 increasingly encouraged me to begin my research, present at conferences and finally contribute to edited volumes and journals. It was initially for them that I wanted to depict a larger picture of this migrant literary writing. Students thus immediately showed a great interest in these authors and their works, but also in the main historical phases of the Italian community in Britain. I am truly grateful to AIFHS (Anglo-Italian Family History Society) for welcoming me as a member, particularly to Rosemarie Leonard for inviting me to the Society’s stimulating events. During the pandemic these cultural events and her generous support were decisive for me to progress in this unexplored area of study. This is to say that this volume is the result of a long research process, but also of important human and academic exchanges. It was a great honour and a pleasure to meet Terri Colpi (University of St. Andrews), Honorary President of AIFHS, and an absolute authority in the field of Italian Migration Studies in Britain. She shared part of her knowledge with me and gave me precious information when it seemed impossible to find a significant number of authors in all the three main British countries. It was during one of our conversations that I first began to envisage the possibility of going beyond teaching and giving shape to a larger and more comprehensive research project. vii

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It took me quite a long time to take a decision. In the meantime, I enlarged my initial network of contacts and included colleagues whose research output is important even today. Bruna Chezzi (University of Cardiff) was extremely generous: she sent me some unobtainable materials and also recounted her experience in the Italian community in the Welsh Valleys. Through her memories I could know more about the main literary voices in the country and their unique features. Both the core chapters of this volume and the information which is contained in the Appendix will show that I am indebted to her and that I appreciate her commitment to promoting their writings. The Italian side was equally supportive. Beginning from Cristina Cavecchi and Margaret Rose (University of Milan), whose contribution was particularly important in the concluding phases of my research, I will mention the MigrAIRE group of the Department of Humanities of the University of Catania. I am particularly grateful to Beate Baumann, Cetti Rizzo and Iride Valenti, colleagues and friends, for firmly believing in this project and for giving me precious scholarly advice in the specific field of plurilingualism in Italian migratory contexts. Yet, this volume is also the product of the desire to discover a different face of Italy and to connect reading and academic research with travel experience even during the pandemic. I cannot mention all the men and women that I met in the summer of 2021 when I toured the enchanting towns and villages of the Comino Valley in the province of Frosinone, in the Barga area in northern Tuscany, as well as in the Ceno Valley near Parma. Those men and women were all eager to share their family stories and were always willing to help: it was thanks to them that I realised that there is still a strong link which unites them to the members of the immigrant communities in Britain and that they are particularly proud of their most talented members. From this point of view, I would like to express my special thanks to Il giornale di Barga and Barganews for providing me with all the necessary support for my work. I am still impressed by their commitment to reviving the ancient traditions of their communities and reinforcing their transnational identity. It was thus thanks to them that I learned more about some of the authors who will be discussed in this volume. Most of them died in the early 2010s, which explains why I considered it important to evaluate their impact on the media, and possibly establish a direct contact with those who are still active in the British literary and artistic scene. I actually tried to contact them all, so I will mention particularly Lilie Ferrari, Melanie

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Hughes, Anne Pia and Robert Rossi for their generosity and invaluable contribution. I can never thank them enough for sharing personal and family memories, useful information, and in some cases even private materials. They were indispensable for me to acquire a deeper understanding of their multi-layered selves and of their rich creative universe. Finally, I would like to express all my gratitude to David Flynn for carefully and skilfully revising my manuscript and to Laura Tosi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) for discussing it and giving precious advice. Without their help and encouragement Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain would not have been the same.

Contents

1 Introduction: A Migrant Literature in the Making—In Search of a Name and a Canon  1 1.1 The “Ethnicity Factor” and the Corpus  6 1.2 From Theory to Content Organisation: The Structure of This Volume 12 Bibliography 16 Addendum 20 2 History  and Histories: Transnational Lives Through Time 25 2.1 Beginnings: From the Late 1800s to the First World War 27 2.2 Economy and Ideology: The 1920s and 1930s 36 2.3 The Darkest Times: 1940–1945  41 2.4 A New “Renaissance”: The Post-war Years 45 Bibliography 49 3 Departures,  Arrivals and Settlements: Pictures from Rural Italy and Urban Britain 53 3.1 Where It All Started: Geo-literary Frescoes of the Centre and the North of Italy 54 3.1.1 Southern Lazio, Picinisco and Its Hamlets 54 3.1.2 Tuscany, the Garfagnana and the Barga Area 58 3.1.3 Emilia Romagna, the Ceno Valley and Bardi 63

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3.2 First Arrivals: London, Cardiff and Edinburgh 66 3.2.1 London and Little Italy 68 3.2.2 The Valleys of South Wales: Port Talbot, Cardiff and Swansea 70 3.2.3 Edinburgh, the Coastal Route to Cockenzie and Glasgow 73 3.3 A Nation at War: Pictures and Maps of Internment Camps 78 3.4 Aftermath 83 Bibliography 85 4 From  Street Musicians to Educators and Actors: The Long Road to Social Integration 89 4.1 Padroni, Organ Grinders and Hokey Pokey Men  92 4.2 Fish Fryers, Confectionaries and Restaurateurs 96 4.3 Boarders and Hoteliers105 4.4 Educators and Actors107 Bibliography111 5 Italian  Cultures, Traditions and Foods in Transition115 5.1 From Corn, Pigs and Ciocie to “Lace Chemises” and “Skinny Denim”117 5.2 Catholic Rituals and Family Life in Britain124 5.3 The Past and the Present: Towards New Food Identities133 Bibliography140 6 Languages  in Contact: Italian, English, German and French145 6.1 Italian and Dialectal Forms as Icons of the Past148 6.2 English, Cockney, Welsh and Scots: Encountering and Appropriating Linguistic Otherness158 6.3 Between Historical Truth and Identity: German and French168 Bibliography171

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7 Conclusion175 Bibliography182 Appendix: Authors, Texts and Contexts183 Index293

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: A Migrant Literature in the Making—In Search of a Name and a Canon

Published between the late 1970s and the 1990s,1 the first scholarly studies on Italian migration to Britain were decisive in defining its distinctive features. They began from the earliest geographical settlements and then gradually showed how the great events of late modern and contemporary times marked the lives and mores of their members. It was principally

1  The first scholarly study was Umberto Marin’s Italiani in Gran Bretagna (Roma: CESR, 1975). See also Russell King, “Italian Migration to Great Britain,” Geography 62 (1977): 176–186; Nicola De Blasio, “Italian Immigration to Britain: An Ignored Discussion,” European Demographic Information Bulletin 10 (1979): 151–158; Arturo Tosi, Immigration and Bilingual Education (Oxford: Pergamon Institute of English, 1984); Anthony Rea, Manchester’s Little Italy: Memories of the Italian Colony of Ancoats (Manchester: Neil Richardson, 1988); Colin Hughes, Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. The Italian Community in South Wales 1881–1945 (Bridgend: Seren, 1991); and Alfio Bernabei, Esuli ed emigrati italiani nel Regno Unito 1920–1940 (Milano: Mursia, 1997).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. D’Amore, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0_1

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thanks to the ground-breaking research of Lucio Sponza and Terri Colpi2 that today we can rely not only on a growing number of scholarly contributions3 on this important transnational phenomenon, but also on the fruitful collaboration between leading university centres and prestigious cultural institutions both in Britain and in Italy. We are confident that in the future the tireless commitment of scholars and activists to raising civic awareness on the cultural role of Italian immigrants will result in a process of profound historical revision. The time is indeed ripe to include the darkest pages of the Second World War—particularly the tragedy of the Arandora Star (2 July 1940)—in school and university textbooks. The younger generations will have to  learn  that the Italians were victims of persecution and even lost their lives because of their origins and presumed political convictions. It is precisely in this spirit that this monograph has been conceived. At a time when historians and sociologists provide further and more detailed reconstructions of this side of Italian migration, very little is known about its literary and artistic aspects. The little research production which has

 Here we will refer to Lucio Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Realities and Images (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988); Terri Colpi, The Italian  Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream, 1991); Terri Colpi, Italians Forward (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream, 1991); and Lucio Sponza and Arturo Tosi, A Century of Italian Immigration to Britain. Five Essays (Reading: Reading University Press, 1991). 3  The number of publications on the social and historical side of the Italian diaspora in Britain is impressive. See, for instance, Giancarlo Rinaldi, From the Serchio to the Solway (Dumphries: Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information & Archives, 1998); Maria Serena Balestracci, Arandora Star. Dall’oblio alla memoria  – From Oblivion to Memory (Parma: Monte Università Parma, 2008); Olive Besagni, A Better Life. A History of London’s Italian Immigrant Families in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the 19th & 20th Centuries (London: Camden History Society, 2011); Margherita Sprio, Migrant Memories: Cultural History, Cinema and the Italian Post-War Diaspora in Britain (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013); Terri Colpi, Italians’ Count in Scotland. The 1933 Census. Recording History (London: The Saint James Press, 2015); Terri Colpi, “Chaff in the Winds of War? The Arandora Star, Not Forgetting and Commemoration at the 80th Anniversary,” Italian Studies 4 (2020): 389–410; and Anne-Marie Fortier, Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020). 2

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appeared since 20004 only focuses on a limited number of authors and works. In this sense, the aim of Literary Voices of Italian Diaspora in Britain: Time, Transnational Identities and Hybridity is to shed light for the first time on the rich textual terrain that they have created, while giving dignity to a community whose role in multicultural England, Wales and Scotland is now widely recognised. In point of fact, the memories of the past when its members lived on the margins of society seem now to have faded. “Italian is now synonymous with flair and creativity”5: a more comprehensive vision of their writings may result in a new configuration of the wider field of Italian migration literatures in English. Recalling in particular the long-­established tradition of North American and Australian Studies will be crucial to seeing how they incorporated the Italian component in their canons. 4  See Joseph Farrell, “Tallies and Italians. The Italian Impact on Scottish Drama,” in A Theatre That Matters: Twentieth-Century Scottish Drama and Theatre. A Collection of Critical Essays and Interviews, ed. Valentina Poggi and Margaret Rose (Milano: Unicopli, 2000), 121–134; Carla Dente, “Personal Memory / Cultural Memory: Identity and Difference in Scottish-Italian Migrant Theatre,” in Performing National Identity: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions, ed. Manfred Pfister and Ralf Hertel, (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2008), 197–212; Elizabeth Wren-Owens, “The Delayed Emergence of Italian Welsh Narratives, or Class and the Commodification of Ethnicity?,” Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture 11 (2012): 119–134; Gioia Angeletti, “Performing Cross-Cultural Relations, Identity and Conflict in Contemporary Scottish Theatre: Expatriate Italian Communities in Marcella Evaristi’s Commedia and Ann Marie Di Mambro’s Tally’s Blood,” International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen 2 (2015): 26–47; Bruna Chezzi, Italians in Wales and Its Cultural Representations, 1920s–2010s (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015); Elizabeth Wren-Owens, “Remembering Fascism: Polyphony and Its Absence in Contemporary Italian Scottish and Italian Welsh Narrative,” Journal of Romance Studies 1 (2015): 73–90; Manuela D’Amore, “Identità, straniamento e resilienza in Joe Pieri, Isle of the Displaced: An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War (1997),” in Testo e Metodo, elaborazione elettronica. Isolitudine, confine, identità, ed. Sabrina Costanzo, Domenico Cusato and Gemma Persico (Messina: Lippolis, 2019), 83–98; Souhir Zekri Masson, “Real Men Mark their Territory!” Spatial Constructions of Masculinity in Joe Pieri’s Autobiographical Narratives,” European Journal of Life Writing 8 (2019): 47–68; Manuela D’Amore, “Neutralising ‘Difference by Silence,’ ‘Choosing to Remain Peripheral’: Xenophobia, Marginalisation and Death in Italian Scottish Migrant Writings of World War Two,” in The Migration Conference 2020 Proceedings: Migration and Integration, ed. Ibrahim Sirkeci and Merita Zulfiu Alii (London: Transnational Press, 2020), 131–134; and Souhir Zekri Masson, “Autobiography through Anecdotes in Joe Pieri’s Isle of the Displaced,” European Journal of Life Writing 11 (2022): 1–11. 5  Anne Pia, Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot (Edinburgh: Luath, 2017), 85.

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The author of numerous key contributions to the field of Italian diaspora, for example, Fred L. Gardaphé is clear on the fact that it was not until the 1970s and 1990s that Italian American literature was posited as a field of enquiry.6 If we consider that Luigi Ventura’s first collection of short stories, Misfits and Remnants, dates to 1886, and that Rosa Basile Green first published her seminal The Italian-American Novel in 1974, it is clear that it took critics almost a century to give full recognition to what already represented an immense body of literary works. In the following years, anthologies such as Helen Barolini’s The Dream Book (1985), Ferdinand Alfonsi’s Dictionary of Italian-American Poets (1989) and Anthony Tamburri’s From the Margin. Writings in Italian Americana (1991) helped to codify and canonise it. Proof that this now represents a fully established literary tradition can be found among others in Elton Prifti’s Italoamericano: italiano e inglese in contatto negli USA (2016), as well as in Pellegrino D’Acierno’s edited volume The Italian American Heritage. A Companion to Literature and Arts. First appearing in 1999, this latter was significantly republished in 2021. The process of scholarly recognition of Italian Canadian literature was equally slow. Putting an emphasis on its markedly plurilingual nature— Liborio Lattoni’s early twentieth-century poems were originally in Italian, whereas Francesco Gualtieri and Mario Duiliani respectively published in English and French7—Joseph Pivato recalls that it began to be studied in the mid-1980s. In this sense, his Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian Canadian Writing8 was decisive in showing that it was necessary to go beyond the duality of traditional approaches and to follow new and more challenging interpretative lines.9 Licia Canton’s Here & Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian Canadian Writing (2021) is one of the latest scholarly studies in the field of Gender and Queer Studies.

6  Fred L. Gardaphé, “Italian American Literature and Culture,” in A Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture, ed. Josephine Hendin (Malden, Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 299. 7  See Joseph Pivato, “Italian Canadian Writing,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, last modified 16 December 2013, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/italian-canadian-writing. Accessed 31 May 2023. 8   Joseph Pivato, ed., Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing (Montréal: Guernica, 1991). 9  See Joseph Pivato, “Introduction: Why Comparative Essays?” in Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing, ed. Joseph Pivato (Montréal: Guernica, 1991), 13.

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Originally flourishing in the second half of the nineteenth century, and now at the heart of a new critical debate, Italian Australian writing was first studied by C.A.  McCormick in 1970. As Giovanni Andreoni recalls, at that time it was not even labelled as “literature” and its linguistic hybridity was utterly negated.10 It was in 1988 that Gaetano Rando’s Literature and the Migration Experience focused on the development of migrant narrative fiction between 1965 and 1986: on that occasion he brought to light a corpus of over 35 volumes of novels published by 27 first-generation authors.11 Writing again on this topic in the early 2000s, he contended that the younger generations had produced an even higher number of works, and that scholarly criticism was now trying to consider the possible links between Italian and Postcolonial Studies.12 Although it was not until very recently that Italy perceived itself as a postcolonial nation,13 Caterina Romeo’s latest publication, Interrupted Narratives and Intersectional Representations in Italian Postcolonial Literature (2023),14 represents the culmination of a research process which began early in 2010. This brief overview shows that literary critics have played a crucial role in the canonisation—and especially in the diffusion—of the major Italian literatures in English.15 Within this perspective, we cannot but notice, for instance, that, considering the unique case of Britain, the first two 10  See Giovanni Andreoni, “Italo-Australians. Notes on Language and Literature,” in Social Pluralism and Literary History. The Literature of the Italian Emigration, ed. Francesco Loriggio (Toronto, New York, Lancaster: Guernica, 1996), 290. 11   Gaetano Rando, “Recent Italian-Australian Narrative Fiction by First Generation Writers,” Kunapipi 31 (2009): 100–115, https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol31/iss1/9. Accessed 31 May 2023. 12  See Gerry Turcotte and Gaetano Rando, “Introduction. Italian Australian Studies: A (Post)Colonial Perspective,” in Literary and Social Diasporas. An Italian Australian Perspective, ed. Gaetano Rando & Gerry Turcotte (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2007), 9–10. 13  One of the earliest reflections on this new perspective in the field of Italian Studies can be found in Silvia Albertazzi, “’We’ve Done Our Bit, Too!’ Crossover Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Reception of Postcolonial Writing in Italy,” in The Future of Postcolonial Studies, ed. Chantal Zabus (New York: Routledge, 2015), 37–38. See also Chiara Giuliani, Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). 14  As the blurb of Romeo’s monograph reads: “Originally published in Italian in 2018 as Riscrivere la nazione: La letteratura italiana postcoloniale, this new English translation brings to light the connections between the present, the colonial past and the great historical waves of international and intranational migration.” 15  See, for instance, Irma Maini  and Mary Jo Bona, Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012).

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contributions on writers of Italian descent respectively date to 2000 and 2008, and that in the years 2010–2019 there was a slight increase of interest particularly in the works of Joe Pieri, Anita Arcari and Mary Contini.16 Based in the main Scottish cities and in the Welsh Valleys, they are still studied for the way they depicted not only the worlds in which they lived, but also their complex identities. Further details about the impact that these few contributions had on the reception of their narratives can be found in the second part of this volume. In a context, however, where the majority of authors are still ignored by academia, we should not be surprised that even in the latest anthologies or edited volumes there is no trace of the dense production of British writers of Italian descent. Referring to other immigrant communities, in fact, Graziella Parati’s The Cultures of Italian Migration (2011), Wiebke Sievers’s and Sandra Vlasta’s Immigrant and Ethnic-Minority Writers since 1945 (2018) and Marie Orton’s and Graziella Parati’s Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives (2021) clearly demonstrate that there is a significant cultural and literary gap which needs to be filled. In an effort to create a link with the long-established traditions in America, Canada and Australia—but also considering the latest critical trends in the field of contemporary Italian literature—this volume will thus begin from a first reflection on the transnational nature of this production. Considering that it is still extremely difficult even to identify all its authors and to rely on precise terms and classifications, it will be crucial to detect all possible contradictions and begin from a first process of systematisation.

1.1   The “Ethnicity Factor” and the Corpus It is undeniable that until today British authors of Italian descent have not been able to convey a univocal vision of their core identities, and that literary critics have not been completely aware of the theoretical and social implications of terms such as “British Italian” or “Italian British.” Starting from titles such as Joe Pieri’s The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant (2005), Hector Emanuelli’s A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman (2010) and Anne Pia’s Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an  See the list of the few publications on these authors’ writings contained in note 4.

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Italian Scot (2017), it seems rather clear that their choices have generally mirrored their private, intimate perception of their immigrant origins, and that critics have used those compound adjectives rather interchangeably. It is now time to give a tentative denomination to what at this stage we may only define as “a literature in the making,” and establish a stronger link with the literary traditions of North America and Australia. It is for this reason that, once again, we will refer to the dense theoretical debate within the field of Italian American Studies. It was 1991 when Anthony Tamburri published the illuminating essay to Hyphenate or Not to Hyphenate. The Italian/American Writer. The product of a long and systematic theoretical reflection on the Italian migrant literary discourse, it proposed the “hyphen” as “an ideologically charged marker” which creates “distance,”17 while fostering a deeper understanding of “diversity and difference” in literature and more broadly in contemporary times.18 Indeed, building upon the main juxtapositions that we tend to associate to postmodern discourses—“stability/subversion; hierarchy/anarchy; determinacy/indeterminacy; genital/polymorphous”19—he advanced “the validation” both of “Italian/American literature” and “of all minority cultures.”20 Writing some years later, in 1996, Fred Gardaphé not only shared Tamburri’s theoretical premises, but also appreciated the fact that he had “made a strong case for the renewal of ethnicity.”21 As we consider this element to be absolutely crucial also in the context of what we have defined “a migrant literature in the making,” we will thus put an emphasis on “the Italian factor”22 and propose, even at this early stage, to call both authors and works “Italian British.” The complex issues concerning the formation of a new canon will remain open to discussion, but we are confident that this will help to systematise terms and definitions, while laying the basis for a re-discussion of the boundaries of the major Italian migrant literatures in English. In this sense, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain will demonstrate that this factor is at the very basis of its corpus. Although the 17  Anthony Julian Tamburri, To Hyphenate or Not To Hyphenate. The Italian/American Writer: An Other American (Montréal: Guernica, 1991), 11. 18  Ibid., 12. 19  Ibid., 18. 20  Fred Gardaphé, Dagoes Read. Tradition and the Italian/American Writer (Toronto: New York, Lancaster: Guernica, 1996), 212. 21  Ibid. 22  Here we are clearly referring to Colpi’s seminal work The Italian Factor.

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editorial market continues to be flooded with narratives by British authors who are committed to reviving the historical memory of the Italian community—here we will only mention Anne Douglas’s Ginger Street (2003), Nathalie Dye’s Arandora Star (2013) and David Shaw’s Arandora Crossing: A Graphic Novel (2018)—we have chosen to focus specifically on those whose families left Italy between the unification of the country (1861) and the outbreak of the Second World War. In this sense, this volume will only include some references to award-winning Domenica de Rosa and Giancarlo Gemin: the former was born in London in 1963 and began to write The Italian Quarter in 1998,23 whereas the latter, after the success of the children’s story Sweet Pizza (2016), has recently published a short autobiographical prose entitled The Valleys of Venice: Memories of an Italian Immigrant in Wales (2022). Mentioning “the voluntary scheme for the recruitment of Italian workers for underground coalmining employment in Great Britain,”24 which his father applied for in 1951, Gemin provides evidence that in the post-war years the migration fluxes from Italy were marked by new and more complex dynamics. Further details about the effects of “bulk recruitment” in the building and industrial sectors and the features of intellectual migration since the early 1970s can be found in the principal historical, sociological and linguistic studies.25 In an attempt, however, to create a homogeneous but representative corpus, a systematic search was conducted also at a geographical level. As the latest scholarly publications about immigration in Northern Ireland continue to be based on oral history projects—which confirm that today “the Italian community’s origins are narrated second or third-hand, constituting a form of communal ‘post-memory’”26—the 21 writers who are presented in this volume will all be connected to 23  There is scant information about de Rosa’s Italian parentage. Her debut “work of fiction,” which first appeared in 2004, is significantly dedicated to her father, Felice de Rosa, but the references to the Italian community are based on “Terri Colpi’s wonderful book The Italian Factor: The Italian Community in Great Britain (Mainstream Publishing, 1991).” See Domenica de Rosa, The Italian Quarter (London: Quercus, 2013), 241. 24  Giancarlo Gemin, “The Valleys of Venice: Memories of an Italian Immigrant in Wales,” in An Open Door. New Travel Writing in a Precarious Century, ed. Steven Lovatt (Cardigan: Parthian), 2022, 66. 25  See among others, Tosi, Immigration and Bilingual Education, 43–46; Colpi, The Italian Factor, 144–154; and more recently, Fortier, Migrant Belongings, 29–31. 26  Jack Crangle, Migrants, Immigration and Diversity in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland. British, Irish or “Other”? (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), 71.

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London and the largest cities in England, as well as to the Welsh Valleys and Scotland. First-, second-, third- and even fourth-generation immigrants who utilised writing as an opportunity to rediscover their roots and reconcile themselves with the contradictory elements in their multi-layered identities, these authors are originally from precise geographical areas in Italy. Eight of them—therefore 38%—belong to Picinisco and the Comino Valley in the extreme south of Lazio, whereas another eight are from the little hamlets of Barga in northern Tuscany and of Bardi in south-western Emilia. Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain will provide detailed information about these mountain areas, yet it is also important to consider that a small group of five—which represents 24% of the overall number of the writers in this corpus—respectively has Ligurian and Lombard origins. Evidence that after the unification of Italy almost all of the Italians resident in Britain were from the main northern and central regions can ultimately be found in Colpi’s seminal The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain.27 Given the scarce biographical and bibliographical resources which are available on this specific aspect of the Italian diaspora in Britain, it is important to clarify that this corpus may not include all literary voices which originated from those early migration fluxes. The research which will be carried out in the future will have to supplement both the data and the information which is contained in this first contribution, and depict a more comprehensive picture, also focusing on the new generations. Interestingly, the earliest memoir included in this corpus dates to 1938, but it was not until the early 1980s, and then, again, at the end of the 1990s, that there was a steady increase of literary publications. Questioning in particular the “delayed emergence” of Italian Welsh narratives,28 in 2012 Elizabeth Wren-Owens rightly put an emphasis on the low level of literacy of the first generation of immigrants, but more importantly, on the level of marginalisation that they were victims of in the first half of the twentieth century. Considering that these reflections can help to understand the more general development of this “migrant literature in the making,” it seems clear that it was only after Britain began to value cultural difference that more members of the Italian community dedicated

 See Colpi, The Italian Factor, 49–53.  Here we refer to Wren-Owens, “The Delayed Emergence of Italian Welsh Narratives.”

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themselves to writing.29 The majority of them are non-professional writers—teachers, ex-soldiers, restaurateurs and even actors—who only published one work, yet it is significant that in 2010 Anita Arcari and Peter Ghiringhelli ideally contributed to the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Arandora Star tragedy with The Hokey Pokey Man and A British Boy in Fascist Italy. The chart in the Addendum will show that there is a strong predominance of memoirs, autobiographies, family sagas and historical novels in this corpus. From this point of view, we can anticipate that even the novels by Arcari, Contini and Rossi have a solid autobiographical basis and that they are the product of their authors’ research on the Italian community. Especially Italian Scottish writers, for instance, considered Terri Colpi’s The Italian Factor as the basis of their stories: it may be of interest to note that there is a markedly growing interest in autobiographies and in the various forms of life writing as distinctive components of migrant literatures particularly on the other side of the Atlantic.30 Yet, despite their strong realism, the narrative structure of most of these works is also characterised by a special blend of perceptions, self-­perceptions and imagination. Compared to war memoirs, whose contents are presented in a strict chronological order, these works intertwine their authors’ memories with vivid images of the Italian community, while offering precious insights into their inner selves. Thus, there are war memoirs which are proposed as a form of collaborative writing to overcome the “fallibility” of memory,31 as well as autobiographical narratives and novels which are based on family materials. Conveying positive messages of courage and resilience, they incorporate diverse textual and linguistic forms, which show the strong level of hybridity of this migrant literature “in the making.” Formal features aside, it seems clear that the literary works which are part of this corpus generally respond to their authors’ desire to discover their roots and value the dignity of their forebears. This is true for Raffaela Cruciani’s An Owl in the Kitchen. The Discovery of My Italian Heritage (2006), for Anita Arcari’s above-mentioned The Hokey Pokey Man, and  Ibid., 121–122.  See especially Rosalia Baena, Transculturing Auto/Biography. Forms of Life Writing (Milton Park: Taylor and Francis, 2013); and Edvige Giunta and Joseph Sciorra, eds., Embroidered Stories. Interpreting Women’s Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2014). 31  See Peter Ghiringhelli, A British Boy in Fascist Italy (Stroud: The History Press, 2010), 7. 29 30

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especially for Mary Contini’s family saga. In the latter case, literary writing also significantly represents an opportunity to promote Italian culture and rich traditional cuisine. From this point of view, a considerable part of her three novels overlaps with Peppino Leoni’s I Shall Die on the Carpet (1966) and Elena Salvoni’s Eating Famously (2012): the recipes which are interspersed in these narratives confirm their authors’ capacity to respect tradition while experimenting with innovative forms and projecting their work onto the international scene. Generally pervaded by a strong optimism—and at times even by an exotic, romantic vision of the Mediterranean—Italian British literary works recount their authors’ difficult path towards social integration, as well as their tormented lives during the Second World War. Eighteen of them refer to the persecutions of the Italians which iconically began on 10 June 1940 and recount their internment experiences on the Isle of Man or in Canada. In this sense, Peppino Leoni’s choice to begin his autobiography with a detailed account of his routine in one of the detention camps in Douglas32 should be considered symbolic of the central role that this part of contemporary history played in the creative universe of this generation of Italian British writers. Interestingly, echoes of those bleak years and references to the tragedy of the Arandora Star can also be found in The Italian Quarter and Sweet Pizza, which show de Rosa’s and Gemin’s desire to add realistic inserts to what they wanted to shape as fictional and successful stories. This overview has thus briefly showed the level of homogeneity of this textual corpus: its numerous writings are clearly characterised from a historical, geographical and even formal-thematic point of view. As has been said, the aim of Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain is to bring to light these non-professional writers and the cultural wealth that they have created, while emphasising the important contribution made by those who have always gained scholarly recognition. Playwrights like Marcella Evaristi and Ann Marie Di Mambro, for example, are long-­ established figures in contemporary Scottish drama: plays like Commedia (1983) and Tally’s Blood (1992) will be considered especially as icons of the complex—often painful—sense of Italianness in Britain as a “contact zone.”33  Peppino Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet (London: Leslie Frewin, 1966), 13–31.  Here we refer to Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel and Transculturation (London: Routledge 1992), 6. 32 33

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1.2   From Theory to Content Organisation: The Structure of This Volume Made up of light and shade, this polyphonic path will thus recount stories of poverty and humiliation, as well as of courage and success: the aim of Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain is not only to approach them from a textual and interdisciplinary perspective, but also to present and closely analyse them as significant components of Italian migration writing in English.34 The first chapter after this introduction, “History and Histories: Transnational Lives Through Time,” will centre on the immigrant community, but its evolutionary phases will be seen through the eyes of the authors who are included in this corpus. The reader will see how they lived in late modern and contemporary times, also how the major historical events influenced the construction of their core identities. In this sense, strong emphasis will be given to the horrors of the Second World War, especially to their internment experiences and the tragic sinking of the Arandora Star: the loss of 446 members of the Italian community contributed to its unity, thus reinforcing the sense of belonging of its members. It was significantly after 1945 that the protagonists of these narratives finally achieved success and enjoyed the fruits of their long and difficult process of integration. Giving shape to a translocal, and yet markedly literary geography, the chapter entitled “Pictures from Rural Italy and Urban Britain: Departures and Settlements” focuses on the areas from where Italian British authors originally came, also on the cities where they settled after they crossed the English Channel. Their descriptions highlight the stunning beauties of central and northern Italy, and provide interesting insights into the suburbs of the main cities in England, Wales and Scotland. Closely related to their past memories and their visits to Italy, the first part in particular will show the stark contrast between the agricultural world which their families belonged to and the largest industrial areas where they sought a better life. Taking readers to a lost world which went through profound administrative changes during Fascism, also this chapter will dedicate a specific section to the most iconic places of the Second World War, particularly to the camps where a large part of Italian British writers and  Callisto Cavalli’s Memorie di un emigrato (1970), which is remembered as an important testimony to the condition of Italian immigrants in the inter-war years, is in Italian and will not be included in this textual corpus. On its main features see Bernabei, Esuli ed emigrati italiani nel Regno Unito, 1920–1940, 507–508. 34

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their characters were interned. In this sense, the concluding section will finally focus on the reconstruction period, thus on the areas in the three British countries where, after 1945, the economic boom was more clearly felt. After providing a clear literary picture of the historical and geographical features of Italian migration to Britain, the following chapter, “From Street Musicians to Educators and Actors: The Long Road to Social Integration” will recount stories of the invisible men and women who depended completely on their padroni, and were exploited by them. Marked by pain and disillusionment, but also by solidarity and resilience, these stories show that in the interwar years the majority of these young lavoranti became experienced confectioners or fish fryers who ran their own shops and lived a decent life with their families. Interestingly, the turning point in this long path towards social recognition and integration, was represented by their final acquisition of a higher level of education. After the Second World War the Italians, especially the younger generations, diversified their activities, thus contributing to the cultural growth of Britain. Artistic talents like Richard Demarco (1930–), as well as the popular painters and musicians Andrew Vicari (1932–2016), Roger Granelli (1950–) and Pino Palladino (1957–), are mentioned by Joe Pieri in The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant (2005)35 and are treasured by a wide public even today. Closely related to the first chapters, but also to the important role that the Italians have always played in the British food industry, “Cultures, Traditions and Foods in Transition” will focus on the significance of cultural transfer in migrant contexts, thus on the hybrid products of the contact between Italian and British traditions. Once again, the iconic objects of Italian rural civilisation will represent the starting point of this new intertextual path: the reader will find interesting elements of material culture particularly of the extreme south in Lazio and of northern Tuscany. This chapter, however, will also show that once the protagonists of these narratives settled in urban Britain, they adapted to a new style and even became attracted to the latest fashion trends. From that moment on, they also gradually changed their beliefs, transitioning from Catholic orthodoxy as a sign of their cultural identity to overt criticism and even Buddhism. Close references will thus be made 35  Joe Pieri, The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2005), 141.

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to the most popular religious processions which were held at the small villages from where they originally came, also to the religious practices that the Italian community continued to respect. Interestingly, from the late modern period to today this part too has become the object of a strong hybridisation process, which stems from the migration experience. The concluding paragraph of this chapter will be rooted in the numerous narratives which go beyond the solid foundations of Italian heritage. They indeed testify to their protagonists’ contribution to the British national cuisine—thus to the long-established tradition of fish and chips— also more importantly to their willingness to “Britishise” their own regional dishes. Devoting her entire life to the catering industry in London, legendary maître d’ Elena Salvoni in Elena. A Life in Soho (1990) and Eating Famously (2012) has shown how she blended different culinary practices to appeal to a wider and more international clientele. The concept of hybridity, which is included in the subtitle of this volume, is also at the heart of the final chapter. Entitled “Languages in Contact: Italian, English French and German,” it focuses on the numerous linguistic forms which are embedded in these migrant literary narratives and on the “process of becoming”36 of its authors. Italian Scot Pieri first wrote about his “chameleon-like personality”37 and his strong communicative skills in Isle of the Displaced in 1997; after him, Pia—who can still speak the dialect of Viticuso in southern Lazio, and who has shared her thoughts about the plurilingual environment in which she grew up— has recently published The Sweetness of Demons (2021), her creative response to Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal. Divided into three main paragraphs, this final chapter will start from a brief overview of the linguistic dynamics that Italian immigrants created in English-speaking countries. The first paragraph will focus on the use of Italian, as well as on popular dialects like Tuscan, Laziale and Neapolitan; the second one will analyse the non-standard forms of English which are embedded in these literary narratives. Living in urban areas, which are depicted as linguistic melting pots, their protagonists initially suffered

36  See Fernando Kuhn, “Cartographies of Transculturality: Region as a Dialogue Zone,” in Identity, Cultures, Spaces: Dialogue and Change, ed. Fernando Kuhn (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 18. 37  Joe Pieri, Isle of the Displaced. An Italian Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War (Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2014), Ch. 23, “Endings,” par. 13.

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from a strong sense of estrangement. It was when they adapted to their new life that they experimented with linguistic hybridity and also encountered new languages. Important components of Pieri’s debut memoir and of Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart (2019), French and German words and phrases express the level of tension and violence of the Second World War. This chapter will show the close relationship between plurilingualism and the construction of multi-layered identities. After focusing, however, on how the twenty-one authors in this corpus have represented the history, the geographical spaces, the cultural traditions and even the languages of the Italian community in Britain, we will draw our conclusions, showing in particular the future perspectives of this emerging field of study. Indeed, there is not only a great interest “in all things Italian” in Britain today, but also an increasing number of educational projects which aim to associate the social growth of the Italians in Britain to important civil values particularly for the younger generations. Sharing these same values—and showing how its authors represent them—Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain will also serve as a basis for future scholarly research. In order to provide clear and precise information about each of them, a sample of their writings will finally be included in the Appendix. Entitled “Authors, Texts and Contexts,” this latter will take the shape of a text-critical catalogue which will be divided into three parts: “England,” “Wales” and “Scotland.” A brief introduction will describe the literary terrain that Italian British authors have created in each country, but more importantly, it will try to show their interconnections. As we will see, their narratives are replete with references to the members of their communities, yet it is undeniable that—apart from the special case of Scotland—there is little or no trace of their cultural exchanges or of a common literary project. In this sense, the reader may have the idea that this side of the Italian diaspora in Britain lacks a truly choral form of expression. However, also the different parts in this catalogue confirm that these authors share the same past and that they utilised writing to leave a lasting mark on British multicultural society. Their most significant works give voice to their desire to highlight their family’s dignity, while creating a solid transnational bridge between Britain and Italy. For this reason, special emphasis will be given to their creativity—particularly to their capacity to produce different textual forms or to write for the media—as well as to their social projects. They were—and continue to

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be—committed to the immigrant community and to the promotion of its rich heritage. At a time when the majority of Italian British authors seem to be doomed to invisibility and marginality, this text-critical catalogue will show how this “literature in the making” has developed since the late 1930s. The information, as well as the elements of critical analysis in each part, is the result of an in-depth research activity on different types of materials: academic contributions, audio-video materials, newspaper articles and interviews. In general, they  can be found on line, but in some cases they were given during virtual meetings, or are contained in private email exchanges with some of the authors. Yet, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain is not only aimed at shedding light on a significant number of unknown or under-researched authors. Its theoretical principles, particularly the deliberate choice to show that their writings can supplement the research which has been carried out until today, ideally represent an appeal to the academia to appreciate their beauty together with their documentary and social significance. In a period of divisions and distances, they speak powerful messages of tolerance and social inclusion, while showing that British Italian relations are culturally solid even today.

Bibliography Primary Sources de Rosa, Domenica. The Italian Quarter. London: Quercus, 2013. Kindle. Gemin, Giancarlo. “The Valleys of Venice: Memories of an Italian Immigrant in Wales.” In An Open Door. New Travel Writing in a Precarious Century, edited by Steven Lovatt, 64–73. Cardigan: Parthian, 2022. Kindle. Ghiringhelli, Peter. A British Boy in Fascist Italy. Stroud: The History Press, 2010. Leoni, Peppino. I Shall Die on the Carpet. London: Leslie Frewin, 1966. Pia, Anne. Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot. Edinburgh: Luath, 2017. Pieri, Joe. The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2005. Pieri, Joe. Isle of the Displaced. An Italian Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2014. Kindle.

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Secondary Sources Albertazzi, Silvia. “‘We’ve Done Our Bit, Too!’ Crossover Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Reception of Postcolonial Writing in Italy.” In The Future of Postcolonial Studies, edited by Chantal Zabus, 31–47. New  York: Routledge, 2015. Andreoni, Giovanni. “Italo-Australians. Notes on Language and Literature.” In Social Pluralism and Literary History. The Literature of the Italian Emigration, edited by Francesco Loriggio, 290–304. Toronto, New  York, Lancaster: Guernica, 1996. Angeletti, Gioia. “Performing Cross-Cultural Relations, Identity and Conflict in Contemporary Scottish Theatre: Expatriate Italian Communities in Marcella Evaristi’s Commedia and Ann Marie Di Mambro’s Tally’s Blood.” International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen 2 (2015): 26–47. Baena, Rosalia. Transculturing Auto/Biography. Forms of Life Writing. Milton Park: Taylor and Francis, 2013. Balestracci, Maria Serena. Arandora Star. Dall’oblio alla memoria—From Oblivion to Memory. Parma: Monte Università Parma, 2008. Bernabei, Alfio. Esuli ed emigrati italiani nel Regno Unito 1920–1940. Milano: Mursia, 1997. Besagni, Olive. A Better Life. A History of London’s Italian Immigrant Families in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the 19th & 20th Centuries. London: Camden History Society, 2011. Chezzi, Bruna. Italians in Wales and Its Cultural Representations, 1920s–2010s. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. Colpi, Terri. Italians Forward. A Visual History of the Italian Community in Great Britain. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream, 1991a. Colpi, Terri. The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream, 1991b. Colpi, Terri. Italians’ Count in Scotland. The 1933 Census. Recording History. London: The Saint James Press, 2015. Colpi, Terri. “Chaff in the Winds of War? The Arandora Star, Not Forgetting and Commemoration at the 80th Anniversary.” Italian Studies 4 (2020): 389–410. Crangle, Jack. Migrants, Immigration and Diversity in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland. British, Irish or “Other”? Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. D’Amore, Manuela. “Identità, straniamento e resilienza in Joe Pieri, Isle of the Displaced: An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War (1997).” In Testo e Metodo, elaborazione elettronica. Isolitudine, confine, identità, edited by Sabrina Costanzo, Domenico Cusato and Gemma Persico, 83–98. Messina: Lippolis, 2019.

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D’Amore, Manuela. “Neutralising ‘Difference by Silence,’ ‘Choosing to Remain Peripheral’: Xenophobia, Marginalisation and Death in Italian Scottish Migrant Writings of World War Two.” In The Migration Conference 2020 Proceedings: Migration and Integration, edited by Ibrahim Sirkeci and Merita Zulfiu Alii, 131–134. London: Transnational Press, 2020. De Blasio, Nicola. “Italian Immigration to Britain: An Ignored Discussion.” European Demographic Information Bulletin 10 (1979): 151–158. Dente, Carla. “Personal Memory / Cultural Memory: Identity and Difference in Scottish-Italian Migrant Theatre.” In Performing National Identity: Anglo-­ Italian Cultural Transactions, edited by Manfred Pfister and Ralf Hertel, 197–212. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2008. Farrell, Joseph. “Tallies and Italians. The Italian Impact on Scottish Drama.” In A Theatre That Matters: Twentieth-Century Scottish Drama and Theatre. A Collection of Critical Essays and Interviews, edited by Valentina Poggi and Margaret Rose, 121–134. Milano: Unicopli, 2000. Fortier, Anne-Marie. Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Gardaphé, Fred. Dagoes Read. Tradition and the Italian/American Writer. Toronto: New York, Lancaster: Guernica, 1996. Gardaphé, Fred L. “Italian American Literature and Culture.” In A Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture, edited by Josephine Hendin, 299–322. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Giuliani, Chiara. Home, Memory and Belonging in Italian Postcolonial Literature. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Giunta, Edvige and Joseph Sciorra, eds. Embroidered Stories. Interpreting Women’s Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2014. Hughes, Colin. Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. The Italian Community in South Wales 1881–1945. Bridgend: Seren, 1991. King, Russell. “Italian Migration to Great Britain.” Geography 62 (1977): 176–186. Kuhn, Fernando. “Cartographies of Transculturality: Region as a Dialogue Zone.” In Identity, Cultures, Spaces: Dialogue and Change, edited by Fernando Kuhn, 11–40. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Maini, Irma and Mary Jo Bona. Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012. Marini, Umberto. Italiani in Gran Bretagna. Roma: CESR, 1975. Masson, Souhir Zekri. “Real Men Mark their Territory!” Spatial Constructions of Masculinity in Joe Pieri’s Autobiographical Narratives.” European Journal of Life Writing 8 (2019): 47–68. Masson, Souhir Zekri. “Autobiography through Anecdotes in Joe Pieri’s Isle of the Displaced.” European Journal of Life Writing 11 (2022): 1–11.

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Pivato, Joseph, ed. Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing. Montréal: Guernica, 1991a. Pivato, Joseph. “Introduction: Why Comparative Essays?” In Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing, edited by Joseph Pivato, 9–14. Montréal: Guernica, 1991b. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Rea, Anthony. Manchester’s Little Italy: Memories of the Italian Colony of Ancoats. Manchester: Neil Richardson, 1988. Rinaldi, Giancarlo. From the Serchio to the Solway. Dumphries: Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information & Archives, 1998. Sponza, Lucio. Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Realities and Images. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988. Sponza, Lucio and Arturo Tosi. A Century of Italian Immigration to Britain. Five Essays. Reading: Reading University Press, 1991. Sprio, Margherita. Migrant Memories: Cultural History Cinema and the Italian Post-War Diaspora in Britain. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013. Tamburri, Anthony Julian. To Hyphenate or Not To Hyphenate. The Italian/ American Writer: An Other American. Montréal: Guernica, 1991. Tosi, Arturo. Immigration and Bilingual Education. Oxford: Pergamon Institute of English, 1984. Turcotte, Gerry and Gaetano Rando. “Introduction. Italian Australian Studies: A (Post)Colonial Perspective.” In Literary and Social Diasporas. An Italian Australian Perspective, edited by Gaetano Rando and Gerry Turcotte, 9–20. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2007. Wren-Owens, Elizabeth. “The Delayed Emergence of Italian Welsh Narratives, or Class and the Commodification of Ethnicity?” Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture 11 (2012): 119–134. Wren-Owens, Elizabeth. “Remembering Fascism: Polyphony and Its Absence in Contemporary Italian Scottish and Italian Welsh Narrative.” Journal of Romance Studies 1 (2015): 73–90.

Web Resources Pivato, Joseph. “Italian Canadian Writing.” In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Last modified 16b December 2013. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/ article/italian-­canadian-­writing. Rando, Gaetano. “Recent Italian-Australian Narrative Fiction by First Generation Writers.” Kunapipi 31 (2009): 100–115. https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/ vol31/iss1/9

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Addendum This chart provides preliminary information about the Italian British writers who will be presented in this volume, as well as the titles and genres of their literary works. As this is an under-researched area of study, we will only refer to their autobiographies and interviews. Further details and elements of critical analysis will be given in the next five chapters and in the Appendix. Name

Place/s of origin Hometown/s in Works in Italy the UK

Literary genres

Arcari, Anita

Picinisco (Frosinone)

Cagliardo Coraggioso (Eugenio D’Agostino) Contini, Mary

Collemorelle (Frosinone)

Morriston (Swansea) (Wales) Edinburgh

The Hokey Pokey Man (2010)

Novel

Wandering Minstrel (1938)

Memoir

Fontitune Picinisco (Frosinone)

Edinburgh

Cruciani, Rafaella

Atina Villa Latina (Frosinone)

Bournemouth (England) Edinburgh

Di Mambro, Ann-Marie

Portella (Frosinone)

Hamilton (Scotland)

Dear Francesca. Family saga An Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love (2002) Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage (2006) Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter (2017) An Owl in the Memoir Kitchen. The Discovery of My Italian Heritage (2016) Tally’s Blood Play (1992) (continued)

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(continued) Name

Place/s of origin Hometown/s in Works in Italy the UK

Literary genres

Emanuelli, Hector

Bardi (Parma)

Treorchy (Wales) Stoke-on-­ Trent (England)

Memoir

Evaristi, Marcella

Stadomelli – Rocchetta di Vara (La Spezia) Borgo Val di Taro (Parma)

Glasgow (Scotland)

A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries:  Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman (2005) Commedia (1982)

Novel

Forte, Charles

Monforte Casalattico (Frosinone)

Alloa (Scotland) London

Ghiringhelli, Peter

Musadino (Varese) Pianlavagnolo Santa Maria del Taro (Parma) Genoa

Leeds Lincoln (England)

Fortunata (1992) Angelface (1995) Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte (1986) A British Boy in Fascist Italy (2010)

Novel

Leoni, Peppino

Cannero (Pavia)

London

Moscardini, Bernard

Sommocolonia (Lucca)

Pelosi, Paulette

Picinisco (Frosinone)

Bedlington Taunton (England) Killay (Swansea) (Wales)

War Changes Everything (2017) I Shall Die on the Carpet (1966) La Vacanza (2009) Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper (2005)

Autobiography

Ferrari, Lilie

Hughes, Melanie

Norfolk (England)

Harrow (England)

Play

Novel

Autobiography

War memoir

Memoir

War memoir

(continued)

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(continued) Name

Place/s of origin Hometown/s in Works in Italy the UK

Literary genres

Pia, Anne

Viticuso (Frosinone)

Memoir

Pieri, Joe

Rossi, Robert

Bacchionero-­ Barga (Lucca)

Barga (Lucca)

Edinburgh

Glasgow (Scotland)

Glasgow (Scotland) Newcastle upon Tyne (England)

Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot (2017) Keeping Away the Spiders. Essays on Breaching Barriers (2019) Dragons Wear Lipstick (2022) Isle of the Displaced. An Italian Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in World War Two (1997) The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant (2005) The River of Memory Memoirs of a Scots-­Italian (2006) The Bigmen. Personal Memories of Glasgow’s Police (2011) Tales of the Savoy. Stories of a Glasgow Café (2012) Italian Blood British Heart (2019) Jewish Blood Italian Heart (2020)

Non Fiction

Poetry War Memoir

Non-­Fiction

Memoir

Memoir

Memoir

Historical Novel Historical Novel (continued)

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(continued) Name

Place/s of origin Hometown/s in Works in Italy the UK

Literary genres

Salvoni, Elena

Northern Italy

Autobiography

London

Servini, Les

Bardi (Parma)

Port Talbot (Wales)

Spinetti, Victor

Bardi (Parma)

Cwm (Wales)

Tognini, Piero

Palleroso (Lucca)

Ayr Kirmarnock (Scotland)

Elena, A Life in Soho (1990) Eating Famously (2007) A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times (1994) Victor Spinetti Up Front… His Strictly Confidential Autobiography (2006) A Mind at War. An Autobiography (1990)

Cookbook Memoir

Autobiography

Autobiography

CHAPTER 2

History and Histories: Transnational Lives Through Time

Ideally rooted in the concept that “the narrative structure of the past, present, and future helps human beings make sense of themselves and their world,”1 Italian British literary writings are replete with references to late modern and contemporary times. They express their authors’ desire to write about their origins and their path towards integration: this chapter will show how they balanced personal or family memories and true historical facts. We will begin from their sources. Some of them consulted official documents both in Britain and in Italy to reconstruct their forebears’ migrant itineraries; more generally, they referred to specialised volumes and took inspiration from authentic materials such as letters, diaries and photo albums. This was their unique way of reinforcing the historical background of their family stories at a time when they wanted to share them with their readers and make them visible. Indeed, before they began to dedicate themselves to writing, the members of the Italian community were on the margins of the British society and their contribution was not even considered valuable. It was in the closing decades of the twentieth century—once they enjoyed the fruits of their hard work—that they decided to write about themselves and their 1  Cecilie Fagerlid and Michelle A. Tisdel, “Introduction: Literary Anthropology, Migration, and Belonging,” in A Literary Anthropology of Migration and Belonging. Roots, Routes and Rhizomes, ed. Cecilie Fagerlid and Michelle A. Tisdel (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 10.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. D’Amore, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0_2

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families. The prefaces to their narratives are clear on the fact that they were not only encouraged, but also practically helped to reconstruct the salient and more painful phases of their lives. This was particularly true when they described the horrors of the Second World War, and also when they reported their tragic experiences as “enemy aliens”: the war memoirs which are included in this corpus are rich in historical details and provide a clear picture of Britain and Italy in those tragic years. Their focus was thus generally on contemporary times, even though most their stories began in the late nineteenth century. Referring to works such as Mary Contini’s Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage, Anita Arcari’s The Hokey Pokey Man and Joe Pieri’s The Scots-­ Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant, the opening section in this chapter will closely refer to the post-unification period in Italy and their protagonists’ gradual transition to a new world. They left their homeland to escape from poverty, but continued to suffer terrible hardships even once they arrived in Britain. They could only enjoy a stronger financial stability and feel an integral part of the society in the following decades, particularly in the 1920s–1930s. The latest research confirms that the Second World War greatly hindered their integration: their literary works show that they were not only marginalised, but also persecuted. After discussing how their protagonists lived in those tragic years, this chapter will show that they could only feel socially accepted after 1945, after hostilities ended. Although Marcella Evaristi’s Commedia and Lilie Ferrari’s Fortunata also refer to Italy in 1980 and 1990, it is a fact that the majority of the Italian British literary works in this corpus are set between 1880 and the post-war period, and that the first half of the twentieth century was decisive for the development of the immigrant community. Giving shape to a challenging intertextual path and referring to a variety of scholarly studies, this chapter will retrace the salient phases of its members’ history, thus showing how the main events of late modern and contemporary times affected both Britain and Italy. It was with great courage that those invisible men and women resisted against all forms of discrimination and persecution. In a period when “universal concerns about immigration and the movement of people dominate world politics,”2 their stories invite a re-discussion of their human and socio-economic implications. 2

 Pia, Language of My Choosing, 11.

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2.1   Beginnings: From the Late 1800s to the First World War There had been widespread unrest since Garibaldi and the unification of Italy some years before. More recently, news had reached even these remote parts of the shocking collapse of the big banks and of course, the huge scandal with the Banca Romana, which had printed enormous sums of money illegally, and arranged dubious “loans” for many high-profile politicians. Italy was in financial crisis with widespread political unrest; there had been revolts and riots in Sicily. Francesco Crispi, the Prime Minister, had recently sent Italian troops to a place called Ethiopia, but they suffered many setbacks. The country was in a fragile and volatile state.3

Taken from Anita Arcari’s The Hokey Pokey Man, this passage briefly explains why the protagonist Tino D’Abruzzo decided to leave Picinisco,4 his hometown in southern Lazio, and cross the English Channel. He was fully integrated into his community and deeply attached to the rural world he came from, but he knew well that there was no future for his generation. It was 1895 and he was determined to follow in his brother’s footsteps: hopefully, on his return, he would marry his beloved fiancée, Maria, and have his own family. Tino D’Abruzzo’s story was typical of the 14 million people who between 1876 and 1915 left their homes to seek new opportunities.5 At that time Italy was one of the most backward and impoverished countries on the Continent: apart from the meagre harvests and the long and damaging tariff war with France in the 1880s and 1890s,6 most of its regions were struggling to adapt to the new national economic policies7: the  Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man (Aberystwyth: Y Lolfa, 2010), 55.  Picinisco is a small village in the province of Frosinone in Lazio. It is about 88 miles from Rome. More details about its rich surrounding area will be given in chapter 2. 5  See Hugh Shankland, Out of Italy: The Story of Italians in North East England (Leicester: Troubador Publishing Limited, 2014), 72. 6  Ibid. Shankland contends that “[a]t its peak, in the decade before the First World War, as many as 800,000 a year were leaving, or one in forty of the entire population.” 7  As Rafaella Cruciani explains in An Owl in the Kitchen: The Discovery of My Italian Heritage (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2016), 27: “Prior to the unification, Italy’s southern farmers were much more affluent than the inhabitants of the north, as they could make a good living from the land—their share of the produce or the profit accrued was fair. After unification, the lands were divided up between new profit-seeking owners and the farmers’ share dwindled to the point where they were no longer able sustain themselves and their families nor make any profit from their labours.” 3 4

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imperial plans of the Prime Minister Francesco Crispi, who served two terms as Italian Prime Minister between 1887 and 1896,8 could not represent the only solution. It is not possible to find any further historical references to the difficult condition of late nineteenth-century Italy in Italian British migrant narratives. Joe Pieri in The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant only refers to 1876 as “the first year in which records were started in order to catalogue the flow of immigration into the UK”9—which is not historically accurate10—but proves that also for him the beginning of “the so-­ called chain migration phenomenon”11 and the foundation of the first communities in England, Scotland and Wales are closely related to the Italian post-unification period. The impact that the Italian diaspora had on the Americas was definitely stronger,12 but Britain was another key destination for those men and women who were “in desperate search of a fresh life in unknown lands.”13 This was true also for Les Servini’s parents. The agricultural crisis in the Parma area had caused the emigration of over two thirds of the local population: even though the majority of immigrants left for France and settled in Paris,14 in 1894 both his father and his mother moved from the small 8  See Giuseppe Finaldi, A History of Italian Colonialism, 1860–1907: Europe’s Last Empire (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 65–90. 9  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 35. He may have referred to E.G.  Ravenstein, Census of the British Isles, 1871. The Birthplaces of the People and the Laws of Migration (London: Trübner & co., 1876), as well as to the scholarly research which has been carried in Italy, and is based on the 1876–1976 period. See among others Sandro Rinauro, “Le statistiche ufficiali dell’emigrazione italiana tra propaganda politica e inafferrabilità dei flussi,” Quaderni storici 2 (2010): 393–417. Close references to the 1876–1976 period can be found on pages 394–395. 10  Referring to the Victorian journalist Henry Mayhew (1812–1877) and his reports, Lucio Sponza contends that the first available data—1604 and 4608—is, respectively, contained in the British 1851 and 1861 censuses. See Lucio Sponza, “Gli italiani in Gran Bretagna: profilo storico,” Altreitalie 30 (2005): 7–8; also Colpi, The Italian Factor, 47–48. According to this latter contribution—which includes the statistics of the British 1871 census—the total number of Italian born residents in England, Wales and Scotland reached a total of 5331. 11  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 35. 12  See Donna R.  Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London and New  York: Routledge, 2003), 59–60, 81–82. 13  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 37. 14  Corrado Truffelli, “L’emigrazione dall’Emilia Romagna: cenni storici,” in Rapporto Italiani nel Mondo, ed. Delfina Licata (Todi: Tau, 2013), 308.

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village of Grezzo near Bardi and, respectively, settled in Llanelli in Wales and Morecambe Bay in north-west England.15 They were only fourteen and remained there for five years. A brief but clear account of their hard life can be found in the opening chapter of A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times: They worked for a pittance for two Italian families. She cleaned, washed and cooked for the men employed, he sold ice-cream in the summer and chips in the winter from the same cart. After 5 years they returned home to Grezzo. He did his National Service and on his return they got married. He went off to Aberavon to prepare a home, I was born in December 1913. In 1915 Italy entered World War I, my dad was recalled to the Alpini. In December 1917 he was killed in action. He was only 26.16

Focusing on painful family memories and on his life as an Italian Welshman, Servini never considered the demographic and economic impact of migration on the province of Parma17 and preferred to shed light on the heroic figure of Giacomo Bracchi. He “had made a little money in America”18 and had travelled to Wales in 1881. The owner of the first Italian café in the region, he demonstrated that it was possible to start as a miner and finally become an icon of Italian success abroad.19 It was for this reason that he not only played a key role in the “exodus from Bardi to Wales,”20 but also greatly helped Servini’s mother when she became a young widow at the end of the First World War. Olive Besagni’s A Better Life is rich in stories of Italian migrants who made their fortunes in Britain,21 yet literary evidence that those early years were extremely difficult can be found, once again, in Arcari’s family saga. After a long and exhausting journey, for instance, Tino D’Abruzzo was

 Les Servini, A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times (Cardiff: Hazeltree, 1994), 7.  Ibid., 8. 17  In those years, most of the lands in the province of Parma were abandoned, which caused an even more dramatic crisis in the area. For a wider historical and social picture, see Truffelli, L’emigrazione dall’Emilia Romagna, 55. 18  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 8. 19  Further information on the figure of Giacomo Bracchi and the rise of temperance bars in Wales can be found in Hughes, Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla, 36–39. 20  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 8. 21  Besagni, A Better Life, 9–14. A short overview of the early history of the Italian community in London is included in the introductory section. 15 16

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horrified by the filth and ugliness of “Little Italy” in north-west London22: its streets were far from “being paved with gold”23 and “everywhere he turned were the unmistakable signs of deprivation and poverty.”24 Although he could not see why he had left his loved ones, the “ominous changes in Italy”25 soon convinced him that he had made the right choice. There was indeed news about Francesco Crispi’s plan to colonise Ethiopia and about the level of corruption in the national Parliament.26 The exchanges between Raffaele D’Abruzzo and his friend Grillo express all the sense of disappointment—and the clear anti-monarchical sentiments—of the Italian community in London,27 yet, Tino’s first experiences were crucial to his slow but continuous process of integration. Aside from the level of poverty that he could see around him,28 he was reassured by the dignity, religious faith and strong social commitment of his fellow countrymen: the Italian church in Clerkenwell Road, St. Peter’s school in Backhill and the Italian hospital in Queen Square represented not only the main foci in their lives, but also clear signs of their desire to continue to follow their past traditions.29 The narrator’s voice confirms that after three months “Tino was actually beginning to enjoy the experience.”30 This may be related to his adaptability skills, but also to the incredible sights in the city—“the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge, even the docks area”31—which he perceived as 22  See Alessandro Forte, La Londra degli italiani: dai penny ice alla City: due secoli di emigrazione. Prefazione di Marco Cattini (Roma: Aliberti, 2012), Ch. 1, “Little Italy e la nascita della comunità italiana,” par. 3–8. 23  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 27. 24  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 73. Interestingly, Fredo, the Tuscan protagonist of Robert Rossi’s Italian Heart, British Blood, had the same experience. In 1899 he was travelling to Glasgow by train when he “saw the industrial landscape of chimneys and long rows of houses” in Birmingham and Manchester: “there was little colour, just black and grey,” which was “in huge contrast to the empty green fields and colourful landscapes” that he had left. See Robert Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart (Independently Published, 2019), 44. 25  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 95. 26  On the level of corruption of the Italian Parliament and the “cowardice” of its members, see Filippo Turati, “La ‘viltà dei deputati’. Un possibile programma della democrazia,” Critica sociale 14 (1892): 209–211. 27  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 95–96. 28  See Forte, La Londra degli italiani, Ch. 1, “Little Italy e la nascita della comunità italiana,” par. 17. 29  See Besagni, A Better Life, 11–14. 30  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 103. 31  Ibid., 104.

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symbols of wealth and international prestige. On 20 June 1897 he was stunned by the sounds and colours of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and could finally understand why he had left the natural beauties of Picinisco: [F]irst, soldiers from throughout the British Empire paraded in full dress uniform, some on foot, others on horseback. It was marvellous to watch how the straight rows deviated neither left or right, while somehow they still managed to keep in perfect step with each other. Then came the landau that carried the Queen herself, ornate and ostentatious, pulled by six perfect-­ groomed horses, themselves a pale creamy-white colour. All around, members of the cavalry, splendid in immaculate tunics of blue, grey, buff and bright scarlet, flanked their monarchy. They reminded Tino a little of the Bersaglieri, with their colourful uniforms and plumes decorating their helmets, though these feathers were quite different from the cockerel feathers of Italy’s elite corps.32

This was a historic day not only for British people “at the height of the Victorian era,”33 but also for the D’Abruzzos, who had a great success with their “lovely bright” cart34 and home-made ice-cream. Although he had entered a more positive phase, on the eve of the new century the number of Italian immigrants doubled,35 which explains why he and his wife Serafina soon moved to Wales and settled in Swansea. In point of fact, despite the pressure of the Italian government36 and The Alien Immigration Act—which the British Parliament passed in 190537—it seemed almost impossible to stop those men and women who were determined to cross the Alps and the Channel to begin a new life. “Their distribution throughout the country followed no set pattern”38: although London still represented an irresistible pole of attraction, after

 Ibid., 168–169.  Greg King, Twilight of Splendor: The Court of Queen Victoria During Her Diamond Jubilee Year (Hoboken: Wiley, 2007), 17. 34  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 89. 35  See Colpi, The Italian Factor, 48. The statistics of the British censuses of 1891 and 1901 are, respectively, 10,934 and 24,383. 36  See Shankland, Out of Italy, 76. 37  See Forte, La Londra degli italiani, Ch. 1, “Little Italy e la nascita della comunità italiana,” par. 28–31. 38  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 36. 32 33

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some time many of them made their way to the north of England, Wales and Scotland. Interestingly, Italian British literary writings show that most of those men’s and women’s stories started between 1910 and 1913. Pieri suggests that this was due to “the rapid growth of an international transport system by land and by sea,”39 yet there is also clear documentary evidence that the level of poverty in Italy increased dramatically just before the outbreak of the First World War.40 At that time, for instance, his parents, Francesco and Maria Pieri, a young couple from the small village of Barga in northern Tuscany, had already settled in Saint Paul, Minnesota.41 Pieri does not provide much information about their migration experience on the other side of the Atlantic, but is clear on the fact that “life was good, for if a man had a strong and willing back there was plenty of well-paid work available.”42 Writing about her Italian family in London, legendary maître d’ Elena Salvoni seems proud to recall her family stories of the early 1900s: Mama and Papa were both orphans from Northern Italy and had been sent to the Italian community in Clerkenwell when quite young—which must have been a daunting adventure in retrospect. They were gladly taken into people’s homes and by the time I came along there were aunts, uncles and cousins galore. […] What our parents must have gone through! And how they worked! Papa was an asphalter working on roofs all over London and Mama ran a boarding house so the lodgers became aunts and uncles too. […] I suppose I learned to work hard from Mama’s example; there were no such things as mod cons in those days.43

Salvoni’s memoir, Elena. A Life in Soho, is rich in evidence of the hard life that the Italian migrants lived in the first half of the twentieth century. However, it is possible to find an even clearer picture of the years 1913–1918  in Mary Contini’s Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage. The second volume of the author’s family saga,44 it begins  Ibid.  See Guido Pescosolido, Unità nazionale e sviluppo economico in Italia 1750–1913 (Roma: Edizioni La Nuova Cultura, 2014), 221–233. 41  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 5–6. 42  Ibid., Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 6. 43  Elena Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho. With Sandy Fawkes (London: Quartet,1990), 24–26. 44  The first volume was, in fact, Dear Francesca. An Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love (2002); Dear Olivia was followed by Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter in 2017. 39 40

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with the decision of the two protagonists, Alfonso and Emidio Crolla, to emigrate from the Picinisco area in southern Lazio in 1913. Very little seemed to have changed since the late 1890s45: the narrative voice briefly refers to the Italian war against Libya, but also, most importantly, to “Tadon Michele” and many of the older men who had already left “to look for work away from the mountains.”46 Their tales of the cities where they now lived and the wonderful opportunities that they offered had struck young Alfonso and Emidio, who hoped for a better future. Combining historical facts, family memories and fiction, Dear Olivia shows that the inhabitants of Picinisco knew that London could not represent a solution. The author’s grandmother, Marietta, who had been born in Clerkenwell, always talked about the “dreadful overcrowding” of Little Italy, and also about its “diseases” and “infections.”47 Life was “too difficult” there, which explains why her husband, Alfonso Crolla, chose an even further destination: “Scotland sound[ed] like a nicer place than London, a nicer country”48; moreover, “Zio Benedetto Crolla” lived in Edinburgh and had “his own shop.”49 Apart from the “news from abroad, all’estero,” which “was keenly devoured” in the small village,50 Uncle Benedetto actually represented a reference point: in May 1913, after a four-day journey, Alfonso and Emidio reached Calais and after meeting all the requirements of the British immigration laws embarked on the ship to Dover. Chetail clearly explains that this was a new system, which had been primarily introduced for racial and economic reasons,51 yet the two brothers demonstrated that they could easily pass what the officers called the “£5 test” and that they would both work with their brother Giovanni in Edinburgh.52 Once they arrived in Dover, the immigration officer was very impressed by Alfonso’s papers: 45  Mary Contini, Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage (Edinburgh, Canongate, 2006), 13. 46  Ibid., 15–16. 47  Ibid., 36. 48  Ibid., 37. 49  Ibid., 41 50  Ibid., 57. 51  Vincent Chetail, International Migration Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 48. For an account of the vicissitudes of the five-pound test, see Jill Pellew, “The Home Office and the Aliens Act, 1905,” The Historical Journal, 2 (1989): 369–385; and David Glover, Literature, Immigration, and Diaspora in Fin-de-Siècle England: A Cultural History of the 1905 Aliens Act (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 152–189. 52  Contini, Dear Olivia, 70–71.

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Not only was [he] coming to work in his well-established eponymous business, he had the means to support his brother as well. These were the kind of immigrants that Britain needed. He stamped their passports and wished them “good luck, boys!” before turning with a scowl to the rabble behind. The men walked out of the customs hall, and as soon as they were round the corner out of sight they hugged each other, slapped each other on the back and laughed. They’d done it! They’d arrived in Great Britain. What a relief! That was the first hurdle out of the way.53

The following chapters are dedicated to the two brothers’ extraordinary adaptation process, but again, the narrator puts an emphasis on their strong links with Italy: “the word” was “that Austria-Hungary [was] going to war with Serbia and that Germany [would] join them.”54 At that point, “Italy could be stuck in the middle” and they could be “called up”55: luckily Scotland was a far-off region, which could hardly be involved in the future war. It was much safer for them to remain in Edinburgh. The Crollas’ short exchange, however, also includes clear historical references to the development of the Italian regions in the north, thus to the growing phenomenon of internal migration and especially to the crucial role of FIAT. The famous Turin company (est. 1899), which had already employed three thousand workers, was now producing new car models and represented a key pole of attraction for those who wanted to remain in Italy.56 However, Alfonso, Emidio and Cesidio were happy with their life in Edinburgh, so when the First World War broke out they wholeheartedly stood on Britain’s side.57 There was news that the Italian migrants joining the Armed Forces were highly praised, which gave them hope that they would soon become more socially integrated.58 Alfonso left for the front on Thursday, 3 June 1915: [Once he arrived, he] and his compatriots joined other Italian emigrants from Manchester and London, New York and San Francisco. They joined mixed battalions of men from all over Italy. Sicilians fought alongside

 Ibid., 75–76.  Ibid., 111. 55  Ibid. 56  See Tiziana Borriello, I salari dell’industria automobilistica nei primi anni del Novecento (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2002), 297–299. 57  Contini, Dear Olivia, 116. 58  Ibid., 114. 53 54

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Milanesi, Abruzzesi alongside Venetians. For the first time in Italian history they fought as one nation, one country. It was a brutal, vertical war. The few kilometres of mountain tops that became the battleground were pulled and pushed between two armies like a macabre tug-of-war. The loss of life was relentless, obscene.59

Despite its rich fictional details, Contini’s long narration of the protagonist’s experience of the war has solid historical basis. Colpi confirms that in 1915 the British Italian collaboration had been publicly supported at “Piccadilly in London, Great Ancoats Street in Manchester and at George Square in Glasgow.”60 As a result, the young Peppino Leoni joined up on 28th May and left the capital to return to Cannero, his hometown, on the Lake Maggiore.61  In Scotland 33 Italian men joined the local armed forces,  all volunteers who felt a strong sense of duty and patriotism for their adopted land. Around 8500 Italians returned to Italy to fight having been conscripted into the Italian forces, mainly the army.62 “In migratory terms, then,” as Colpi claims, “the period of the War was one of forced return to Italy,”63 so Maria Crolla and most of the Italian women in Elm Row remained at home looking after their children. At the beginning they were victims of the local population’s prejudice, but then, as time went by, they were lovingly supported.64 The narrative voice claims that despite the fact that “over 30,000 Italians [had] died in the dreadful, bloody massacre at Caporetto,”65 the British and the French finally won the war and Alfonso returned home. Decorated with the “Ordine della Corona d’Italia,” he was now a different man: “educated,” “bilingual” and with a lot of international friends.66

 Ibid., 120.  Colpi, Italians’ Count in Scotland, 88. 61  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 100–103. 62  Colpi, Italians’ Count in Scotland, 90. Interestingly, the Italians who joined the Highland Light Infantry, the Royal Scots Fusiliers and the Cameron Rifles departed from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee. 63  Ibid., 95. 64  Contini, Dear Olivia, 124–126. 65  Ibid., 138. 66  Ibid. 59 60

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2.2  Economy and Ideology: The 1920s and 1930s The post-war years were marked by great poverty and disillusionment. At a time when Europe was committed to its reconstruction, both the Italian and British governments changed their legislation to have a greater control over the movement of people. In 1920 in Edinburgh, for instance, Alfonso and Maria Crolla feared that their new official status of “aliens” could hinder their social integration67; in Swansea Tino D’Abruzzo was surrounded by “beggars, blind or mutilated, […] with a card tied around their neck, proclaiming to the world that they were veterans”68: it was clear that both the present and the future were far from bright. The British manufacturing sector, for instance, was now far less stable than in the past,69 which had a negative impact both on foreign trade and on the catering industry. Probably referring to the Società di Mutuo Soccorso [“Mutual Aid Society”] (est. 1891) and the Associazione Nazionale Combattenti (est. 1919),70 the narrator of Contini’s Dear Olivia contends that in January 1923 “a meeting of the Scoto-Italian Society” was held at the new Café Hall in Edinburgh71: its members, who had been drawn together to find practical solutions to problems, decided to invest even more in their businesses. As a result, the mid-1920s and the 1930s “were something of a golden era for the Italians in Scotland”72: on the eve of the Second World War such a positive change gave rise to a strong anti-Italian sentiment. Despite the survival strategies and the economic success of the Italian community in the extreme north, Servini in A Boy from Bardi clearly explains that in Wales the Depression years were extremely difficult for those who had always operated in the coalfield: “the unemployed”—he claims—“got less than £1 a week,” which caused a heavy “exodus from

67  On the effects of the 1920 Aliens Order, a statutory instrument which required all aliens seeking employment or residence to register with the police, see among others Susan Kingsley Kent, Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 54–55. 68  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 309. 69  See “Coal. Britain’s Crucial Industry: Background of Nationalization and Present Outlook,” Labor and Industry in Britain. A Monthly Review 1 (1947): 185–195, particularly 185–186. 70  Colpi, Italians’ Count in Scotland, 96–97. 71  Contini, Dear Olivia, 181. 72  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 69.

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the impoverished valleys.”73 His memories at this point of the narration may be considered a mixture of pain, self-sacrifice and resilience: The Bernis moved to Bridge Street, Worcester and we took over the High Street shop, a better proposition. We worked like slaves, up at five to greet the iceman, make ice-cream, by hand, until 9.30 or so, boil milk and make custard for the next day, get the carts and ponies ready, a hurried breakfast, then off around the streets or to the beach to sell until sunset. The shops opened at 7.00 and were served by the uncles and two local girls and my mother. We helped when we returned home and the shops closed at 11 pm, which meant supper and bed by midnight or so. We didn’t go selling on Sunday, we closed at 8 pm, then had the only meal we ate together. After that we listened to opera on records or I had to read to the family, a few chapters per week from a novel. They loved Hall Caine, Marie Corelli, Victor Hugo, very human touching stories.74

Published in 1994, A Boy from Bardi is one of the earliest literary representations of the Italian community in these transition years. Although Servini’s focus is always on his personal experience, he is clear on the fact that “the clouds of war were gathering,” and that as soon as “Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, Italians even […] in Wales joined the Fascist party.”75 It was 1935 and the Duce’s powerful propaganda was playing on the Italians’ nostalgia and sense of patriotism.76 Born in Leeds in 1930, Peter Ghirlinghelli explains that his father, who had been a member of the “Fascisti all’estero Association since the late 1920s,” regularly travelled by tram to take part in the “meetings which were held at the Italian Consulate office in Bradford.”77 Although these were considered as “social occasions”—“there was always an Italian buffet and a dance to Italian records”78—the members of the association also exchanged political ideas on the Italian government’s policies. In October 1935, after the League

 Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 12.  Ibid., 13. 75  Ibid., 16. 76  On Mussolini’s intent to reinforce the relationships with the migrant communities, also on the events at the numerous Case del Fascio in Britain, see R.J.B., Bosworth, Italy and the Wider World: 1860–1960 (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), particularly chapter 6, The Rise and Rise of the Empire of the Italies. Emigration 1860–1960. 77  Peter Ghiringhelli, A British Boy in Fascist Italy, 13. 78  Ibid. 73 74

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of Nations imposed the first economic sanctions on Italy,79 Mussolini called on all Italian wives to donate their wedding rings and any other gold or silver artefacts that they may have. These were Ghirlinghelli’s vivid memories of the so-called giornata della fede: The collection was also made in Britain, and for this memorable occasion the Italian Ambassador, Dino Grandi, came up from London to the consulate in Bradford to preside over the ceremony. I can remember my mother giving up her gold wedding ring there. To applause, all married women walked up to a basket before him and placed their gold wedding rings in it as a “gift” to Il Duce, and in return Grandi gave them their steel wedding rings (fede d’acciaio). My mother had absolutely no interest in politics then or subsequently […], but in this case the political stunt was sanctioned by the Church. […] [O]n 8 December 1935 [the Bishop of Civita Castellana] sent his pastoral cross to Mussolini saying “I thank the Almighty God for permitting me to see these days of epic grandeur.”80

Elena Granelli, the author’s mother, was not the only Italian in Britain who was indifferent to politics, but who had to respond to Mussolini’s call. These were indeed the years when the Italian community was feeling more socially isolated, therefore, it was not difficult for the Fascist circles to put pressure on its members and involve them in their activities. As we can read in Critica fascista, one of the party’s official journals, “La Casa Littoria” represented both an “ideal centre” and a meeting point for Fascists, who could find a solution to their everyday problems and, most importantly, establish a close link between morality and ideology.81 Yet, Italian British migration literature provides a more complex picture of the attitudes and political choices of those men and women. Eugenio D’Agostino and Peppino Leoni, for instance, respectively believed that the new regime had caused numerous positive changes in Italy82 and overtly 79  On the economic sanctions that the League of Nations imposed on Italy after Mussolini “ordered the bombing of Addis Abeba” on 3rd October, see Richard Lamb, Mussolini and the British (London: Lume Books, 2019), 185–220. 80  Ghiringhelli, A British Boy in Fascist Italy, 15. 81  See “Littoriali del Lavoro,” Critica fascista, 1 (1940): 162. 82  See Cagliardo Coraggioso (Eugenio D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel. New edition by Carlo Pirozzi (Woking: Nielsen Book Services, 2018), 166–167: “Since the Fascist regime came to power, everybody is more or less educated. Schools have sprung up in every part of the country; new roads built; old roads repaired, bridges built almost everywhere. […] “Long live Mussolini and Fascismo.”

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supported it83; sharing his experience as an internee in Canada in 1940–1943, Joe Pieri, instead, considered the Italians in Scotland “the Pakistani immigrants of our days,”84 but “had no dealings with the Casa del Fascio in Park Circus.”85 The following passage, which is taken from Isle of the Displaced, clearly shows his political stance, his vision of Britain and the painful implications of his transnational identity: I felt vague stirrings of embarrassment and dislike for the bombast and loud rhetoric of Mussolini. I could see clearly that the way of life and social structure in Britain was far superior to the class-ridden and still impoverished Italy of those days. But even in the land of my birth I was not accepted as one of themselves. In Glasgow I was “The Tally.” In Barga I was “Lo Scozzese,” the Scotsman. The lines from The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott could well have been written for the likes of me. Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!86

One of the thousands of Italians who were interned in Britain, Canada and Australia during the Second World War, Pieri finally became a reference point for the migrant community in Glasgow. He always associated Italy with poverty and firmly believed that if his parents had remained in Barga, their hometown, he and his brother would have served as “cannon fodder for Fascism.”87 However, he went back every summer and became a reference point for the Bargan Scottish community: he was even awarded the “Cristoforo d’oro” prize in 2005. Respectively living in Wales and England, Les Servini and Hector Emanuelli, on the contrary, were reluctant to take such a clear political stance. The former, for instance, clearly remembers that at a time when the Italians in Wales “joined the Fascist Party,” he “had none of it.”88 As 83  See Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 26. The famed proprietor of the Quo Vadis restaurant in London defended his political ideas even when he was taken to the Isle of Man as an “enemy alien” during the Second World War: “Was I a Fascist? “Listen!” I said. “The King is a Fascist, Mussolini is a Fascist, most of the Italian people are Fascists. I am patriotic Italian. Therefore, I am a Fascist.” 84  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 18. 85  Ibid., par. 16. 86  Ibid., par. 12–13. 87  Ibid., par. 16. 88  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 17.

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regards Emanuelli, who was born in the small mining town of Abercarn in 1920, he was “thoroughly apolitical” as a teenager, but perfectly “knew that Mussolini was a dictator.”89 As he writes in A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman, his family could be very ironic about the main Fascist slogans: Whenever my mother got too bossy, which she did from time to time, my father would shrug his shoulders, cast his eyes to the ceiling and proclaim “Carolina ha sempre ragione!” (“Carolina is always right”). This was modelled on the fascist slogan “Mussolini ha sempre ragione!”90

Despite his criticism, in 1939 he joined the Casa d’Italia in Manchester. At that time his family had moved to Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, and he, who was now eighteen, was “eager to know more of Italy’s art, history, literature and especially its language.”91 When Dino Grandi (1895–1898), “the popular Consul”92 of the Italian regime in Britain, informed him that “the government was organising a campo estivo—a summer camp—at Rome and Pescara,” he considered it a special cultural opportunity and decided to participate.93 Unfortunately, the experience at the “Campo Mussolini” at Monte Sacro in the month of August soon turned into a nightmare. The name of “Count” Dino Grandi is also mentioned in Contini’s family story Dear Olivia. The narrator defines him an “excellent” diplomat. Thanks to him and “Count” Galeazzo Ciano, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1936 to 1943,94 Italy and Britain had good bilateral relations. After an initial diffidence the Conservative Party expressed a positive judgement about Fascism95: there is historical evidence that

89  Hector Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman (Langenfeld: Six Towns Books, 2010), 59–60. 90  Ibid., 60. 91  Ibid. 92  One of the most important statesmen of the Fascist regime, Dino Grandi was actually more than a “popular consul”: he was Ambassador of Italy to Britain from 1932 to 1939 and Minister of Grace and Justice from 1939 to 1943. 93  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 60–61. 94  Contini, Dear Olivia, 254. 95  See Gianni Silei, “I conservatori britannici e il fascismo (1929–1935). La parabola discendente di una ‘storica amicizia,’” Il Politico 3 (1992): 497–499.

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Winston Churchill greatly appreciated Mussolini,96 but that the imperial campaign in Ethiopia in east Africa represented a turning point in the relations between the two countries. On the eve of the Second World War it was clear that they were on opposite sides.

2.3  The Darkest Times: 1940–1945 Mussolini declared war on Britain on 10 June 1940 and Churchill’s reaction against the Italian community was immediate. From that moment on its members were officially considered “enemy aliens,” who had to be controlled and possibly expelled from the country. In order to avoid the risk of a “Fifth Column,” the government imposed severe restrictions on their personal freedom, which served to “silence” and marginalise them.97 Writing on the contradictions of British culture with respect to its liberal and anti-alien policies, David Cesarani contends that Churchill’s infamous order “Collar the lot!” had its roots in “the popular and official responses to the influx of Jewish refugees after 1933.” They were generally considered an economic threat and were systematically discredited: in 1938 the Sunday Express declared that the new “big influx of foreign Jews into Britain” was “overrunning the country,”98 which shows that in the pre-war years the country had developed strong negative feelings not only about immigrants, but also about refugees. Although the Italians had long contributed to the economic growth of England, Wales and Scotland, they had never renounced either their cultural traditions or Catholicism, which represented a justification for the episodes of rioting and of extreme violence against them. Put on stage at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1992, and then published in 2002, Ann Marie Di Mambro’s Tally’s Blood re-enacts the horror of the night of 10 June 1940. As Pieri recalls, “that night gangs of hooligans took the streets of Scottish towns and cities to vent their rage on Italians and their property.” This play clearly shows that “[t]here was 96  See among others Geoffrey Best, Churchill and War (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 152. 97  The bibliography on this new dramatic phase of the history of the Italian community in Britain is immense. See among others Manuela D’Amore, “Neutralising ‘Difference by Silence.’ ‘Choosing to Remain Peripheral,’” 131. 98  See David Cesarani, “An Alien Concept? The Continuity of Anti-Alienism in British Society before 1940,” in The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain, ed. David Ceserani and Tony Kushner (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 42–43.

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hardly a café or fish and chip shop in the land which was not wrecked, broken into, looted and vandalised.”99 Second-generation Italian Scots who were based in Glasgow, the fictional characters Massimo and Rosinella Pedreschi were defenceless victims of one of the most dramatic events of contemporary history: Noise of brick bashing against boards: the “mob” outside, banging on the doors and windows: shouting. […] MOB: Get the bastard. Waste the place. Fascist pigs. Greasy Tallies. / MASSIMO: (Whispers) They cannie do this to me. / ROSINELLA: (Whispers) Massimo … please … don’t do anything. Please, please. Jeers continue. MOB: Come out and fight, you bastarding Tally! / ROSINELLA: Oh Sant’ Antonio. San Giuseppe. Massimo makes to go to the door. MASSIMO: I can’t just stand here and do nothing. / ROSINELLA: Massimo … no! Don’t leave us. She holds on to his arm as the mob breaks into front shop: we see their silhouettes carrying sticks and stones. We see and hear the smashing up and the jeers MOB: Tally bastards etc. / […] / MASSIMO: I need to go. I need to see what they’ve done to my shop. […] Massimo returns, looking defeated. MASSIMO: Eight years’ work gone in eight minutes.100

Hector Emanuelli explains that from that moment on, all “enemy aliens” were arrested and “detained under section 18B of the Defence  of the Realm Act.”101 Aside from Joe Pieri, who had been informed by a Scottish member of the Glasgow police that his name was on their list, and who was thus prepared to lose his freedom, all the others were surprised and shocked when they were parted from their families. In Wales, for instance, Les Servini could not believe that he had been abandoned by his “Welsh friends” and that he was being taken to “Maindy Barrack, Cardiff.”102 As regards Emanuelli—whose “stay at the summer  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 93.  Ann Marie Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood (Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2012), 67–69. 101  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 71. For further information on this special defence regulation, see Aaron L.  Goldman, “Defence regulation 18B: Emergency Internment of Aliens and Political Dissenters in Great Britain during World War II,” Journal of British Studies 2 (1973): 120–136. 102  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 21. 99

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camp at Monte Sacro in Rome had not gone unnoticed by the authorities”103—first he was taken to Hanley Police Station and the next day to Walton Prison in Liverpool. Although he was suffering from starvation and poor hygiene at the internment camps in Ascot, York and Huyton, he always considered himself lucky: the news about the death of 446 Italians after the sinking of the Arandora Star104 had dramatically struck the Italian migrant community, which convinced him that, despite all the hardships that he was facing, he was at least in a condition of safety. He did not change his mind when he embarked on the Lady of Mann, the ship which took him and his companions to Douglas, on the Isle of Man. Writing in different periods, but witnessing the passage to the twenty-­ first century, Servini, Pieri, Emanuelli and Ghiringhelli all wanted to share their internment experiences. These were crucial in their path towards maturity, but also in their cultural growth. Pieri, for instance, in the closing chapters of Isle of the Displaced, contends that “it had taken a world war and imprisonment to gain [him] access to higher education.”105 It is undeniable that Italian British literary writings represent powerful testimonies of the most tragic events of the Second World War: their continuous references to the tragedy of the Arandora Star not only contribute to their memory, but also supplement the historical research in the field. Apart from Pieri’s short list of victims in The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant,106 we can also find a fictionalised representation of the sinking of the ship in Natalie Dye’s Arandora Star. Published in 2013 as a tribute to Giovanni Tambini, the author’s grandfather-in-law, this novel confirms that the Germans did not know that the ship was overloaded with German, Austrian and Italian internees and that it was heading to Canada: “Enemy or neutral?” asked the officer. Prien peered through the periscope. “Hard to say. Too far away.” The submarine slowed, hanging suspended in

 Ibid.  At a bibliographical level, we will only consider Maria Serena Balestracci, Arandora Star; Stefano Paolini, Missing Presumed Drowned. A True Story of the Internment of Italians Resident in Britain during the Second World War (Independently Published, 2015); and Colpi, “Chaff in the Winds of War?” 105  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 15, “Recreation,” par. 21. 106  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 107–108. The complete “Missing persons list” was however compiled by Terri Colpi and first appeared in The Italian Factor, 271–278. 103 104

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the water, waiting. Prien watched the ship as she drew closer, thrilled by his good fortune. Minutes passed. The tension inside the submarine intensified. “Fully armed,” Prien said, his voice an excited whisper. “Fore and aft. Large calibre cannon on the bow.” “If only we could be sure of the torpedo, Captain.” Prien continued staring at the ship. “Travelling around 15 knots. No red cross. Zig zagging.” “To avoid our submarines,” the officer replied. “Exactly. This is more than enough evidence for me. It is an enemy ship. I shall fire the last torpedo.” […] “Herr Hitler will be most impressed.” He picked up his log book to record the kill, his first entry for 2 July 1940. The crew opened celebratory bottles of beer and passed them around, their relief amplifying their voices and their belligerence. Prien welcomed their high spirits, but continued in his duty of completing his log. Seventeen minutes later, at 7.15 a.m., he checked his periscope, noting down that the ship had stopped, and lifeboats were being lowered. At 7.40 a.m. he checked again. “Resume course,” he ordered. “Our work here is done.” The Arandora Star had disappeared.107

Stefano Paolini’s Missing Presumed Drowned is rich in testimonies of the disaster. Rando Bertoia, Uberto Limentani and Angelo Albericci were among the 264 deportees who survived,108 but Bertoia, “who was watching from a lifeboat the final moments before the Arandora Star sank,” confirms that “[i]t was terrible.”109 Although he was never willing to give any details about the sinking of the ship, Cesare di Napoli, the fictional protagonist of Domenica de Rosa’s The Italian Quarter, explains that the majority of his fellow internees drowned because they had been put in the lower cabins “below the sea level”110: unlike them he managed to escape, but he had to “float in the freezing sea” for “ten hours” before he was rescued by the Canadians. His short account is part of chapter 3111: “Many Italians were killed on the Arandora Star.” “Yes.” Cesare leans forward. “Because they were put in the lowest cabins. Below sea level. Many were old men who should never have been interned. They had no chance at all.” “How did you escape?” I look up. Though, I know, of course, about the Arandora Star, Cesare is always strangely reticent on the details; all we usually get is some guff  Natalie Dye, Arandora Star (London: Peach Publications, 2013), 2–3.  Paolini, Missing, Presumed Drowned, 102–104. 109  Ibid., 107. 110  de Rosa, The Italian Quarter, 26. 111  Ibid., 26–27. 107 108

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about seagulls. Sure enough: “Ten hours floating in a freezing sea. All I could hear were the seagulls. To this day I hate the cry of seagulls.”112

The post-war generations found different ways of paying their tribute to such an important historical event. Fortier maintains that “the British Italian community defines itself by the grief over the lives lost in the Arandora Star”113: although today there are memorial plaques and monuments in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Cardiff, Glasgow and on the Irish Isle of Colonsay,114 further action needs to be taken. It was on 2 July 2020, for instance, that the “arts legend” Richard Demarco called for a permanent memorial to be erected in Edinburgh: sadly “[n]o one appear[ed] to be noticing it [the anniversary],” which for him was “a disgrace.”115

2.4  A New “Renaissance”: The Post-war Years The 1950s marked the Italian community’s “renaissance.”116 Les Servini, Hector Emanuelli and Peter Ghiringhelli are the only authors who mention the fall of Mussolini, the joyous V-E Day celebrations,117 also the great plans in Aberavon to “create a town at Sandfields,”118 yet, evidence of the new, more welcoming atmosphere in the greatest British cities can be found in Pieri’s Isle of the Displaced. For the first time he, an ex-Italian  Ibid., 27.  Anne-Marie Fortier, Migrant Belongings, 57. 114  As regards the main initiatives of the Italian community in the UK, we shall consider the Arandora Star Memorial Fund in Wales 1940–2010, http://www.amicivalcenogalles. com/?p=183. Accessed 31 May 2023; as well as the memorial garden that was dedicated to the Italian victims in Glasgow in 2011. News about the event was given on 16th May by the BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-13400727. Accessed 31 May 2023. 115  See Daniel McLeod, “Richard Demarco Calls for Edinburgh Memorial to Arandora Star Victims,” Edinburgh News, July 10, 2020, https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman. com/heritage-and-retro/retro/richard-demarco-calls-edinburgh-memorial-arandora-starvictims-2902230. Accessed 31 May 2023. 116  Again, see Rinaldi, From the Serchio to the Solway, 36: “They appear to have focused themselves on their work with an intensity that perhaps did not even exist in the pioneering days. By the 1950s Italian shops in the town were booming and mirroring the economic miracle of their home country. They had emerged from their darkest times into the bright lights of what turned out to be something of a ‘golden age.’” 117  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 110. 118  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 39. 112 113

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deportee, could feel part of the Scottish community. The war had finally deleted all national differences and inequalities, which made him proud of belonging to multi-ethnic Scotland119: Remarkably enough, when I did go back to serving the public, I found that attitudes seemed to have been transformed. Complete strangers, ex-soldiers who had fought in the Italian campaigns and who correctly assumed that I was Italian, would regale me with their stories of Italy. Of how they were treated as liberators, of the hospitality received from the Italian families, of the help given to escaped British prisoners and friendliness of the population in general. For whatever reason, the war seemed to have broadened attitudes and increased people’s tolerance. Paradoxically, after all that had happened, for the first time in my life I began to feel welcome and a part of the society in which I lived. […] I never had the impression that the fact of my background mattered in any way.120

Although in Mary Contini’s Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter there seems to be no trace of the difficult integration process of its protagonists, the narrator’s description of fashionable Anna Di Ciacca121 confirms that even her family had recovered from the crisis of the war period. It was now 1951 and the “Italians” had put “the past behind them.”122 Most of the authors’ families were still employed in the catering industry across the UK, yet there were great opportunities for the new generations. As even Pia contends, “the pathway to a better position in society was education,”123 so after graduating in Modern Languages, just like Servini, she became a high-school teacher. Of course, even this part of the process was long and painful. In the 1960s and 1970s there was a new surge of anti-Italianism in Edinburgh. In fact, Pia and her family were often “objects” of “insults” and “negativity”124: as she recalls, they would never respond in public, but “in 119  As Giancarlo Rinaldi reports in From the Serchio to the Solway, 35: “Perhaps it was this shared sense of relief that allowed the Italian community to return to the town [Dumfries] with so little difficulty. […] Indeed, there was real sympathy for the plight of some locals who found themselves interned during this time. Incidents of trouble in Italian shops began to fade and people soon started putting the war behind them.” 120  See Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 22, “Aftermath,” par. 14–15. 121  Mary Contini, Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2017), 135. 122  Ibid., 117. 123  Pia, A Language of My Choosing, 71. 124  Ibid., 68.

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the privacy of [their] homes [they] developed “a counter-narrative of criticism and disdain of Scottish ways.”125 Apart from Emanuelli’s short description of the economic boom in the “Swinging Sixties,”126 and of his new creative job as a designer in the following years,127 there is scant historical and cultural information in Italian British literary works. Three entire chapters of Victor Spinetti Up Front! ... His Strictly Confidential Autobiography, for instance, are dedicated to the extraordinary collaboration of the Italian Welsh actor with The Beatles128; as concerns Pia’s memoir, it reveals her love for the best Italian cinema— “Loren,” “Lollobrigida,” “Fellini” and “Mastroiani” [sic]—as well as her curiosity for popular magazines such as Oggi129 and the “San Remo” [sic] music festival.130 It is in Marcella Evaristi’s Commedia that we can find references to the political tension of those years in Italy and in particular to the Bologna Massacre (2 August 1980).131 In one of the closing scenes of the play, Cesare, Elena’s son, is one of the eighty-three victims who lost their lives during the violent bombing at the train station: ELENA: You’re crying, babba. What’s happened? / LUCY: There’s been a bombing at the station. Oh Elena, Cesare’s been killed. He’s dead. We’ve identified him. Oh there were so many dead people. / ELENA: Oh no— Davide. (He holds her) / DAVIDE: Oh my poor girl. / LUCY: Some fascists have claimed responsibility. DAVIDE. Do you mean literally? Was it a fascist  Ibid.  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 162. 127  Ibid. 128  Victor Spinetti, Victor Spinetti Up Front… His Strictly Confidential Autobiography. With Peter Rankin (London: Robson Books, 2006), 145–171. We refer specifically to chapter 13, “A Hard Day’s Night,” chapter 14, “Help!” and chapter 15, “The Beatles, by Association.” 129  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 70–71. A very popular Italian magazine, it first appeared on 3 June 1939 and was originally called Oggi. Settimanale di spettacolo e di letteratura. Today it sells almost 400,000 copies every week. 130  Ibid., 120. 131  Known in Italian as strage di Bologna, the Bologna massacre was a terrorist bombing which killed 85 people and wounded over 200. It was defined as a “State massacre.” Several members of the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR, Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) were sentenced for the bombing, although the group denied involvement. Investigations have uncovered alleged links to Italy’s secret services. See “Bologna Bombing was ‘State Massacre,’ Says Court,” ANSA, 8 January 2021, https://www.ansa.it/ english/news/general_news/2021/01/08/bologna-bombing-was-state-massacre-sayscourt_377ef602-2661-42bf-8b4b-1b2cb6a69c9b.html. Accessed 31 May 2023. 125 126

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bombing? / ELENA: Where is he? Does he still have his body? Where is he? / LUCY: We’ve been to the mortuary. He isn’t mutilated, isn’t that strange? Gianna’s in shock and Stefano’s with her. / DAVIDE: The bastards, the murdering fascist bastards! / […] / ELENA: […] Oh love, why did they do that? / DAVIDE: Because Bologna’s a communist town with a communist mayor. Because we’re at war. The enemy couldn’t bear to see a decent socialist humanist socialism work. That’s why they bombed ordinary innocent commuters.132

One of the earliest Italian Scottish works, Evaristi’s popular play was the first one which introduced the opposition between communists and fascists in Italy. In the following years Lilie Ferrari in Fortunata and Melanie Hughes in War Changes Everything gave form to two strong female protagonists—respectively, Fortunata Vialli and Yolanda Barroni—who were left-wing members of the Italian community in London in the 1930s, and who strenuously supported Emidio Recchioni’s fight against the “blackshirts.”133 Rich in historical details, Ferrari’s novel in particular ends with a short section on Castel Gandolfo near Rome in 1989, which includes Pope John Paul II (1978–2005),134 as well as references to the series The Small Hours and the iconic fashion designer Giorgio Armani.135 Although the narrator only focuses on the Pope and his residence, the reader can taste the flavour of a decade of great political turmoil both in Italy and in most Western countries. Generally recounting the main events of the period 1890–1960, the Italian British authors in our literary corpus rarely refer to these first decades of the twenty-first century. In this respect, Pia not only relates her writing to the great concern that immigration is causing at an international level, but also to the Covid-19 pandemic. In such bleak times, she seems confident that her work “[will] steady, inspire, give confidence in possibility, confirm and reawaken the ingenuity and creativity that we possess.”136

 Marcella Evaristi, Commedia (Edinburgh: The Salamander Press, 1983), 31.  On Emidio Recchioni (1864–1933), also called “King Bomba,” see Pietro Di Paola, The Knights Errant of Anarchy. London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 219. 134  Lilie Ferrari, Fortunata (London, New York, Toronto: BCA, 1993), 270–274. 135  Ibid., 271, 273. 136  Anne Pia, Keeping Away the Spiders. Essays on Breaching Barriers (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2020), 11–12. 132 133

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Bibliography Primary Sources Arcari, Anita. The Hokey Pokey Man. Aberystwyth: Y Lolfa, 2010. Contini, Mary. Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006. Contini, Mary. Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2017. Coraggioso, Cagliardo (D’Agostino, Eugenio). Wandering Minstrel. New Edition by Carlo Pirozzi. Woking: Nielsen Book Services, 2018. Cruciani, Rafaella. An Owl in the Kitchen: The Discovery of My Italian Heritage. Bloomington: Xlibris, 2016. Kindle de Rosa, Domenica. The Italian Quarter. London: Quercus, 2013. Kindle. Di Mambro, Ann Marie. Tally’s Blood. Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2012. Dye, Natalie. Arandora Star. London: Peach Publications, 2013. Kindle. Emanuelli, Hector. A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman. Langenfeld: Six Towns Books, 2010. Evaristi, Marcella. Commedia. Edinburgh: The Salamander Press, 1983. Ghiringhelli, Peter. A British Boy in Fascist Italy. Stroud: The History Press, 2010. Ferrari, Lilie. Fortunata. London, New York, Toronto: BCA, 1993. Leoni, Peppino. I Shall Die on the Carpet. London: Leslie Frewin, 1966. Pia, Anne. A Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2017. Pia, Anne. Keeping Away the Spiders. Essays on Breaching Barriers. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2020. Pieri, Joe. The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2005. Pieri, Joe. Isle of the Displaced. An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2014. Kindle. Rossi, Robert. Italian Blood British Heart. Independently Published, 2019. Kindle. Salvoni, Elena. Elena. A Life in Soho. With Sandy Hawkes. London: Quartet, 1990. Servini, Les. A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times. Cardiff: Hazeltree, 1994. Spinetti, Victor. Victor Spinetti Up Front … His Strictly Confidential Autobiography. With Peter Rankin. London: Robson Books, 2006.

Secondary Sources Balestracci, Maria Serena. Arandora Star. Dall’oblio alla memoria—From Oblivion to Memory. Parma: Monte Università Parma, 2008. Besagni, Olive. A Better Life. A History of London’s Italian Immigrant Families in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the 19th & 20th Centuries. London: Camden History Society, 2011.

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Best, Geoffrey. Churchill and War. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2001. Borriello, Tiziana. I salari dell’industria automobilistica nei primi anni del Novecento. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2002. Bosworth, R.J.B. Italy and the Wider World: 1860–1960. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Cesarani, David. “An Alien Concept? The Continuity of Anti-Alienism in British Society before 1940.” In The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain, edited by David Ceserani and Tony Kushner, 25–52. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Chetail, Vincent. International Migration Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. “Coal. Britain’s Crucial Industry: Background of Nationalization and Present Outlook.” Labor and Industry in Britain. A Monthly Review 1 (1947): 185–195. Colpi, Terri. The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 1991. Colpi, Terri. Italians’ Count in Scotland. The 1933 Census. Recording History. London: The Saint James Press, 2015. Colpi, Terri. “Chaff in the Winds of War? The Arandora Star, Not Forgetting and Commemoration at the 80th Anniversary.” Italian Studies 4 (2020): 389–410. D’Amore, Manuela. “Neutralising ‘Difference by Silence,’ ‘Choosing to Remain Peripheral’: Xenophobia, Marginalisation and Death in Italian Scottish Migrant Writings of World War Two.” In The Migration Conference 2020 Proceedings: Migration and Integration, edited by Ibrahin Sirkeci and Merita Zulfiu Alii, 131–134. London: Transnational Press, 2020. Di Paola, Pietro. The Knights Errant of Anarchy. London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013. Fagerlid, Cecilie and Michelle A Tisdel. “Introduction: Literary Anthropology, Migration, and Belonging.” In A Literary Anthropology of Migration and Belonging. Roots, Routes and Rhizomes, edited by Cecilie Fagerlid and Michelle A. Tisdel, 10–18. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Finaldi, Giuseppe. A History of Italian Colonialism, 1860–1907: Europe’s Last Empire. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. Forte, Alessandro. La Londra degli italiani: dai penny ice alla City: due secoli di emigrazione. Prefazione di Marco Cattini. Roma: Aliberti, 2012. Kindle. Fortier, Anne-Marie. Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Gabaccia, Donna R. Italy’s Many Diasporas. London and New  York: Routledge, 2003.

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Glover, David. Literature, Immigration, and Diaspora in Fin-de-Siècle England: A Cultural History of the 1905 Aliens Act. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Goldman, Aaron L. “Defence Regulation 18B: Emergency Internment of Aliens and Political Dissenters in Great Britain during World War II.” Journal of British Studies 2 (1973): 120–136. Hughes, Colin. Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. The Italian Community in South Wales 1881–1945. Bridgend: Seren, 1991. King, Greg. Twilight of Splendor: The Court of Queen Victoria During Her Diamond Jubilee Year. Hoboken: Wiley, 2007. Kingsley Kent, Susan. Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain 1918–1931. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Lamb, Richard. Mussolini and the British. London: Lume Books, 2019. “Littoriali del Lavoro.” Critica fascista 1 (1940): 160–163. Paolini, Stefano. Missing Presumed Drowned. A True Story of the Internment of Italians Resident in Britain during the Second World War. Independently Published, 2015. Pellew, Jill. “The Home Office and the Aliens Act, 1905.” The Historical Journal 2 (1989): 369–385. Pescosolido, Guido. Unità nazionale e sviluppo economico in Italia 1750–1913. Roma: Edizioni La Nuova Cultura, 2014. Ravenstein, Ernst Gregor. Census of the British Isles, 1871. The Birthplaces of the People and the Laws of Migration. London: Trübner & Co., 1876. Rinaldi, Giancarlo. From the Serchio to the Solway. Dumphries: Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information & Archives, 1998. Rinauro, Sandro. “Le statistiche ufficiali dell’emigrazione italiana tra propaganda politica e inafferrabilità dei flussi.” Quaderni storici 2 (2010): 393–417. Shankland, Hugh. Out of Italy: The Story of Italians in North East England. Leicester: Troubador Publishing Limited, 2014. Silei, Gianni. “I conservatori britannici e il fascismo (1929–1935). La parabola discendente di una ‘storica amicizia.’” Il Politico 3 (1992): 497–528. Sponza, Lucio. “Gli italiani in Gran Bretagna: profilo storico.” Altreitalie, 30 (2005): 4–22 Truffelli, Corrado. “L’emigrazione dall’Emilia Romagna: cenni storici.” In Rapporto Italiani nel Mondo, edited by Delfina Licata, 305–314. Todi: Tau, 2013. Turati, Filippo. “La ‘viltà dei deputati.’ Un possibile programma della democrazia.” Critica sociale 14 (1892): 209–211.

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Web Resources “Bologna Bombing was ‘State Massacre,’ Says Court.” ANSA, January 8, 2021. https://www.ansa.it/english/news/general_news/2021/01/08/bologna-­ bombing-­was-­state-­massacre-­says-­court_377ef602-­2661-­42bf-­8b4b-­1b2cb6a 69c9b.html. McLeod, Daniel. “Richard Demarco Calls for Edinburgh Memorial to Arandora Star Victims.” Edinburgh News, July 10, 2020. https://www.edinburghnews. scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/retro/richard-demarco-calls-for-edinburgh-memorial-to-arandorastar-victims-2902230. “Memorial Garden for Arandora Star Victims.” BBC News, May 16, 2011. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-13400727.

CHAPTER 3

Departures, Arrivals and Settlements: Pictures from Rural Italy and Urban Britain

Recounting the stories of poor but courageous men and women who left their homes in search of a better life, Italian British writings often take the shape of “literary atlases,” which enable the reader to follow their migratory paths while gaining a clearer understanding of their transcultural experiences. Interestingly, apart from the exceptional case of Wandering Minstrel— which narrates the protagonist’s picaresque adventures in England and Wales before D’Agostino settled in Edinburgh—most of the literary works in our corpus clarify the connection between forgotten but enchanting hamlets in northern and central Italy and the main British cities. Italian Welsh authors such as Les Servini and Hector Emanuelli, for instance, wanted to share their memories of the little centre of Bardi near Parma, especially of its majestic medieval castle. Residing in different parts of England and Scotland, Joe Pieri, Piero Tognini, Bernard Moscardini and Robert Rossi proudly wrote about the beauties of Barga and of other little villages in the province of Lucca. This chapter will show how this latter district in particular became the iconic setting of brutal battles in the concluding phases of the Second World War. While Anne Pia, writing about southern Lazio, wanted to pay her tribute to the victims of the siege of Monte Cassino (17 January–18 May 1944), Anita Arcari, Mary Contini and Paulette Pelosi preferred to associate the hamlet of Picinisco to its natural riches and ancient culinary

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. D’Amore, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0_3

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traditions. Echoes of the same idyllic vision of the Mediterranean can be found in Contini’s descriptions of Pozzuoli near Naples. In Dear Alfonso, for instance, the “pile of crumbling, crowded slums”1 of the Rione Terra contrasts with the colourful image of women carrying vegetables “for the midday meal,”2 also, more importantly, with the delicious flavours of their cuisine. In fact, the transnational relations that Italian British authors have created are rooted in these hamlets. In an effort to metaphorically follow their journeys to Britain, the opening section will begin from southern Lazio and the ancient district of Terra di Lavoro, and will continue with northern Tuscany and north-western Romagna. This will offer the opportunity to see how migrant writing intertwines with the long established tradition of travel literature, and also how some of their authors developed an interest in the culture of main European countries. Yet, the core setting of their narratives is Britain. After showing the symbolic significance of Dover—the first centre where Italian immigrants arrived after crossing the English Channel—the focus will be on the main cities in England, Wales and Scotland. Italian British authors wanted to give minute topographical and sociological details of the areas where they and their families settled: their stories, though, are clear on the fact that their hard experiences were influenced by the most tragic events of the twentieth century. From this point of view, the concluding sections will metaphorically reproduce the war and post-war “geography” of their lives: made up of vivid representations of the camps where most of them were detained—as well as of the new areas where they moved after 1945—they also provide insights into the construction of their transnational identities.

3.1   Where It All Started: Geo-literary Frescoes of the Centre and the North of Italy 3.1.1   Southern Lazio, Picinisco and Its Hamlets And this journey through time and space will start precisely from southern Lazio. Most scholarly studies on Italian migration to Britain generally

1 2

 Contini, Dear Alfonso, 4.  Ibid.

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refer to the mountain communities in the Liri Valley,3 but if we consider our literary corpus, we will need to be more specific and focus particularly on the Comino Valley, which is located on the south-eastern borders of the region. Both territories are part of the province of Frosinone: founded in 1927, the latter province actually resulted from the unification of Ciociaria, the district which had always been part of the State of the Church, and a portion of the ancient district called Alta Terra di Lavoro, which belonged to the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Thus, traditionally connected to the southern provinces of Naples and Caserta, the fourteen principal towns in the Comino Valley4 are rich in medieval castles and are merely agricultural centres. Today they are also popular tourist destinations—Picinisco, for instance, is within the National Park of Abruzzo—and poles of attractions for Italian British and Italian French immigrants, who spend their summer holidays with their families. One of the few narratives which includes geographical information about this area, Rafaella Cruciani in An Owl in the Kitchen shows that before she could trace her ancestry she had to know its main centres: My great, great-grand father, Nunziato Gizzi, was born on May 10, 1821, in Atina, a village at the foot of the Apennines in a region that was then known Terra de Lavoro, but now called Frosinone. I cannot be certain of his exact birthplace, as Italian records indicate where a child is registered in Picinisco, a town further up the mountains, which at that time would have been considered to be the main town or commune which encompassed large surrounding areas and villages. […] It would seem that he was a shepherd as a young man. His wife, Maria Grilli, was born on 16 March 1835 in Villa Latina, a village next door to Atina. […] [T]heir third daughter was my great-grand-­ mother, Giacinta Gizzi, born in 1869  in a small village higher up and adjacent to Picinisco called San Giuseppe. There were strong links to this hamlet, as previous generations not registered in Picinisco were baptised in the church of San Giuseppe. The area was fertile, grazing for sheep and goats, which lends to its inhabitants being shepherds rather than farmers who would probably live in the lower villages of Atina or Villa Latina. 3  We will consider Lucio Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain, 33; Colpi, The Italian Factor, 50, 56; and Panikos Panayi, Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain, 1815–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 28. 4   They are Alvito, Atina, Campoli Appennino, Casalattico, Casalvieri, Fontechiari, Gallinaro, Picinisco, Posta Fibreno, San Biagio Saracinisco, San Donato Val di Comino, Settefrati, Vicalvi and Villa Latina.

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Whatever their occupations, they were workers on the land, looking across the beautiful Val di Comino, almost at the point where the regions of Lazio, Abruzzo, and Molise meet.5

Cruciani’s short introduction is not completely accurate. As has been said, the ancient Terra di Lavoro was a larger district, including Campania, Lazio and Molise, which also included the city of Frosinone; apart from Atina, the main centre in the Comino Valley, and the rural towns of Villa Latina and San Giuseppe, it is possible to find further evidence that Picinisco gave way to a huge emigration phenomenon which connected the south of Lazio to Britain. Interestingly, “[t]he first mention of [her] great-grandmother Gizzi in an English census is in a boarding house in Bordesley Street, Birmingham […], in 1881”6: most Italian British literary works will show that numerous Italians first arrived in England and then moved to Wales and Scotland. Building upon the main publication in the field, Vincenzo Arcari’s La storia di Picinisco (1959), Virginia Arcari’s Picinisco is one of the latest monographs which help the English-speaking reader to visualise not only the profound administrative changes that the town went through over the centuries, but also its main historic sites. As regards the main agricultural resources, we learn that “because the topography of the region offers limited flat space for growing,” the local population generally “took care of the animals” and “attended the marketable crops: grains, fruit, orchards, olive groves and vineyards.”7 Of course, when Italy became a united nation and the central government imposed a heavy taxation on land properties and their products, Picinisco was gradually abandoned, which had a devastating effect on the economy of the whole area.8 It may be for this reason that the migration narratives which are set in the Comino Valley tend to provide a nostalgic representation both of the Valley and of the little hamlet. In this respect, recreating the most distinctive features that the latter had in the late nineteenth century, Anita Arcari in The Hokey Pokey Man recounts that young Tino D’Abruzzo was appalled by the spectacular landscapes that he could admire from the top of Mount Meta:  Cruciani, An Owl in the Kitchen, 21–22.  Ibid., 24. 7  Virginia Arcari, Picinisco: Uncovering 1000 Years of History (Independently Published, 2017), 48. 8  Ibid., 49. 5 6

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He looked back up the path; right behind, Colleruta, where his family had farmed for centuries; renowned for its olive groves, fruit orchards and the fattest, ripest figs and cherries anyone could wish for. Further back, hidden by trees and higher up the mountain the little walled village of Picinisco, with its pretty medieval churches and towering castles; and across the valley, hidden by dense trees, San Gennaro, with Villa Latina nestling sleepily just below. Dotted all around were other villages and hamlets—Le Serre, Il Cervo, Vallegrande, Immoglie—often no more than a few rusticos, farmhouses huddled together intimately. […] Some of the older villagers, who had travelled in the past, told tales of how, on a clear day, from the top of the towering Monte Meta behind him, you could even see Vesuvius in the far distance.9

This was, thus, a rich area both from a topographical and from a demographic point of view. Eugenio D’Agostino in Wandering Minstrel adds further details to this enchanting picture drawing the reader’s attention to the “blue waters” of the rivers “Rave, Mollarino and Melfa”10: although neither he nor the narrator of The Hokey Pokey Man mentions the ancient Terra di Lavoro, the incredible sight of Mount Vesuvius symbolically represents the tight link which united this part of Lazio and the south of Italy.11 Apart from the cultural implications on this particular perception of the centre and of the south, the list of villages in Arcari’s descriptive passage confirms that Il Cervo—today called Cervaro—was close to Monte Cassino, whereas the others belonged to the municipality of Picinisco. Blending different materials, which contribute to the hybridity of her work, Mary Contini in Dear Olivia includes photographs of Fontitune in 1890, of Picinisco in 1900, as well as a black and white map of the surrounding area. “[A] tiny hamlet of a dozen or so houses,” in 1913 Fontitune in particular was only “an hour’s walk” from Picinisco. It had a “small piazza” and very simple “centuries-old houses”: despite its natural beauties, life for its inhabitants—and for the Crollas, Contini’s forebears— was “exceedingly hard.”12

 Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 15–16.  Coraggioso (D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel, 35. 11  Ibid., 36. 12  Contini, Dear Olivia, 22. 9

10

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Unfortunately, this condition of extreme poverty did not improve in the following decades. Setting part of his narrative in the inter-war years, Eugenio D’Agostino contends that despite the “new roads” and “bridges” which had been built under the rule of Mussolini, there continued to be no prospects for the younger generations. Profoundly discouraged because he had to leave for England again, he claimed that “it was the same old story over and over again—working hard all the year round and getting nothing of it.”13 There is no trace of the tragic events which marked Picinisco during the Second World War in Italian British literary narratives14: although, according to the latest scholarly research, it was a strategic centre of the Gustav line,15 Tally’s Blood and Language of My Choosing only evoke the battle of Monte Cassino. Anne Marie Di Mambro in particular focuses on the devastation in the area: although both the “Basilica” and the poor house of the Ianelli family had remained intact, Luigi had lost all his “olives,” “hens” and “grapes.”16 Mentioning the nearby centre of Castro dei Volsci, instead, Anne Pia includes the stunning Rocca di San Pietro—one of the Colonnas’ most impressive castles—as well as the monument called Mamma Ciociara.17 In white marble, and at the same time “sensual” and “ethereal,” it is still located on the highest summit of the Rocca and pays tribute to the thousands of men and women that the French and Moroccan troops brutalised and killed before the final victory of the Allies on 18 May 1944.18 3.1.2   Tuscany, the Garfagnana and the Barga Area Peace and quiet are at the heart of Paulette Pelosi’s memories of the Comino Valley in the early 1990s. As the Italian Welsh activist writes in  Coraggioso (D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel, 167.  See, for instance, Teresa Arcari Caporicci, Alle Serre di Picinisco. Memorie di emigrazione, guerra, liberazione (Sora: Centro Studi Sorani “Vincenzo Patriarca,” 2006). 15  The Gustav Line was the main German defensive line that spanned from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic Sea. Defended by 15 German divisions, it considered Monte Cassino as its key terrain because of its position in the Liri Valley. See among others Jeffrey Plowman, Monte Cassino: Amoured Forces in the Battle for the Gustav Line (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2018). 16  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 95. 17  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 39. 18  Ibid. 13

14

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Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper, she was full of expectations when she landed in Rome. Once she arrived, she felt relieved “that things had remained fundamentally the same” and that they perfectly corresponded to her father’s descriptions.19 She could thus “shop for delicious fresh produce at the Monday market at Atina as her grand-mother had done,” and more importantly, she was happy that her family home in Collemorelle was still standing.”20 Re-enacting an important part of her first visit to Picinisco— when she discovered the “small cappella,” the “shrine,”21 which her grandfather had been built in 1909—Anita Arcari in The Hokey Pokey Man added that it was “a short-distance up the rough-made road that led to the village” and that “it had suffered the ravages of time.”22 Readers will find the same combination of history, natural riches and sense of national belonging in the descriptions of north-eastern Tuscany. Depicting the enchantment of little hamlets like Barga, Sommocolonia and Palleroso, they testify to the strong civic commitment of British authors of Tuscan descent like Joe Pieri, Piero Tognini, Bernard Moscardini and Robert Rossi: as the numerous newspaper articles and cultural events confirm, their communities will never cease to celebrate their narratives as evidence of the transnational trait of the Garfagnana. Proud of its past and strong cultural identity, this green area was originally inhabited by Etruscan and Ligurian tribes and underwent numerous historical and administrative changes. First, in fact, it was subject to the power of Florence; then, from the fourteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century, its centres were respectively controlled by Modena and Massa Carrara. Annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, they became part of the province of Lucca in 1923.

19  Paulette Pelosi, “Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper,” in Even the Rain Is Different. Women Writing on the Highs and Lows of Living Abroad, ed. Gwyneth Tyson Roberts (Aberystwyth: Honno Autobiography, 2005), 226. 20  Ibid. 21  Here we refer to a public lecture that Arcari held at the University of Cardiff in May 2012. It was entitled “My Welsh Italian Heritage and Its Impact on My Work as an Author”: The PowerPoint presentation, which represents one of our sources of information about Arcari and her work, is attached to Bruna Chezzi, “Welsh-Italian Authors—Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man,” Welsh Italians, n.d., http://www.welshitalians.com/welsh-italianauthorsm. Accessed 31 May 2023. 22  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 10.

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There is scant information about this part of Tuscany.23 Evidence that the local population lived on herding and chestnut-growing can also be found in the Piano paesaggistico Garfagnana e Val di Lima, which was published by the Regione Toscana in 202024: together with detailed geo-­ economic details, this study also contends that after the unification of Italy—in the 1860s and 1870s—the agricultural policies of the central government created a large social inequality, which lay the basis for a mass migration phenomenon.25 Joe Pieri in Isle of the Displaced confirms that “the area is remote, deserted” and that “access is difficult,” yet, he continued to go there even after the Second World War, which gave him the opportunity to learn more about migration as a social and demographic phenomenon. The following passage refers not only to Barga, but also to Bacchionero. An abandoned village near Coreglia—which was on the border of the early modern Florentine and Lucca city states—Bacchionero was the place where he and his mother had been born: A few kilometres from the hilltop town of Barga in Tuscany, on the steep wooded slopes above, stand the ruins of a small stone chapel. In front is a paved clearing, and on either side a farmhouse and some small barns. The area is remote, deserted and access is difficult. There is no road, but the climb up from Barga is well worth the effort, for the view from the clearing down into the valley beneath is spectacular. Since the end of the 1939–45 war I have trekked up there many times, although the walk seems to become even steeper for me as the years go by. Many years ago a family of crofters eked out a living there. The hamlet went by the name of Bacchionero (“Black Wood”), and this is where I was born nearly 80 years ago, at the end of the 1914–18 war.26

He continued to share his memories of those “450 acres of land in the centre of which stood a group of farm buildings”27 in River of Memory. Memoirs of a Scots-Italian. Here he offered further geographical details, 23  See Michele Armanini, Ligures Apuani, Lunigiana storica, Garfagnana e Versilia prima dei Romani (Padova: Libreriauniversitaria.it, 2015), 28–31. 24  “Piano paesaggistico Garfagnana e Val di Lima” (Firenze: Regione Toscana, 2020), 22, https://www.regione.toscana.it/documents/10180/11801512/Ambito+03_garfagnana. pdf/e497023c-2ff8-408d-9a59-37a6454258ef. Accessed 31 May 2023. 25  Ibid., 13. 26  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 1–2. 27  Joe Pieri, River of Memory. Memoirs of a Scots-Italian (Edinburgh: Mercatpress, 2006), 3.

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specifying that Bacchionero was near the village of Renaio and that “every year at chestnut harvest time, scores of families congregated [there], either from the Lucca valley beneath or from the other side of the Apuan Alps.”28 Although his main focus was on its poor agricultural economy and migratory fluxes, he could not forget about its “tiny square” and “small church.” This latter, which was endowed with a beautiful organ, also served as a school “for those who wanted to learn how to read and write.”29 Dedicating himself to writing several years later, Robert Rossi set Italian Blood British Heart in the imaginary villages of Montecino and Valbona, which gave him the chance to pay his tribute to the memory his maternal grandparents, who “were part of the huge emigration from Barga and the Garfagnana to Britain and to the US in the late 1800s/early 1900s.”30 Unlike Pieri, he mentioned “the communal pozzo where the women of [Montecino] did their washing,”31 the “square near the church”32 and “the shrine to Our Lady.”33 As concerns Valbona, he referred to the “Apennines” and the “regional borders in Romagna,”34 also to the fact that it is traversed by “the Corsonna river.”35 Rossi decided to overtly mention Barga and the Garfagnana when he wrote the second novel of his trilogy, Jewish Blood Italian Heart. Here the map which precedes the narration includes the Apennines, the rivers Serchio, Corsonna and Lima, as well as the main urban centres in the area. Handmade and in black and white, this map prepares the reader for their new ventures into the Second World War: clearly outlined, the Gothic Line36 divides the centres of Stazzema, Borgo a Mazzano and Bagni di Lucca from the main city of Lucca.37

 Ibid.  Ibid. 30  Robert Rossi, email to author, July 11, 2022. 31  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 8. 32  Ibid. 33  Ibid., 11. 34  Ibid., 25 35  Ibid., 31. 36  A German defensive line of the Italian campaign between 25 August 1944 and early March 1945, it stretched from the area south La Spezia through the Apennine mountains to Pesaro and Ravenna. See Pierpaolo Battistelli, Assault on the Gothic Line 1944: The Allied Attempted Breakthrough into Northern Italy (London: Bloomsbury, 2023). 37  Robert Rossi, Jewish Blood Italian Heart (Independently published, 2020), 3. 28 29

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One of the new talents of Bargan descent, Rossi—who also met Pieri “before he decided to write his own memoirs”38—wanted to establish a close link between his family and the little village of Sommocolonia. It was there that his grandfather used to spend his holidays39: detailed information especially on its rich cultural traditions can be found in Bernard Moscardini’s La Vacanza. The product of the author’s memories as a child and of a long documentary research, this memoir initially proposes Sommocolonia as a “safe” place when Mussolini declared war on Britain,40 but then becomes the setting of a violent battle, which forced the local population to find refuge in the nearby centres of Barga, Lucca and Pisa. Taken from chapter 12, the following extract shows that in those bleak times there was no trace of the natural beauties that Piero Tognini had described in A Mind at War41: We were soon to learn that the Germans had started blowing up all the bridges along the Serchio Valley. Once again, they spared one bridge. This was the Ponte della Maddalena at Borgo a Mozzano. This bridge is a narrow humped back bridge with asymmetrical arches. It was first built around about the eleventh century and took on its present shape in the thirteenth century. It is a classic example of a medieval packhorse bridge. As it was very narrow it was obviously of no strategic military importance. The German Officers in charge of demolishing the bridges must have realised its historical importance and left it standing. […] [T]owards the end of September, the Germans began mining all the bridges in the Barga region. On the morning of Tuesday 26th September the German commander ordered the Provost of Barga, Monsignor Lombardi, to be ready to ring the church bells to warn the population to stay clear of the area around all the bridges. […] [W]e were now on the threshold of a long precarious period of life in the frontline, with all its concomitant dangers. The famous Linea Gotica (Gothic Line) was to halt right at our village for several months.42

 Rossi, email to the author, July 11, 2022.  Rossi, Jewish Blood Italian Heart, 299. 40  Bernard Moscardini, La Vacanza (Kennoway: Spiderwize, 2009), 19. 41  See Piero Tognini, A Mind at War (New York, Vantage Press, 1990), 1–2. 42  Moscardini, La Vacanza, 120–122. 38 39

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3.1.3   Emilia Romagna, the Ceno Valley and Bardi Similar to Barga, “Italy’s most Scottish town,”43 Bardi played an equally strategic role during the Second World War. In fact, it was one of the main centres of the anti-fascist Resistance, and in 15–17 July 1944 it was also heavily bombarded. Despite the unspeakable horrors of the Wallenstein Operation (30 June–29 July 1944), the partisans were finally able to free the entire area. Deported to the Isle of Man like thousands of other Italians, neither Servini nor Emanuelli were  witness to the destruction of their original hometown. Their memoirs, though, include detailed descriptions of its natural beauties and of its castle: precise geographical and demographic information can be found in Colin Hughes’s study on “The Italian Community in Wales.”44 Here English-speaking readers can learn that Bardi is located in the River Ceno Valley in north-western Emilia Romagna and that it is part of the province of Parma. Interestingly, it had over 9000 inhabitants in 1861, whereas today it only has 2300. This was the effect of mass migration, which gradually made that part of the region desolate and poor. In point of fact, if we consider the Censimento straordinario, which was carried out by the Duchy of Parma in 1849, we will realise that the situation was very different before the unification of the country. Bardi could be a “drab” “little town,”45 but the figures clearly show that only 11% of the population had emigrated: 40 bardigiani—thus 5.41%—were now living in Britain, whereas the majority of emigrants had chosen other European destinations.46 Providing a wider picture of the evolution of migration in the province of Parma, Desalvo considers that the highest peaks could respectively be found in 1879 and 1887, and then, again, in 1901 and 1903 when over 350 men and women left for Britain.47 43  Here we refer to Gabriel McKay, “Italy’s Most Scottish Town Plans Even Closer Ties with Glasgow Opera in the Pipeline,” The Herald, December 2, 2022, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23163956.barga-italys-scottish-town-seeks-even-closer-ties/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 44  Hughes, Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla, 13–20. 45  Ibid., 14. 46  See “Il Censimento straordinario del 1849: un panorama a metà secolo,” Centro di documentazione sull’emigrazione parmense, 17, http://www.emigrazioneparmense.it/index. php?option=com_content&view=article&id=103&Itemid=229. Accessed 31 May 2023. 47  Fausto Desalvo, Statistiche ufficiali, governative e ISTAT sull’emigrazione dalla regione Emilia-Romagna e dalle sue province tra il 1869 e il 2016 (Bologna: Consulta degli emilianoromagnoli nel mondo, 2016), 86.

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Servini and Emanuelli in their memoirs recall all the desperation and pain behind those figures. The former in particular defines Bardi as a “close community” of “hard-working peasants” who lived on “corn,” “grass” and “maize,” but who were deeply attached to their rural traditions.48 At the same time he expresses his strong sense of belonging through a detailed description of its ancient castle: The salient feature is the Castle, visible for many a mile, high on its rocky promontory. Bardi Castle was mentioned in annals as far back as 898 A.D. built to resist invasion as a fortress for the bishop of Piacenza. In the twelfth century the Landi dynasty ruled, then the famous Farnese. What was once a crude rock fort now was a fortified castle. In the 1700’s [sic] it became a stronghold of the Bourbons. A noted member of this Royal House, Marie Louise, later wife of Napoleon, lived there. The Castle finally fell to the Piedmontese, with the unification of ltaly it became the regional centre. In my family’s day it was the Town Hall, the Court of Justice, the Jail, almost everything. Now it is a museum, at peace after a turbulent history, housing a marvellous presentation of local crafts, the arts and the story of this region of Italy. Incidentally, a tourist attraction too, you know, the Bardigiani are business people!49

Emanuelli too writes about what he considered the symbol of Bardi. He first saw it in 1927 and, struck by its “majestic” sight, he thought that “[t]his really was the fairyland [his] mother had told [him] so much about.”50 He then briefly mentions the “dusty Piazza del Mercato” in the town centre, but also provides a lengthy description of the “magnificent river Ceno.” As his mother had told him, it “flowed past the farmstead where [she] had been born,”51 however, he could not even forget the area of “Barsia di Sotto,” near the mountain “Pizzo d’Oca.”52 Apart from the fact that he more probably referred to the little centres either of Varsia or of Masanti di Sotto, he recalled the time when his little cousin told him more about the natural riches of the area:

 Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 2.  Ibid., 4. 50  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 14. 51  Ibid., 13. 52  Ibid., 15. 48 49

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The river rises below Monte Penna […] and rushes down to the town of Fornovo, where it changes its name to Taro, and then flows on to join the great river Po that flows to the sea. […] It is a fine and honest river […] but a sleepy one. It has a brother over the hill called Taro. He is a fine river too, but less honourable.53

The boy’s unique vision of the Ceno and Taro rivers combines with other clear topographical information: the stunning Penna Mountain, for instance, is on the border between Liguria and Emilia Romagna, and even today is renowned for its green woods. As for the little town of Fornovo, it is situated on the Taro river and is rich in early medieval churches and aristocratic villas. The fantastic tales that the young Emanuelli’s family recounted during his stay in Italy not only entertained him, but also helped him to keep vivid memories of that part of Emilia Romagna. Going “southward out of Bardi,” in fact, he heard about the “ghosts” called “Moroello” and “Soleste”; it was after walking “through the woods of oak, chestnut, pine and beech” that one day he and his uncle reached Cereseto.54 A small hamlet, which belongs to the municipality of Compiano and has only 84 inhabitants, it represents another key destination in Emanuelli’s discovery of his roots: We were surrounded by barking—though harmless—dogs who seemed pleased at the novelty of visitors. Opposite the church stood the baptistery. The door stood open and inside we could see workmen undertaking repairs to the ancient building. The interior was elaborately painted but was much in need of restoration. After greeting his fellow workmen, Zio Pain’ unloaded his cart and set about his work, mixing powders with pigments of burnt sienna and ochre, and one that I found particularly attractive, a glorious ultramarine blue. […] He told me he usually used this ultramarine for the ceilings of shrines and when it was dry he would embellish it with gold stars. The interior walls of the baptistery were bare, but above the white cornice that topped them everything was painted. Climbing his ladder, Zio Pain’ chatted away as he started to work on in intricate geometric and floral decorations in gold, blue and red. […] I was enthralled at his finished work.55

 Ibid., 16.  Ibid., 23. 55  Ibid., 23–24. 53 54

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The description of the coloured ceiling of the main church in Cereseto symbolically concludes Emanuelli’s account of his short stay in Bardi. He had been charmed by the magic and the beauties there, yet he was happy to go back to Britain: it took him a long time to develop a clear sense of belonging and to share Servini’s belief that “[they] [had] found a welcome in the hillsides, but “Bardi [was] still the land of [their] fathers.”56 It was in 1948, after a long painful experience as an internee during the Second World War, that he celebrated his new life with Joan Hulse and began a “Grand Tour” of Italy which included “the Vatican, Florence, Fiesole, San Marino, Pisa and Genoa on the Ligurian coast.”57 Of course, “the last stage of the honeymoon was to be spent in Bardi.” The sight of the Castle in the distance after a long and tiring journey made them “cry with delight”58: It still stood brooding over the confluence of the Ceno and the Noveglia, clothed in autumnal mist which dissolved as we drew near, revealing the castle perched on its re-veined jasper rock. It was pure magic. Joan was enchanted. “The perfect setting for a gothic novel,” she said. “Has it got dungeons?”59

Emanuelli and his wife tasted the flavour of rural Italy and enjoyed their encounters with the other inglesi. They met at the Piccolo bar in the town centre and all spoke “in gentle Welsh accents”60: it was clear that they were “all Bardigiani at heart.”61

3.2   First Arrivals: London, Cardiff and Edinburgh Hector and Joan Emanuelli returned to England by train and their experience was obviously very different from that of the Italian men and women who had left their country to seek their fortune: Tunstall, a part of Stoke-­ on-­Trent, was their home, they were financially independent, and what is more important, they were beginning a new life together.

 Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 9.  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 124. 58  Ibid., 139. 59  Ibid. 60  Ibid., 140. 61  Ibid., 141. 56 57

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It is possible to find literary traces of those men’s and women’s journeys across the Alps and the English Channel especially in Contini’s and Arcari’s family stories. The Crolla brothers and Tino D’Abruzzo, for instance, finally reached Dover after an exhausting journey on foot, by train and by boat. Civitavecchia, the closest port to the city of Rome, and Turin were their first destinations: as Moraglio contends,62 the quality of the roads in the southern and central regions was extremely poor, which represented a great obstacle for those people who were heading for the north or the Americas.63 Facing all forms of hardships, though, laziali, abruzzesi and napoletani obtained the type of support that they needed thanks to those that they encountered along the way. Proof of the great solidarity that Italian immigrants were able to express even before they crossed the Italian borders can be found, for instance, in Dear Olivia, where Alfonso and Emidio Crolla, who were on their way to Turin, received not only material help, but also practical advice on how to get from Picinisco to the north.64 In fact, at that time only Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria could be relied on advanced means of transportation,65 which explains why Italian migrants needed to walk miles before they could embark at the port of Civitavecchia or take the train first to Paris and then to Calais.66 Peppino Leoni’s case, though, was different. Leaving from Cannero on the Lake Maggiore a few years earlier, precisely on 26 November 1907, first he had reached Luino67 by boat, and then he had caught the train to France. He clearly remembered that he was “frightened,” yet he equally “sat” on one of “the hard wooden seat[s]” in his compartment68: looking out of the window, he soon realised that the natural scenery was changing. In Cannobio and Cannero, the two hamlets on the Lake Maggiore where he had been born and had always lived, for instance, “there were orange and lemon groves rising in carefully cultivated steps up from the lake into the 62  Massimo Moraglio, “Le politiche viarie in Italia da fine Ottocento al regime fascista,” Studi storici 45, no. 2 (2004): 555–580. 63  Ibid., 555–558. 64  Contini, Dear Olivia, 62–65. 65  See “Strade ferrate,” Nuova enciclopedia italiana, ovvero, dizionario generale di scienze, lettere, industrie, ecc. (Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1887), 573–574; also Valter Guadagno, Ferrovia ed economia nell’Ottocento post-unitario (Roma: Edizioni CAFI, 1996), 304. 66  See Ferrari, Fortunata, 29. 67  Called Luvino until 1889, the little town of Luino borders with Switzerland. Today it has almost 15,000 inhabitants and is a popular tourist attraction. 68  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 56.

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hills”69: apart from the “cottages” and “dark countryside” in Switzerland and France, the sight of the sea “and the grey, tumbling, foaming waves of the narrow English Channel petrified [him].”70 It may be for this reason that he was glad when “[they] steamed into the calm of Dover Harbour.”71 Leoni did not want to “bore” the reader “with details of the journey,”72 yet we can infer that he met the requirements of the British 1905 Aliens Act,73 and that he was appalled by the “richness” of the town.74 During the Victorian Age, the coming of the railways and trams, especially the development of the harbour, had led to a rapid growth in its size. Although he may not have been interested in its historic castle or beautiful Church of St. Mary in Castro, he and the rest of the Italian migrants were struck by its lively centre and numerous Italian shops.75 Thanks to their owners—or even to the immigrants’ contacts in town—they would easily find their way to London.76 3.2.1   London and Little Italy Their first impressions of Little Italy, also of a busy railway station such as King’s Cross, would give them a more realistic vision of the future changes in their lives. As we have seen, in late Victorian times the Clerkenwell-­ Holborn area was far from “paved with gold”77: in the following decades, especially in the interwar years, the quality of life of the Italian community slowly improved, which explains why Salvoni’s Elena and Ferrari’s Fortunata draw their readers’ attention to its strong multicultural trait. Rich in colours and flavours, this passage in particular offers clear topographical information: This was not a beautiful part of London. There were few trees, and the buildings were old, squat and crammed together in a disorganised hotch  Ibid., 36.  Ibid., 57. 71  Ibid. 72  Ibid., 56. 73  See Jill Pellew, “The Home Office and the Aliens Act, 1905,” The Historical Journal 39 no. 2 (1989): 373–374. 74  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 57. 75  Ibid., 76–77. 76  See Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 71–72. 77  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 27. 69 70

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potch of factories, shops and tenements. But this was the edge of the Italians’ familiar world, the triangle of Little Italy, bordered by Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell Road and Farringdon Road, and dominated by the Church of St Peter, built by the first immigrants in Clerkenwell more than fifty years earlier. Within this magical triangle another Italy had sprung up, managing somehow to capture all the energy and colour of la patria in spite of the grey English climate—or so Fortunata believed, even though she had never actually been to Italy herself. Here she and Antonio threaded their way back into the heart of the Hill, were the colourful fruit and vegetable stalls, the tiny delicatessen stuffed with salami and a hundred different cheeses; here were the cafés where the men drank cappuccino and argued politics until the small hours.78

Earlier known as Saffron Hill, which was in the south western corner of Clerkenwell, the Hill was thus “the heart and soul” “for all Italians living in London.”79 Olive Besagni provides not only a clear map, but also a short history of the area, which confirm that “Il Quartiere”—namely “The Italian Quarter” or “The ’ill”80—was the place “where they married their sons and daughters,” also where they “celebrated saint days.”81 We should not be surprised that most of the social life was centred on St Peter’s Italian Church. The site had been purchased in 1852, but the actual church had finally been consecrated in 1863. Although its architectural style was similar to the Basilica of San Crisogono in Trastevere in Rome,82 for the immigrant community, it was “a cathedral, a glittering palace, crammed with dazzling objects” and “enormous Madonnas.”83 Yet, although at Christmas and Easter the church was crowded with Italian and Irish families, the atmosphere was clearly international. As Salvoni recalls, the whole area was inhabited by other minority groups such as “Jewish Italians, Greeks and Irish,”84 which also explains why the members of such a “close-packed society” “could not comprehend hate and so ignored it.”85 Proof that they had learned to “respect other  Ferrari, Fortunata, 27.  Ibid., 28. 80  Besagni, A Better Life, 9. 81  Ferrari, Fortunata, 28. 82  Besagni, A Better Life, 11–12. 83  Ferrari, Fortunata, 35. 84  Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho, 39. 85  Ibid. 78 79

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people’s habits” and that “name-calling” did not worry the younger generations can also be found in the “many marriages between different races,” which were celebrated in the following years: We had Catholic Italians, Jewish Italians, Greeks, Irish and English. When you grow up in such a close-packed society you learn to respect other people’s habits be they religious, eating or dressing. We simply couldn’t comprehend hate and so ignored it. We couldn’t very well call each other names, could we? The Scots called us names though. They’d shout “spaghetti” after us or sometimes “Wops” or they’d yell, “Italians sell fish, three halfpence a dish,” at us; at the time we couldn’t understand why and it was much later that we found out that almost every Italian who went to Scotland opened up a fish-and-chip shop. Still, name-calling didn’t worry us kids and to prove it were later on many marriages between our different races. At that time though we just all went dancing together, sometimes at the Finsbury Town Hall which was half a crown.86

3.2.2   The Valleys of South Wales: Port Talbot, Cardiff and Swansea Although Lilie Ferrari contends that the members of the immigrant communities were not always in harmony and that some of them were often in conflict,87 Melanie Hughes in War Changes Everything puts an emphasis on the rich human and intellectual stimuli which multicultural London offered in the 1930s–1950s. Based on the private diaries and correspondence of Juanita Serracante Bruce, her mother-in-law, this novel too may be ideally considered a map of human encounters and experiences which helped the protagonist to become a mature woman endowed with a strong political sensitivity. Little Italy, for example—particularly Yolanda Barroni’s house in Mornington Crescent—is associated with warmth, protection and security88; Earls Court and Bloomsbury, 89 especially Old Compton Street,90 represent the space of activism and anti-fascist commitment.

 Ibid., 39–40.  Lilie Ferrari, interview by author, November 15, 2022. 88  Melanie Hughes, War Changes Everything (Manningtree: Patrician Press, 2017), 26. 89  Ibid., 38. 90  Ibid. 71. 86 87

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Anita Arcari in The Hokey Pokey Man clearly shows that London also served as a gateway to other destinations.91 Italian immigrants who headed for Wales, for instance, generally chose the Cynon and Rhondda Valleys: they were only 15 miles from Cardiff and were far richer than the north. Writing about his family’s early settlement in the area, Servini was definitely more precise when he connected the Berni brothers’ “territory” to the maritime centre of “Port Talbot,” to “Neath,” as well as to “the Afan and Banwen Valleys.”92 It was actually in Port Talbot that in the early 1920s the Bernis gave his father a shop to run.93 It was located in Station Road, thus in the city centre, and he, a young boy who could only speak Italian, was registered at St. Joseph School, which was just opposite. However, the majority of Italians were in Aberavon, which today covers the central and south western part of the town. Although there are no references to its long sandy beaches or its beautiful views over Swansea Bay, Servini is very clear on the places where they had their shops and activities. As he reports, they were all very central: There were quite a few ltalians in Aberavon at that time, John Franchi and Lui Belli besides us in Station Road further along Paul Salmi. In Taibach, Joe Moruzzi later down in Margam, Segadelli, two Viazzanis in Water Street, Rabaiotti and Berni (then Servini) in High Street, Charlie (Cesare) Figoni in Ysguthun Road towards the beach, and Lui Berni by the Empire. Later on we had Vaccari, then Negrotti and Sterlini by the Market, Salmi opened in Station Square, and John Moruzzi next to the Plaza. John Viazzani, father of Tony and Frank, opened on the Bridge opposite the Globe Hotel. How did we all live? Well, we were too many but we made a living. There was competition in plenty, but there was no animosity, after all, we were all from the same area of Bardi, the youngsters met at school, we spoke the same dialect.94

None of the Italians in his network of relations seemed to be employed in the steel industry, so A Boy from Bardi does not provide a clear representation of the difficult economic transition in the area. As Parry maintains, by the late 1920s Britain had lost about 20% of its pre-war export markets,  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 280–285.  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 8. 93  Ibid., 10. 94  Ibid., 12. 91 92

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which immediately affected the main industrial sectors95 and greatly impoverished the immigrant community. Following his vivid memories, Servini briefly lists the few attractions in Port Talbot—“the live shows at the Grand Cinema,” “The Red Barn,” “The New Hall” and the “Workmen’s Club”96—while focusing on the hardships that he and his family were facing at the time. As they “never closed” their shop,97 they indeed had little or no time for social events. Luckily, his several Welsh friends made him feel fully integrated in town. Made of hard work and simple joys, Servini’s experience in the 1920s is very similar to that of Hector Emanuelli. In the opening chapter of A Sense of Belonging, he relates his childhood to Treorchy and Treherbert, two small mining centres in the Rhondda Valley. This latter in particular, which lies “amongst mountainous and picturesque scenery at the foot of Penpych [sic],”98 had had its economic boom between 1850 and 1920. It must have been for this reason that at a certain point, Emanuelli’s father decided not only to open a new shop at 138, Bute Street, but also to move there with the rest of the family. Compared to the following parts in the narration, the first three chapters provide meagre topographical details. Emanuelli only recounts, for instance, that in 1927 he went to school in “nearby Penyrenglyn,”99 and that his parents “occasionally ventured out on the New Road across the mountain”100 to visit some friends in Aberdare. The black and white photograph of Treorchy, as well as his reference to “Penpych [sic],” one of “Europe’s few table-top mountains,”101 show how close he felt to the natural beauties in the area. Emanuelli’s parents emigrated to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1932. Further evidence of the crisis of most economic sectors in south Wales can also be found in Anita Arcari’s The Hokey Pokey Man. By that time, the D’Abruzzo brothers had already moved to Swansea: apart from the level of poverty of the ex-soldiers, they too were aware of the fact that the situation had changed dramatically. After a few years, when Italy declared war 95  Stephen Parry, History of the Steel Industry in the Port Talbot Area 1900–1988, PhD diss. (University of Leeds, 2011), 71. 96  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 13. 97  Ibid., 17. 98  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 16. 99  Ibid., 1. 100  Ibid., 8. 101  Ibid., 29.

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on Britain, those members of the Italian community who had not taken British nationality were imprisoned and interned on the Isle of Man, in Canada and even Australia. Enchanted by the beauties of Ebbw Vale,102 and strongly attached to the little town of Cwm, where he had grown up, Victor Spinetti toured countless cities all over the world, but dedicated a “Postscript” to his train tour of Wales when he last visited his ninety-five year-old mother, Lily. He changed at Crewe, a railway town in Cheshire, and defined the sight from the mountains “spiritual”103: again, he preferred not to describe the landscape in details, but expressed the same love that he always felt for Wales and proudly wrote about how his family had progressed.104 3.2.3   Edinburgh, the Coastal Route to Cockenzie and Glasgow Providing clear topographical details of the Scottish cities where their protagonists were seeking their fortune, a considerable part of migration narratives generally begins from their arrival at chaotic rail stations such as King’s Cross in London and Waverly Station in Edinburgh105: apart from the special case of Eugenio D’Agostino, who did not share his memories of the journey from England to Edinburgh in the early 1900s,106 that first experience generated a feeling of estrangement and enthusiasm. Indeed, they may be confused and exhausted, but they were all impressed by the “beautiful gardens” in the capital, the sophisticated men and women walking around and the stunning sight of the Castle.107 The city looked very different from the little hamlets where they came from, yet they gradually became familiar with the main streets and even enjoyed the landscapes in the surrounding areas. Interestingly, Dear Olivia also includes a map of central Edinburgh and mentions historic sites such as Waverly Bridge and Princes Street, La Strada dei Principi.108 The topographical information contained in this passage also helps to see where the Italian community was based:

 Spinetti, Victor Spinetti Up Front…, 12.  Ibid., 255. 104  Ibid. 105  Contini, Dear Olivia, 78–80. 106  Coraggioso (D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel, 258–259. 107  Contini, Dear Olivia, 89. 108  Ibid., 88–89. 102 103

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“You’ll see, Maria, we’re going to be so lucky. You won’t be lonely. There are about ten Italian families here, some of them you already know.” […] They started to walk east along Princes Street then turned down a long sweeping road towards Leith Walk. Alfonso pointed out buildings along the way: the North British Station Hotel towering above them at the east end of Princes Street with horse-drawn cabs outside and very important looking men sitting aloft. They passed the Vittoria Palais de Danse  [sic], which Emidio said people went in the evenings to dance. […]. “Maria, ecco la Chiesa: St Mary’s Cathedral. This is where we’ll go to Mass. It is different here. Only a few are Catholics. All the Italians are, of course. They all go to Mass, so you will meet them there. And that’s the Playhouse Theatre. People dress up in their best finery and go there to hear people sing.” […] They crossed to the right hand-side of the wide street, lined with elm trees. […] [Then] they passed a shop with the name “Green’s Furniture Store” […], a lawyer’s office […], the post office and a drinking place called Pearce’s. […] “Now look, here we are. Your new home. Diciannove, Nineteen, Elm Row, Edimburgo!” In front of Maria were two arched windows; faint glimmers of light could be inside. In the window was a display of jars of coloured boilings and sweets, and a pile of purple foiled boxes. […] […] “This is Giovanni’s shop, Maria. What do you think? We’ll have our own shop like this one day.”109

Although The North British Station Hotel is now called The Barbican Hotel, the attractions between Leith Walk and Elm Row are the same as in the early 1910s. Respectively founded in 1814 and 1909, for instance, St Mary’s Cathedral and the Palais de Danse represent important reference points. As regards the Italian delicatessen shop Valvona & Crolla, it was officially established in 1934 and it is still at the iconic address “Nineteen, Elm Row.”110 Italian immigrants generally considered these buildings as symbols of the local population’s cultural identity and wealth, but the idea that they were part of a lively and solidary community was reassuring. It was not just at the beginning of their new careers that they could count on the network of relations that their predecessors had established since the late 1880s. As  Ibid., 90–93.  See the website of the historic deli Valvona & Crolla at https://www.valvonacrolla. co.uk/contact-us. Accessed 31 May 2023. 109 110

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the narrator shows, for instance, “Signor Valvona,” whose coffee shop was well established in Newhaven Road, offered young Alfonso Crolla not only precious advice, but also useful contacts. There were indeed “shops just outside Edinburgh, further down the coast in Portobello,” also in the small fishing town of Prestonpans.111 A “Signora Rossi,” though, was selling her café “in Easter Road, about ten minutes from Elm Row,”112 which represented a great opportunity: Alfonso “walked the length of Easter Road,” and even went to Leith Street and Great Junction Road. When he realised that his new café would not compete with other similar Italian shops, he rented his first flat in Rossie Place.113 Even at that time the whole area was not far from the city centre. It was densely populated, mostly by the working classes and immigrants, but monuments and buildings such as Trinity House (1816), Queen Victoria’s Statue (1913) and the Catholic church St Mary’s Star of the Sea (1859) show that historic Leith was at the heart of a substantial architectural and demographic growth. The history and geography of early contemporary Edinburgh, however, also regard the coastal route from Newhaven and Leith. The small map in chapter 13, “Cockenzie, 1921–1922,” includes Portobello, Prestonpans and Port Seton,114 yet, the narrator focuses on Cockenzie— “an old fishing village on the Firth of Forth,” “ten miles to the east of Edinburgh”115—where in 1921–1922 Cesidio and Marietta Di Ciacca opened their ice-cream shop and “made their own Italian food.”116 Ten years later it was “the village’s meeting place,”117 which demonstrates that the couple had now become part of the local community. Writing as a second-generation “Scots-Italian,”118 Joe Pieri provides a different picture of warm and welcoming Scotland. His parents, who had first emigrated to America in the early 1900s, had finally arrived in  Contini, Dear Olivia, 105.  Ibid. 113  Ibid., 107–108. 114  Ibid., 151. 115  Ibid., 150. 116  See Panikos Panayi, Spicing Up Britain. The Multicultural History of British Food (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), Ch. 2, “Immigration and the Emergence of Ghetto Food,” par. 62. 117  Contini, Dear Olivia, 220. 118  Because Pieri arrived in Glasgow with his parents when he was only one, he is technically a 1.5G immigrant. See Paolo Ruspini, Migrants Unbound (London: Transnational Press, 2019), 86. 111 112

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industrial Glasgow in 1919. They must have felt shocked by the “fog” and “smog” of the city, also by the “impenetrable mixture of soot and mist” in the winter.119 Although it was not difficult for them to become familiar with “placenames like Kilmarnock, Aberfoyle and Auchinleck,” living “on the fringes of the Gorbals”120 immediately turned them into victims of racial discrimination and violence. Pieri in Isle of the Displaced does not provide any description of suburban Glasgow. In 1999, though, when he first published Tales of the Savoy. Stories of a Glasgow Café, he dedicated the introductory chapter to the “stark contrasts” of the city. Between 1920 and 1950, when Sauchiehall Street was “well renowned for its elegant shops” and Renfield Street represented the financial and administrative centre, “the word Gorbals stood for filth and squalor and crime.”121 It was “at the northern side of Dixon’s Blazes,” “in Surrey Street,” that Pieri’s father found lodgings: the impact on his mother was “huge,” but “there were two factors which cancelled out all the negative ones: hope and opportunity.”122 Located on the south bank of the river Clyde, the Gorbals was only one of the slum areas of the city. Each of them was built near the industrial districts, which represented the main poles of attraction for the immigrants who inhabited them. Most of them were Irish, Jewish and Italian: as it was difficult to adapt to the level of violence of the locals,123 they moved to other parts of the city when their condition improved. The Pieris only left the area in the 1930s. “Living in a rented apartment far from [its] squalor” represented a great reward after a decade’s hard work in the city. After several years, however, their next successful business was in the Cowcaddens. This too was a poor working class area, but it “lay side by side with the glamorous city centre,” which provided its customers an easy access to “another world.”124 “Something of an institution” in the district since the early 1930s, The Savoy  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 63.  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, “Origins,” par. 11, 15. 121  Pieri, Tales of the Savoy. Stories of a Glasgow Café (Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2012), 1. 122  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 64. 123  Detailed information about the area can be found in Colin MacFarlane, The Real Gorbals Story. True Tales from Glasgow’s Meanest Streets (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 2007); and in Robert Crawford, On Glasgow and Edinburgh (Cambridge, MS, and London: Harvard University Press, 2013), 210–213. 124  Pieri, Tales of the Savoy, 2. 119 120

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stood […] at the corner of Hope Street and Renfrew Street, at the border of cinema and theatreland and was surrounded by a sea of public houses ranging from the posh Guy’s and Lauders down through the less elaborate Atholl Arms and Glen Afton to the many drinking dens frequented by the less savoury elements of the Cowcaddens. [It] drew its custom from the richly variegated spectrum of humanity attracted to the area by all these amenities and it profited also by the custom provided by the inhabitants of the densely populated tenements behind it, whose staple diet, fortunately for the Petri family who had come into ownership of the place in 1931, seemed to consist largely of fish suppers, pies and chips and black puddings.125

Depicting a bleak, but humanly rich portrait of urban Glasgow, Pieri in Tales of the Savoy also mentions the Central Station area and St. Vincent Street, where Sadie, a prostitute and one of the aficionados of The Savoy, “ventured in search of customers,” as well as the bookies in Wemyss Street, just off Hope Street, in West Nile Street and especially Garscube Road.126 Although his family succeeded Francesco Petri and the other four owners in the late 1970s, Pieri wanted to put an emphasis on the level of violence that the area reached in those years, thus showing how the situation steadily improved after the war. Indeed, it was thanks to the physical strength and courage of an Italian immigrant coming from a small hamlet in Tuscany that The Savoy finally became “a place which decent people could frequent.”127 It is possible to read about the Cowcaddens today in The  Bigmen, Pieri’s “book about the Glasgow police.”128 Starting from the principle that this is a “typical” modern European district,” the following extract also draws the reader’s attention to its main attractions: Today, the Cowcaddens district of Glasgow is typical of a district in any modern European City. Criss-crossed by ramps leading to and from the M8 motorway, the district, immediately to the north of Glasgow City Centre, now consists of scores of ultra modern steel and glass buildings which serve mainly as offices and high-tech factories. The most imposing building in the district is the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall at the eastern end of Renfrew Street, which faces a high rise fortress-like car park and a well laid out bus depot at one of the sliproads of the M8 motorway. No more than a block  Ibid., 5–6.  Ibid., 21. 127  Ibid., 8. 128  Pieri, The Scots-Italian, 56. 125 126

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away from this magnificently structured edifice with its perfect acoustics, at the corner of Hope Street and Renfrew Street, the Royal Academy of Music and Drama dominates the scene. A few of the buildings of the old Cowcaddens still stand derelict, but these are being progressively demolished as development proceeds. The modern Cowcaddens is a model of what well thought out town planning can achieve, but half a century ago the reality was altogether different.129

3.3   A Nation at War: Pictures and Maps of Internment Camps Born in the Tuscan village of Palleroso in 1924, but educated in Prestwick after his parents settled in the historic county of Ayrshire in Scotland, Piero Tognini provides detailed information about the first family house at “3 Lilybank Road”: “a modern bungalow”—which was located “about three hundred yards from the shop, on the opposite side of Ayr Road”—it “was the first of several brand-new homes built there.” They “moved into it in 1935 and it was to be [their] home for many years to come.”130 The economic prosperity of the period, which made the family business a success, suddenly came to an end on 10 June 1940 when Mussolini declared war on Britain. Piero had already decided to leave school and to “[concentrate] on a future in business.”131 We may understand why the “frightening scene,”132 which he saw “at the Marina Café, at the corner of Heathfield Road,”133 became an indelible memory for him: The glass front door of the café had been smashed and a crowd of people, mostly women, were milling around. They were systematically looting the shop! I stared in horror as large jars of sweets and bulky packs of cigarettes were handed out to accomplices, who made off with guilty haste. My heart was sick as I saw onetime neighbours, and even friends, sneaking off into the growing darkness of a summer night. War had turned even law-abiding folk into a pack of scavenging wolves!134

129  Joe Pieri, The Bigmen. Personal Memories of Glasgow’s Police (Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2011). Kindle. See Ch. 2, “The Northern,” par. 2. 130  Tognini, A Mind at War, 6. 131  Ibid., 15. 132  Ibid., 17 133  Ibid. 134  Ibid.

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His father and his older brother were arrested the next morning; he was taken to Barlinnie prison on 3rd July, on his sixteenth birthday. The only author in our corpus who shared his memories as a young detainee, he “was driven to the harbour at Gourock, on the estuary of the River Clyde,” crossed the Argyll shore and finally arrived at Lock Eck, where an internment camp had been set up at Glenbranter, near Strachur.135 Focusing on the natural beauties of the area, Tognini did not want to describe the work camp, which was located in the grounds of Glenbranter House, and which during the Second World War was called Camp 6.136 A few years later, Les Servini in A Boy from Bardi recounted that Warth Mills—the camp where he was detained before being transferred to the Isle of Man—was a “disused isolated, dilapidated cotton mill,” which was “encircled by barbed wire.”137 Built in 1891 and situated in the Redvales area of Bury, alongside the river Irwell, it was closed in the mid-1930s and re-opened in 1940 to take “Category A” internees alongside captured Nazis.138 At the heart of a cultural project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Warth Mills accommodated thousands of prisoners who were of Italian, German and Austrian extraction, and who were conducted first to the port of Liverpool and then to the Isle of Man, Canada or Australia. As Pieri recounts, it had “no electricity” and poor “lavatory facilities”139; furthermore, “the sights, sounds and smells were dreadful.”140 Luckily, he started his train journey to Liverpool after a week. It was 1 July 1940 and he and his companions “watched as the Arandora Star drew away.”141 The day after they embarked on the Ettrick and finally reached the Île Sainte Hélène in Canada. When they arrived on 15th July, he could see the “Cabot Straits,” the “Gulf of St Lawrence”142 and “the  Ibid., 25.  See “PoW Camp 6 Glenbranter Camp,” Repatriated Landscape. The Search for WWII PoW Camps in the British Landscape, https://repatriatedlandscape.org/pow-sites-in-scotland/pow-camp-6-glenbranter-camp/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 137  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 22. 138  For further information consider the Warth Mills Project, which “is funded through the Heritage Lottery Fund and tells the story of one of the largest internment camps in wartime Britain,” https://www.warthmillsproject.com/about/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 139  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 5, “Warth Mills,” par. 1–2. 140  Ibid., par. 3. 141  Ibid., par. 11. 142  Ibid., Ch. 8, “Reception,” par. 1. 135 136

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Chateau Frontenac.”143 Although he was only struck by the beauty of the nature, he still remembered that his new train journey to Camp 43 included “Pont Rouge,” “Deshanboult” [sic] and “Trois Rivières.”144 Even today they are all beautiful rural centres in the heart of Québec and rich also from an architectural point of view. Of course, the focus in Pieri’s narration is on his three-year experience on the Île Sainte Hélène. A black and white map helps us to visualise the area,145 so that the reader can see where Camp 43 was exactly located and how close it was to the city of Montreal. As it was surrounded by the river St Lawrence, and the camp was protected by a thick wall of “barbed wire,” it was conceived as an almost unescapable fortress.146 Pieri’s detailed description of the camp—complete with a clear reference to the city of Montreal, to “the heights of Mount Royal,” as well as “the Jacques Cartier bridge”—can be found in one of the opening sequences of the chapter entitled “Ile Sainte Hélène.” This too is followed by a drawing of the three-floor building: Across the front of the building a seven-foot-high, double-wire fence had been erected to form a courtyard about 100ft wide by 350ft long. At either end of the fence stood an elevated wooden tower, each equipped with a heavy machine-gun manned by three soldiers. The whole structure ran parallel to the river, separated from it by some 50 yards of gently sloping ground. Across the river lay the city of Montreal, surmounted by a huge neon illuminated crucifix on the heights of Mount Royal beyond. Dominating the scene was the impressive structure of the Jacques Cartier bridge as it passed over the northern end of the building, with one of its giant concrete pylons almost touching the perimeter fence of the compound. The old fortress of Ste [sic] Hélène, built so many years by Champlain on the island named after his young bride, was now serving as an internment camp for 407 Italian prisoners.147

Pieri never forgot the sense of claustrophobia that he and the other internees experienced during their stay in Camp 43. Although they engaged in cultural or more purely entertaining activities to break their dull life  Ibid., par. 2.  Ibid., par. 5. 145  Ibid., par. 12. 146  Ibid., Ch. 18, “Escape,” par. 7. 147  Ibid., Ch. 9, “Ile Sainte Hélène,” par. 3. 143 144

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routine, at a certain moment some of them—“Franz von Werra,”148 “George Martinez,” “Festa,”149 “John Agostini”150 and “George Barletta”151—tried to escape. Once again, the topographical details in the narration provide evidence of their desire for freedom: Pieri writes about the “strong” “current of the St Lawrence,” about “the US border which lay some 50 miles away,”152 also about a “road sign with the name La Prairie.”153 The memory of the stunning sight of the city of Montreal from the summit of Mount Royal,154 though, always helped them to endure the severe punishment to which they were inflicted.155 The transatlantic journey back home in 1943 symbolically represents a rite of passage. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, they embarked on The Queen Elizabeth, and after just a few days they docked at Greenock, one of the largest ports in Scotland. “[T]here they boarded a large ferry for the short crossing to the Isle of Man”156: On this journey, however, there were no guards, no barbed wire and no claustrophobic confinement in a hold. For the short journey we had the freedom of the ship and could mix freely with the passengers, most of whom were Italians and Germans of both sexes and of all ages on their way to visit relatives in the various camps on the island.157

The map in Kochan’s Britain’s Internees in the Second World War shows that there were seven internment camps on the small island in the Irish Sea.158 They were all located on its coasts, but most of them were in the south, in Port Erin, Port St. Mary and Castletown. They had been established in 1940 also to solve the local population’s difficult economic

 Ibid., Ch. 18, “Escape,” par. 1.  Ibid., par. 8. 150  Ibid., par. 23. 151  Ibid., par. 32. 152  Ibid., par 26. 153  Ibid., par. 28. 154  Ibid., par. 37. 155  Ibid., par. 20. 156  Ibid., Ch. 21, “Return,” par. 8. 157  Ibid. 158   See Mirian Kochan, Britain’s Internees in the Second World War (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1983), xii. 148 149

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condition: by the end of July over 23,000 enemy aliens were interned, even though their number increased considerably in the following months.159 Peppino Leoni, the famed proprietor of the Quo Vadis restaurant in London, was detained in Douglas and could only remember “the thick barbed-wire fence”160 which surrounded the whole camp. As regards Les Servini and Joe Pieri, they were respectively taken to the nearby Palace Camp—which was close to Little Switzerland and consisted of twenty-­ eight houses161—and the historic Onchan Camp. The latter was the largest on the island and its over sixty houses were situated on a headland overlooking the sea, Derby Castle and the city of Douglas. Considering his three-year experience as an internee in Canada, Pieri defined it as “a holiday camp”: The contrast between Camp 43 and the Camps on the Isle of Man could not have been greater. On the Isle of Man internment zones had been formed by wiring off areas of terraced houses and small hotels and designating them as camps. Two or three men shared each bedroom, and toilet facilities and living accommodation were more than adequate. There was space in abundance. We were assigned to the Onchan Camp, and to “the Canadians,” as we were immediately christened by the men there, the place had the appearance of a holiday camp!162

Dedicating two chapters of A Sense of Belonging to his detention, Hector Emanuelli actually stayed on the western coast of the island, in Peveril Camp. Located near the little town of Peel, it “consisted of a row of large Victorian guesthouses situated at the end of the Promenade” “and of several terraces of smaller houses, all enclosed by barbed wire.”163 The photographs of him and other internees in 1941 and 1942164 show that “apart from confinement, conditions were favourable”165: in those years he too had the chance to improve his level of education, while engaging in several recreational activities with his inmates. It would not be so during the time 159  For though information about the internment camps on the Isle of Man, see Connery Chappell, Island of Barbed Wire. The Remarkable Story of World War Two Internment on the Isle of Man (London: Robert Hale, 2005). 160  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 23. 161  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 25. 162  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 21, “Return,” par. 10. 163  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 78. 164  Ibid., 85–86. 165  Ibid., 78.

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that he spent in Brixton Prison in London before he was finally released in 1943.

3.4   Aftermath The post-war years were extremely painful for the Italian community in Britain. Its members were still “mourning for the fathers, sons and brothers they had lost on the Arandora Star”166; furthermore, they were still victims of a strong anti-Italian sentiment. A third-generation Italian Scot, Anne Pia defines her family life in the 1950s as “raw, relentless [and] merciless.”167 Evidence, however, that in the following decades her—and the Italians’—rich socio-cultural contribution was appreciated can be found in the following passage: I am grateful to a friend, Beth who when I told her about this book, said, “I sometimes wonder that the Scottish Italian community wanted to stay on here post-war. I remember my mum talking about the horror of what was done, and later, Italian friends and neighbours told me more. I am very glad that the Italian Scots did stay. Scotland is greatly enriched by the Italian community.”168

Interestingly, apart from the value of this important social recognition, most Italian British writers relate this final part of their integration process to the way they lived—even appropriated—urban spaces. In his memoir, for instance, Servini refers not only to the “great plans” “in Aberavon” “to create a town in Sandfields,” but also more importantly to the dramatic changes in the commercial centre169: most Italian families’ shops in “Water Street” and “High Street” were closed, and even “great communities like Vivian Square, Charlotte Street, yes, and Margam Terrace” suddenly disappeared.170 Scholarly research has showed that even a larger city like Swansea underwent the same type of transformation after the 19–21

 Ibid., 111.  Pia, A Language of My Choosing, 18. 168  Ibid., 41. 169  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 39. 170  Ibid. 166 167

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February 1941 bombing raids.171 This too had a strong demographical and social impact on the Italian community. In point of fact, in the early years of the reconstruction, both Servini and Pieri left their hometowns and respectively settled in Llanharan and Bearsden. The former, which is located in the Rhondda district, was witness to “another Italian invasion”—“[t]here was lack of man-power [there], so the Italians, […] left a country still unstable and reeling from the war […] to work in farming, in mining, on tinplate”172—and to a great change in the author’s life, who for the first time found a new occupation in the manufacturing industry. As regards Bearsden, six miles from the centre of Glasgow, it symbolically represented the place where Pieri offered his four children greater social and learning opportunities. Far from the Gorbals, they all “became university graduates in medicine, law and in the arts.”173 It is possible to find the same pride and sense of accomplishment in those narratives whose authors or main protagonists continued to live where their families had settled down. Starting from autobiographical writings, Elena Salvoni, who had just joined Bianchi’s, depicted a lively picture of 1950 Soho: this was one of the few areas in London where “there was little or no snobbery,”174 but most importantly it offered great opportunities: her restaurant soon became a meeting point for celebrities, who admired her for her transnational identity and high professional skills. It was only in the 1960s that “the streets round Soho” changed, thus mirroring the new more “permissive” trends in British society.175 Colourful and more and more inclusive, British cities were thus dynamic spaces where it was possible to grow and take new directions. This was true, for instance, for Olivia Crolla and Neapolitan Carlo Contini, who chose “the North British Hotel in Princes Street, right beside Waverly Station,” as the perfect venue for their wedding in Edinburgh in 1952.176 It had already hosted four Italian weddings in the previous two years, but

171  This tragic event has been recently remembered. See David Dulin, “Swansea Still Regenerating 75 Years after Blitz,” BBC News, February 19, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/ news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-35494885. Accessed 31 May 2023. 172  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 43. 173  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 22, “Aftermath,” par. 15. 174  Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho, 67. 175  Ibid., 141. 176  Contini, Dear Alfonso, 217.

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it significantly had a strong “European” atmosphere,177 which clearly showed the new multicultural trait of the city. Fully integrated into their hometowns, the new generation of British people of Italian descent was now open to travel and culturally stimulating experiences. Anne Pia both in Language of My Choosing and Keeping Away the Spiders nostalgically remembers  her one-year sojourn in France in 1969–1970. Cities such as Paris and Montpellier had a huge influence on her, especially on the construction of her complex identity. For the first time, though, references to the “Bibliothèque Nationale”178 and to the “Tuileries gardens” in Paris179—also to another small town such as Millau in l’Aveyron in the Midi-Pyrénées180—became marginal with respect to the significance of her experience. While she was there, she “was not Italian, not Scottish, but culturally open and growing.”181 The reason she “arrived back in Edinburgh with deep reluctance”182 is that she had learned to “value who she was” and had received “love and affirmation,” thus a whole “life.”183

Bibliography Primary Sources Arcari, Anita. The Hokey Pokey Man. Aberystwyth: Y Lolfa, 2010. Contini, Mary. Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006. Contini, Mary. Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2019. Coraggioso, Cagliardo (D’Agostino, Eugenio). Wandering Minstrel. New Edition by Carlo Pirozzi. Woking: Nielsen Book Services, 2018. Cruciani, Rafaella. An Owl in the Kitchen: The Discovery of My Italian Heritage. Bloomington: Xlibris, 2016. Kindle. Di Mambro, Ann Marie. Tally’s Blood. Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2012. Emanuelli, Hector. A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman. Langenfeld: Six Town Books, 2010.  Ibid. 219.  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 103. 179  Ibid., We should also consider the poem entitled Tuileries on p. 111. 180  Ibid., 104. 181  Ibid., 106. 182  Ibid., 110. 183  Ibid. 177 178

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Ferrari, Lilie. Fortunata. London, New York, Toronto: BCA, 1993. Hughes, Melanie. War Changes Everything. Manningtree: Patrician Press, 2017. Leoni, Peppino. I Shall Die on the Carpet. London: Leslie Frewin, 1966. Moscardini, Bernard. La Vacanza. Kennoway: Spiderwize, 2009. Pelosi, Paulette. “Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper.” In Even the Rain Is Different. Women Writing on the Highs and Lows of Living Abroad, edited by Gwineth Tyson Roberts, 223–228. Aberystwyth: Honno Autobiography, 2005. Pia, Anne. Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot. Edinburgh: Luath, 2017. Pieri, Joe. The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2005. Pieri, Joe. River of Memory. Memoirs of a Scots-Italian. Edinburgh: Mercatpress, 2006. Pieri, Joe. The Bigmen. Personal Memories of Glasgow’s Police. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2011. Kindle. Pieri, Joe. Tales of the Savoy. Stories of a Glasgow Café. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2012. Kindle. Pieri, Joe. Isle of the Displaced. An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War. Glasgow: Neil Publishing, 2014. Kindle. Rossi, Robert. Italian Blood British Heart. Independently Published, 2019. Kindle. Rossi, Robert. Jewish Blood Italian Heart. Independently Published, 2020. Kindle. Salvoni, Elena. Elena. A Life in Soho. With Sandy Fawkes. London: Quartet Books, 1990. Servini, Les. A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times. Cardiff: Hazeltree, 1994. Spinetti, Victor. Victor Spinetti Up Front… His Strictly Confidential Autobiography. With Peter Rankin. London: Robson Books, 2006. Tognini, Piero. A Mind at War. New York: Vantage Press, 1990.

Secondary Sources Arcari, Virginia. Picinisco: Uncovering 1000 Years of History. Independently Published, 2017. Arcari Caporicci, Teresa. Alle Serre di Picinisco. Memorie di emigrazione, guerra, liberazione. Sora: Centro Studi Sorani “Vincenzo Patriarca,” 2006. Armanini, Michele. Ligures Apuani, Lunigiana storica, Garfagnana e Versilia prima dei Romani. Padova: Libreriauniversitaria, 2015. Battistelli, Pierpaolo. Assault on the Gothic Line 1944: The Allied Attempted Breakthrough into Northern Italy. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. Besagni, Olive. A Better Life. A History of London’s Italian Immigrant Families in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the 19th & 20th Centuries. London: Camden History Society, 2011.

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Chappell, Connery. Island of Barbed Wire. The Remarkable Story of World War Two Internment on the Isle of Man. London: Robert Hale, 2005. Colpi, Terri. The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 1991. Crawford, Robert. On Glasgow and Edinburgh. Cambridge, MS, and London: Harvard University Press, 2013. Desalvo, Fausto. Statistiche ufficiali, governative e ISTAT sull’emigrazione dalla regione Emilia-Romagna e dalle sue province tra il 1869 e il 2016. Bologna: Consulta degli emiliano-romagnoli nel mondo, 2016. Guadagno, Valter. Ferrovia ed economia nell’Ottocento post-unitario. Roma: Edizioni CAFI, 1996. Hughes, Colin. Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. The Italian Community in South Wales 1881–1945. Bridgend: Seren, 1991. Kochan, Miriam. Britain’s Internees in the Second World War. London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1983. MacFarlane, Colin. The Real Gorbals Story. True Tales from Glasgow’s Meanest Streets. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 2007. Moraglio, Massimo. “Le politiche viarie in Italia da fine Ottocento al regime fascista.” Studi storici 45, no. 2 (2004): 555–580. Nuova enciclopedia italiana, ovvero, dizionario generale di scienze, lettere, industrie. Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1887. Panayi, Panikos. Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain, 1815–1945. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. Panayi, Panikos. Spicing Up Britain. The Multicultural History of British Food. London: Reaktion Books, 2008. Kindle. Parry, Stephen. History of the Steel Industry in the Port Talbot Area 1900–1988. PhD diss. University of Leeds, 2011. Pellew, Jill. “The Home Office and the Aliens Act, 1905.” The Historical Journal 39, no. 2 (1989): 369–385. Plowman, Jeffrey. Monte Cassino: Amoured Forces in the Battle for the Gustav Line. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2018. Ruspini, Paolo. Migrants Unbound. London: Transnational Press, 2019. Sponza, Lucio. Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Realities and Images. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988.

Web Resources Chezzi, Bruna. “Welsh-Italian Authors—Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man.” Welsh Italians. n.d. http://www.welshitalians.com/welsh-­italian-­authors. Dulin, David. “Swansea Still Regenerating 75 Years after Blitz.” BBC News, February 19, 2016. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-­wales-­south-­westwales-­ 35494885.

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“Il Censimento straordinario del 1849: un panorama a metà secolo.” n.d. Centro di documentazione sull’emigrazione parmense. http://www.emigrazioneparmense.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar ticle&id=103& Itemid=229. McKay, Gabriel. “Italy’s Most Scottish Town Plans Even Closer Ties with Glasgow Opera in the Pipeline.” The Herald, December 2, 2022. https://www. heraldscotland.com/news/23163956.barga-­italys-­scottish-­town-­seeks-­even-­ closer-­ties/. “Piano paesaggistico Garfagnana e Val di Lima,” Firenze: Regione Toscana, 2020. https://www.r egione.toscana.it/documents/10180/11801512/ Ambito+03_garfagnana.pdf/e497023c-­2ff8-­408d-­9a59-­37a6454258ef.

CHAPTER 4

From Street Musicians to Educators and Actors: The Long Road to Social Integration

Anne Pia’s account of such an important cultural experience should be considered emblematic. It was thanks to her new encounter with otherness that she developed a clearer perception of her transnational identity. In the following years she could finally distance herself from her family’s traditional values and find more personal ways of expression. The latest academic research has proved that the construction of multicultural identities is strongly related to socioeconomic class and position: Berry and Sam, for instance, are clear on the psychological implications of such an important factor, also on migrants’ need first to be considered an integral part of the social texture of their host countries, and then to improve their condition.1 From this point of view, Italian British literary narratives provide a lucid picture of the process of integration of the Italians in England, Wales and Scotland. Once again, thorough information about the connection between “the time of arrival, the occupation and the area of origin of each group of migrants”2 can be found in Terri Colpi’s The Italian Factor and in Hugh

1  See John W. Berry and David L. Sam, “Multicultural Societies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Multicultural Identity, ed. Verónica Benet-Martinéz and Ying-Yi Hong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 98–99; and Jennifer Cook, “Transnational Migration and the Lived Experience of Class Across Borders,” in Handbook of Culture and Migration, ed. Jeffrey H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci (Cheltenham: Elgar Publishing, 2021), 232. 2  This specific quote is from Colpi, The Italian Factor, 91.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. D’Amore, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0_4

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Shankland’s Out of Italy.3 Starting from the key concept of chain migration, the two studies plainly explain how the figure of the padrone—“a pioneer who had been successful at establishing himself at a destination”4— gradually “transformed the process of emigration into a business.”5 Eugenio D’Agostino6 has shown the darkest sides of a system which in Britain emerged between 1830 and 1839,7 yet it is also undeniable that for most Italians, having a reference point and a job in the city where they had decided to live was reassuring. Thus, Italian newcomers depended on these padroni and began as street musicians or “hokey pokey” men. Their aim, though, was to make their way in the catering industry and open their own cafés, ice-cream parlours or fish and chip shops. It was thanks to their skills and commitment that they finally granted a better life to their families and left an indelible mark in the history of British food culture. They were indeed the first who promoted the taste and quality of artisan gelato, and more importantly, who made fish and chips the most popular British national dish.8 Considering that they finally controlled over 80% of this latter trade especially in Wales and Scotland, we may now say that fish fryers such as the Pieris and the Di Ciaccas in Scotland or the Spinettis in Wales contributed to the creation of a symbolic bridge connecting Britain and Italy. The colourful sagre del pesce e patate (fish and chip festivals), which are organised by Italian Scots in towns such as Barga and Bardi during the summer,9 represent a strong pole of attraction not only for the local communities, but also for tourists even today. Unsurprisingly, as Giancarlo

 See also Shankland, Out of Italy, 107–115.  Colpi, The Italian Factor, 34. 5  Ibid. 6  Coraggioso (D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel, 67–70, 71. See the extracts included in chapter 8 of this volume. 7  See Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain, 69; and Shankland, Out of Italy, 83, 92–94. 8  See Panayi, Spicing Up Britain, Ch. 2, “Immigration and the Emergence of ‘Ghetto’ Food,” par. 64–65; and Panikos Panayi, An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism since 1800 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 283–284. 9  For a historical account of this transcultural phenomenon see Panayi, Spicing Up Britain, Ch. 3, “The Birth of a Foreign Restaurant,” par. 40–41. Detailed information about the traditional festival in Barga can be found at “Sagra del pesce e patate—Fish and Chips in Barga,” Barganews, August 13, 2022, https://www.barganews.com/2022/08/13/sagra-­ del-­pesce-e-patate-fish-and-chips-in-barga/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 3 4

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Rinaldi reports in From the Serchio to the Solway, in 1993 BBC Scotland dedicated a documentary specifically to this tradition.10 Italian immigrants were mostly engaged in the catering industry until the end of the Second World War. Due to the rapid growth of the building and industrial sectors—“and the desperate shortage of English labours”11—a new influx of Italian immigrants finally arrived in Britain. As Joe Pieri explains, this was indeed the effect of “an agreement signed between the governments of Britain and Italy,” “which allowed the entry of 2,000 women to work in the textile industries” and of an equal amount of men who were recruited “in the construction industry and in the brickmaking factories.”12 The case of Bedford in eastern England has been at the heart of several scholarly contributions,13 yet it is undeniable that the phenomenon of “bulk recruitment” led to the formation of “entirely new Italian Communities” also “in Peterborough, and, in the 1960s, Nottingham.”14 Divided into four sub-sections whose titles indicate the place that the protagonists of Italian British narratives occupied in the job market, this chapter will recount the immigrants’ path towards integration. Starting from the late modern period, when most of them lived in poor city areas and worked on the street, it will focus on their ability to diversify their activities and offer an important contribution to the economic growth of England, Wales and Scotland. Italianness played a crucial role in their success: Britons could not but appreciate their openness and warm hospitality. From this point of view, through their stories, we will also see the impact that this important factor had on the salient phases of their development. They could finally enjoy the fruits of their hard work and became the proud owners of important cafés, restaurants and hotels: the multimillionaire Charles Forte, for instance, was the CEO and chairman of the Forte 10  See Rinaldi, From the Serchio to the Solway, 77. It may be of interest to note that the BBC documentary—Pesce e patate: A Celebration of Scots-Italians—is still available at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=pInFUhRHML4. Accessed 31 May 2023. 11  Tosi, Immigration and Bilingual Education, 43–44. 12  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 137. 13  See, for instance, Tosi, Immigration and Bilingual Education, 43–70; Colpi, The Italian Factor, 153–158; and Siria Guzzo, A Sociolinguistic Insight into the Italian Community in the UK: Workplace Language as an Identity Market. With a Preface by David Britain (Newcastle-­ upon-­Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 5–14. 14  See also Colpi, The Italian Factor, 145.

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Group until the early 1990s; although they belonged to different generations, Servini, Emanuelli, Spinetti and Pia chose alternative careers, which gave them the opportunity not only to put their knowledge and skills to use, but also to show their creativity. Organising contents in a chronological order, this chapter aims to supplement the numerous historical and sociological contributions on the Italian immigrant community. Its textual basis, in fact, gives voice not only to the suffering of its members, but also to their sense of achievement. The arc that they followed clearly confirms that we should now go beyond stereotypes and value their great cultural contribution.

4.1   Padroni, Organ Grinders and Hokey Pokey Men Thus, once again, we will begin from the late 1800s. Eugenio D’Agostino’s Wandering Minstrel represents the earliest literary testimony by an Italian emigrant. He left from the Laziale hamlet of Picinisco in 1892 at the age of ten, and after he and his father arrived in Newhaven, they reached London.15 It was in Leather Lane—“where the first Italian musicians had stayed”—that his father, a skilled player of “a home-made clarinet called piffera,”16 bought some “accordions” and “small barrel organs.”17 They were part of a larger group of 12, whose members depended on a cruel padrone called Cesare Tascarino: their contract would last three years.18 It was on this occasion that he learned how to play an accordion. Taken from chapter 2, “I Go to England and I Begin My Adventures,” the following extract shows how difficult his first experience was: The next move was to teach us what we were to do, so for the first time in my life I was supplied with an accordion and I had to play it and beg for money and food. I was sent to a lonely house, a little distant from the road and instructed what to do. I went there, opened the accordion, and tried to play it. I could hardly keep the instruments in my hand. I kept touching the notes for a long time and then went to the door and knocked several times, as I had been told to do, but no one appeared at the door. I was puzzled at this, and still kept knocking and looking around at the windows. […] I went  Coraggioso (D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel, 56.  Ibid., 49. 17  Ibid., 56. 18  Ibid. 15 16

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away wondering and joined the others, thinking all the time why the people in the house did not give me money and food. No wonder, it was an empty house, and had been empty for many years. I had made a bad start. Others did more or less the same thing. […] It was the same thing every day—nothing but tramp, tramp, all the time, playing the accordion and begging for food and money, sleeping in different, filthy beds almost every night. […] [W]herever I went, the boys and girls followed me in large numbers, laughing at me, throwing stones, shouting, and making a fool of me. […] I was nothing but a clown and a target for kids.19

Young D’Agostino moved to Wales, changed his musical repertoire and even used a little monkey to entertain his public. Writing in the late 1930s—when he was now a successful businessman in Edinburgh—he could thus still remember the times when he was a victim of physical violence, or when he was detained in prison. Despite all the hardships that he had to face in those first years, he overtly admitted that after he freed himself from his padrone, he could not renounce his nomadic life and especially music. An important documentary testimony of the time, Raniero Paolucci’s I girovaghi italiani in Inghilterra ed i suonatori ambulanti denounces the condition of exploitation of Italian organ grinders in Britain, while providing precise regional and local data. Interestingly, in 1893 there were 920 street musicians in London, 13 in Swansea, 200 in Edinburgh-Leith and 130 in Glasgow.20 Despite the patriot Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) having taken effective measures to offer those unfortunate children concrete educational opportunities,21 the national press and the editorial market continued to report the complete lack of hygiene and of legality in the district where they lived.22 Proposing the same nightmarish descriptions that The St. James’ Gazette, The Lancet or The Evening Standard offered of the Holborn area in those years,23 Anita Arcari in The Hokey Pokey Man

 Ibid., 57, 60.  Raniero Paolucci di Calboli, I girovaghi italiani in Inghilterra ed i suonatori ambulanti (Città di Castello: Lapi, 1893), 209–211. 21  Ibid., 141. Here Paolucci refers to the school that Mazzini founded in Grenville Street in London in 1841. 22  Ibid. 23  Ibid., 160, 162. 19 20

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also shows that Italian children and young adolescents were employed as ice-cream street peddlers. The protagonist Tino D’Abruzzo was indeed one of them. He had just arrived in London and was working for “Zi Giuseppe.” Taken from chapter 7, the following extract shows how he contributed to his trade and how appreciated he was. On a special occasion such as the Golden Jubilee, the Italian phrase “Ecco poco!” [Try a little!]—which was mispronounced as “hokey pokey”—represented an irresistible call for Londoners who literally assaulted their new ice-cream cart: As the end of the procession came nearer, people’s attention began to turn to ice-cream. It was a lovely, sunny day, just right for business and Giuseppe sent the handcarts further afield, so that they wouldn’t be in competition with each other. As he had predicted, the new ice-cream cart complete with Nero, was a big attraction. It was as much as they could to keep up with the demand. “Ecco poco!,” they would call, tempting passers-by with the familiar cry and sure enough, for much of the time there were queues of people waiting “to try a little” of their delicious home-made ices. Giuseppe had recently acquired a new bowler hat, tipping it comically towards the back of his head while Tino sported a flat cap. They both wore a clean outer sleeve over the jacket sleeve of the arm they used to serve ices. There were spotless white towels hanging from the side rails and a pail of water for washing the glasses after use. There had been a lot of controversy about ice-cream sellers; many were not as clean as they could have been, others were decidedly grubby. The Board of Health had raised concerns, because there were cases reported of people being made ill after eating ices from street vendors. Giuseppe was adamant that no-one could ever make accusations like that about his ice-­ cream, his was not only the cleanest, but the best.24

Lucio Sponza confirms that in the 1890s ice-cream making and selling represented one of the most profitable occupations of the Italians in London.25 Apart from the positive effects of the economic boom of those years, the success that they achieved was also the product of the tireless commitment of the Italian Swiss immigrant Carlo Gatti (1817–1878). He had settled in London in the 1850s and had made huge profits from the “standard penny ice-mix.” As the “frozen flavoured custard” was made up  Ibid., 170.  See Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth Century Britain, 96–97.

24 25

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of simple ingredients like “fresh milk, eggs, sugar, cornflower and a stick of vanilla”—and it was easy to prepare26—Italian immigrants fitted barrows with small braziers and sold hot roasted chestnuts only in the winter.27 Domenica de Rosa in The Italian Quarter clearly relates these trades to those who originally came from the regions of Garfagnana and Lunigiana.28 It was, however, in the closing decades of the century that the “Ice Age” began.29 The primitive conditions in which so many produced this delicacy—also the use of “licking glasses” that had to be washed between customers30—raised hot medical debates on the Italian quarter and its inhabitants. Despite the fact that the latter were mercilessly depicted as “a horde of unwashed, illiterate, semi barbarous foreigners,”31 ice-cream carts continued to be popular and even spread all over the country.32 Things changed for the better at the turn of the century. More and more Italians had the opportunity to open their first cafés and ice-cream parlours, which means that “in 1933 the Italian Association of Ice-cream Vendors had 4,200 members with branches in London, Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and South Wales.”33 Compared to the late Victorian period, the new proprietors may find it more difficult to obtain their licences from the local health officers, but at the end of a long bureaucratic process the majority of them managed to improve their social position, thus actively contributing to the economy of their home country.

 Shankland, Out of Italy, 120.  Geraldine M.  Quinzio, Of Sugar and Snow. A History of Ice-Cream Making (Berkley: University of California Press, 2009), 106. 28  de Rosa, The Italian Quarter, 104. 29  Shankland, Out of Italy, 120. 30  de Rosa, The Italian Quarter, 107. 31  Shankland, Out of Italy, 124. 32  On the use of ice-cream carts and bikes in Dumfries in those same years see Rinaldi, From the Serchio to the Solway, 8. 33  Panayi, Spicing Up Britain, Ch. 3, “The Birth of the Foreign Restaurant,” par. 37. 26 27

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4.2   Fish Fryers, Confectionaries and Restaurateurs Joe Pieri rightly contends that setting up “a little shop” represented a “dream” for all Italian immigrants34: they employed all their skills to reach their goal, also their determination and spirit of sacrifice. Les Servini, for instance—who sold “ice-creams, teas, cigarettes and sweets” in Aberavon in south Wales—certainly “knew no boy’s life”35; as for his family, who were free from any Italian padroni, they continued to “work like slaves.” Detailed information about the rise of “bracchis” and of “temperance bars” in early twentieth-century Wales can be found in Colin Hughes’s Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. This new phenomenon was linked to the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit of the Bracchi, Fulgoni and Rabaiotti families, who all came from Bardi and had made their fortunes in the Valleys. They too had begun as ice-cream street vendors and had invested their profits in their first shops.36 Successful businessmen and powerful padroni who sold “ice-cream, sweets, tobacco, [and] hot drinks such as oxo,”37 they soon persuaded the youngest members of their families to cross the Channel and work for them. Caterina Fulgoni, Servini’s mother, was one of them. Hughes confirms that in those years street vending complemented the running of the shops. This was true not only for the rich above-mentioned families, who fried fish and chips to ensure a steady flow of sales in the winter,38 but also for the Servinis, who struggled to “make a living.”39 Drawing the reader’s attention to the strong anti-Italian sentiment which pervaded Britain in the 1930s,40 Joe Pieri explains that despite their hard work, he and the other members of the Italian community in Glasgow were “tolerated” “but not quite accepted,”41 which may explain why they became even more united and determined to avoid any internal conflicts.

 Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 19.  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 11. 36  Hughes, Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla, 36–37. 37  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 8. 38  Hughes, Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla, 39. 39  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 12. 40  See also Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 87. From the point of view of scholarly research, consider Colpi, Italians’ Count in Scotland, 127. 41  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 18. 34 35

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In point of fact, they had long established their shops in the same city areas. They could be located in the centre or in the suburbs, but they carefully diversified their production lines, so that they could get on well together and work on Sundays.42 It must have been for these reasons that following “Zio Benny’s” precious advice, Alfonso Crolla decided to open his first confectionary shop in Elm Road in Edinburgh.43 The narrator of Dear Olivia clearly expresses all his pride when he first inaugurated it: The front windows of the shop were decorated with Fry’s and Cadbury’s brands. The travelling representatives from these manufacturers dressed the windows with their products free of charge for a commitment of steady orders. Inside, the shop was long and narrow, with a high ceiling, and walls lined with wooden shelves. The backs of the shelves were mirrored, making them look deeper and full of stock, even if there was just one row of goods. A wooden counter stretched down the right-hand side with a till and scales at the door. Behind a glass partition was a small seating area with six or seven round marble tables and chairs. A fire at the back wall and glass lamps made the whole area cosy and warm. Alfonso felt very proud to stand behind his own counter. The customers were suspicious at first, but were gradually enticed by his charming manner. As soon as he knew their names he greeted them personally, making them feel important. He was especially careful to treat the women with the utmost respect, but was gracious and flattering to them as well.44

This was one of the numerous Italian confectionary shops in Scotland before the outbreak of the First World War. Scholarly research has showed that in 1911 there were 2,344, which was the product of a steady increase in this type of activity.45 Apart from the effects of the growing phenomenon of chain migration, it is undeniable that the British government had taken effective measures to reduce street vending and vagrancy since the closing decades of the nineteenth century.46 As a result, it had become easier for

 See Hughes, Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla, 45; and Colpi Italians’ Count in Scotland, 23.  Contini, Dear Olivia, 106–107. 44  Ibid., 107–108. 45  See Colpi, The Italian Factor, 63. 46  See Paolucci di Calboli, I girovaghi italiani in Inghilterra, 147–153. 42 43

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immigrants to open their shops, which however were subject to ever stricter forms of control and of sanitary regulations.47 More Italians would be employed in the catering industry in the following years. Highly appreciated for their extrovert personality and kindness, they enhanced their businesses, even diversifying their production lines48: in the early 1920s, for instance, Cesidio Di Ciacca’s shop in Cockenzie “was split into two, selling ice cream and confectionery on the left side of a wooden partition [and frying] fish and chips on the other.”49 “Tommy Dougal,” a deaf and dumb Scotsman, would “help him with the fish,”50 while he took extreme care in the preparation of his ice-cream. The following passage provides evidence that the immigrants’ trade had now greatly progressed from the customary combination of back-kitchen factory and street sales51: Twice a week a gallon can of warm fresh milk was delivered to the back door. In the back room, Cesidio was standing over a deep pot of simmering milk, balanced on a square gas ring. He had added sugar, double cream and butter and two or three pungent oily vanilla pods that he kept in a jar. He was stirring the creamy mixture rhythmically with a long wooden spoon with a metal paddle attached at the end. “What a wonderful smell.” Marietta breathed in deeply. “It reminds me of when I was in London when I was young. Oh, Cesidio, it seems like a lifetime away.” “Here, taste it.”52

The inter-war years represented a “golden era” for Italian businesses especially in Scotland.53 It was then that their “hard work began to show rewards,” and that even Joe Pieri’s father finally made his “dream come true”: the “little fish and chip shop” that he opened “in the suburb of Glasgow” represented a new beginning for him and the whole family.54 47  See Nicoletta Franchi, La Via della Scozia. L’emigrazione barghigiana e lucchese a Glasgow tra Ottocento e Novecento (Lucca: Fondazione Paolo Cresci, 2014), 49. 48  John Walton, Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 1870–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 37. 49  Contini, Dear Olivia, 152. For further information about this type of business in Scotland, particularly in the Dumfries area, see Rinaldi, From the Serchio to the Solway, 15. 50  Ibid., 154. 51  Shankland, Out of Italy, 138. 52  Contini, Dear Olivia, 154. 53  See Walton, Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 37; and Colpi, Italians’ Count in Scotland, 127. 54  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 19.

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Walton contends that 80% of Scotland’s fish fryers were Italian at the time.55 The origins of this dish are still uncertain—they may be related to the Jewish community in London in the 1850s—yet, the recipe and its preparation were soon appropriated by the Italians from the Picinisco and Barga areas. Setting up a fish and chip shop, in fact, was tiring, hot and smelly, but it was inexpensive56: it may be for these reasons that between 1890 and 1914 the number of business units increased to 4,500. Despite the economic crisis which had been caused by the First World War, this trade quickly recovered. The majority of shops were located in Fitzrovia in London and in the industrial districts of the north of England, yet we cannot ignore the fact that this sector of the catering industry had a significant development in the other countries, as well as in Ireland. It was 1932, for instance, when a popular English fryer called “Chat chip” visited Aberdeen and, commenting on the role of the Italians in the spread of such a popular national dish, thundered: “What in the world have Scotsmen been doing to let these foreigners predominate what is pre-­ eminently a British institution?”57 The overall picture became more complicated in the following years. In Wales, for instance, “oil was replacing coal” and “miners’ wages were under pressure.”58 As there seemed to be little or no hope for cafés and restaurants, the Emanuellis decided to leave the Valleys and to move to England. The John’s Temperance Bar in Tunstall in the Potteries area offered “teas, refreshments, cakes and confectionary.”59 Unfortunately, it took the local customers quite a long time to appreciate them: Trade was slow to start, but then—driven perhaps by curiosity—the girls from the pottery factory in Keel Street started to come in for the cakes and Cornish pasties that my mother had started to bake. Men from the slaughter house, also from Keel Street, came in for the morning coffee-break. Gradually we found that trade was increasing and that we had been accepted. Father had started to make his ice-cream again, and workers on their way home from work would call in for a wafer.60  Walton, Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 38.  David Gentilcore, Italy and the Potato: A History, 1550–2000 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 121. 57  Walton, Fish and Chips, and the British Working Class, 37. 58  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 31 59  Ibid., 46. 60  Ibid. 55 56

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After young Emanuelli left school, he took a job at the Gordon Pottery works. It was 1937 when he started pushing handcarts to sell his father’s ice-cream: considering the profits, the family soon decided to invest in that activity and to purchase their first motorised ice-cream van. It was “orange, cream and chocolate,”61 but more importantly, it gave them the opportunity of reaching more customers in the surrounding area. They thus closed their old bar and opened a new one. It was called Wonder Bar and Emanuelli beautifully decorated it.62 This partly confirms that the condition of Italian immigrants was very unequal in Britain in the 1930s and that Scotland remained the only region which offered the Italians good opportunities of development. Both Pieri’s and Contini’s narratives refer to the general atmosphere of enthusiasm in Edinburgh and Glasgow, also to their families’ positive energy. Fascism could be a matter of debate and concern,63 but their priority remained making their businesses prosper. It was in 1934, in fact, that the Valvona & Sons delicatessen shop was first founded; in 1938 Joe Pieri and his brother Ralph64 closed their father’s old fish and chip shop and opened a new and bigger one near the city centre. Although there is scholarly evidence that this was another boom period for this type of trade, we can see that the Pieri brothers’ shop soon became the place where they confronted a subtler form of social discrimination: “Are you going home for your holidays, Joe?” “Do you think you’ll go back to live in Italy Joe?” “You should do something about Mussolini, Joe.” Our shop consumed a fair quantity of raw materials, and our custom would be much sought after by the various suppliers. “Must have you and Ralph out for a meal sometime, Joe.” “Must have you out for a round of golf at the club, Joe.” “Must have you out to the house sometimes, Joe.” Empty phrases, and all for the sake of doing some business. The golf clubs had never been trodden by Jewish, Italian, or for that matter Catholic feet. This type of xenophobia pricked the skin a little, where the “Tally bastard” variety did not.65  Ibid., 50.  Ibid., 53. 63  See Contini, Dear Olivia, 232–233. 64  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 2, “Allegiances,” par. 1. 65  Ibid., par. 6. 61 62

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Apart from the numerous Italian products which were displayed at the new Valvona & Sons in Edinburgh—also the “bright-coloured posters for Barilla pasta and Strega liqueur” hanging on its walls66—we cannot find any descriptions of the shops where Pieri or Contini’s relatives were working at the time, nor of the way they were furnished. The photos which are included in their works only proudly portray them outside, standing next to their shop windows with their families: it was probably in this way that they showed the space that, despite all difficulties, they occupied in the public sphere. The outbreak of the Second World War suddenly changed their position. As has been said, on the night of 10th June 1940, as soon as they became “enemy aliens,” their shops were attacked by hooligans.67 Although there were “anti-Italian riots” in London and Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow were the worst affected.68 Belonging to different literary genres, the narratives which recount similar episodes all put a strong emphasis on their protagonists’ effort to defend their properties. Some of them even physically fought against those who were attacking their cafés and shops,69 however, it was probably much harder for them to accept that this time the police would not help. The war years made the Italian community weaker and even more emarginated. Despite the pain that its members felt for the losses caused by the Arandora Star tragedy, in 1945, with the ending of hostilities, the majority of its members invested all their energy in their businesses. Peppino Leoni, who finally reunited with his family in October, redecorated his historic Quo Vadis and finally reopened it in New Year’s Eve 194670; Les Servini, who had been released from one of the internment camps in the Isle of Man and was now living in Llanharan, soon realised that “the old ‘Bracchi’ local shop that [he] had known was dead”71: he had just opened the Swallow Café, but decided to close it and to follow a new direction.

 Contini, Dear Olivia, 246.  See Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 93–94. 68  Ibid., 93. See also Lucio Sponza, “The Anti-Italian Riots, June 1940,” in Racial Violence in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Panikos Panayi (London: Leicester Press, 1996), 131–149. 69  See also Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 68; and Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 333–334. 70  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 177–179. 71  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 43. 66 67

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In those same years, instead, respectively living in Glasgow and in Cwm, Joe Pieri and Joe Spinetti—the actor’s father—respectively bought a new fish and chip shop and a café.72 For them, this was a real beginning, which made them feel very optimistic: although Spinetti would have also liked to sell his ice-cream, he never did to avoid any conflicts with his Italian neighbours.73 His wife, however, greatly helped him to make their café popular: At the start we had nothing, so my mother baked. She baked sponge cakes, apple tarts and scones. On the counter they sat and on the counter they stayed. For all the business we did, they could have been glued there. Apple tarts were for homes, not shops thought the customers, who simply stared at them. Next we tried meals. My mother cooked those too but this time the result was quite different. Her signature dishes were roast Welsh lamb, roast beef and steamed fish. If anyone asked for fish and chips, that was no problem either. We only had to pop next door. Lunches and dinners we did, basic food but it worked. We became very popular. Commercial travellers from miles around made a beeline for us because they knew that whatever they ate would be home cooked.74

A young man at the time—he was in his late twenties in 1948—Victor Spinetti loved this type of business, especially the idea that he could make his customers happy. In such difficult times, this gave him a great satisfaction: he would experience the same feeling when he moved to London some years later and became a successful actor. It is undeniable that those shops had a strong symbolic value. They had been a source of survival and self-affirmation until the outbreak of the Second World War, but now, during the reconstruction, they provided the setting for a new dynamic between their proprietors and the local customers. Giving a more complex version of the story, Anne Pia’s section on The Copper Kettle in late 1950s Edinburgh is revealing of the interplay of key elements such as gender, ethnicity and language: The café, which had been the focus of my family life since 1956, was both my home and a social space, a self-sustaining world, ever changing, ever 72  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 22, “Aftermath,” par. 13; and Spinetti, Victor Spinetti Up Front…, 63. 73  Spinetti, Victor Spinetti Up Front…, 63. 74  Ibid., 64.

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nourished by the personalities of those who passed through and the regulars who inhabited it. It was known in the neighbourhood as the café run by “those two Italian women.” Sisters? Cousins? No one knew. […] It was iconic; a bustling, eccentric place of italianismo, of our dialect, our excesses. […] It was too the scene of our conflicts: mine with my mother; and a place where my own were played out. […] English was the language spoken by what was, in effect, this new race; but with that slightly mellow, lilting delivery of people brought up in a home of Italian speakers. I am in no doubt that there exists an Italian-­ Scottish way of speaking.75

Pia’s intense memories not only of that period, but also of such a particular environment, combine with some interesting details about the products that her grandmother and her mother sold, or the dishes that they served: “home-made ricotta,” “baccalà,” “white fish with marjoram and oregano,” also “beef sugo.” This latter was “made only with marbled hough darkening, softening hour by hour on the cooker in the back shop.”76 At a time when the catering trade was flourishing again, and there was an explosion of cafés and bars all over the country,77 Britons became eager to taste new types of food: Chinese, Italian and Indian restaurants started competing with traditional pubs and fish and chip shops, which means that Pia’s The Copper Kettle café in Edinburgh or an Italian trattoria like The Canasta in Glasgow78 readily responded to this new trend. Investigating this intriguing topic, Jeremy Black has recently contended that “the impact of foreign cuisine” in the post-war years was linked to the end of food rationing and “the deficiencies of British food culture”79: although there is no trace of neologisms such as “spag bol, or spaghetti bolognese”80 in these migrant narratives, Elena Salvoni’s professional development testifies to a new and more stimulating atmosphere in the catering industry. At the time when Hector Emanuelli had opened The Paddock, “an ice-­ cream factory in a garden,” which was highly praised for its quality and  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 117–119.  Ibid., 119. 77  See Colpi, The Italian Factor, 133; and Pete Brown, Pie Fidelity: In Defence of British Food (London: Penguin, 2019). See the chapter entitled “Fish and chips.” 78  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 139. 79  Jeremy Black, A History of Britain, 1945 to Brexit (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019), 99. 80  Ibid. 75 76

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sanitary standards,81 she was indeed establishing herself as London’s most admired maître d’. Like several girls of Italian origin82 she had begun as a seamstress; soon, however, she found her way in the catering industry in multicultural Soho. First, as a waitress at the Café Bleu in Old Compton Street, where just before the outbreak of the Second World War “they mostly served minestrone, vegetable ravioli or mounds of spaghetti”83; then, from 1951 to 1981 as a hostess at Bianchi’s. These two phases in her career clearly mirror the emergence of new “coffee bars” and trattorias— whose menus were based on simple but tasty national and Italian dishes84— as well as more sophisticated restaurants. As Scott Sutherland explains, the years between the 1950s and 1980s were crucial in setting higher quality standards in the Italian catering industry in London: the River Café on the Fulham-Hammersmith Thames waterfront and especially La Terrazza in Westbourne Grove provided new models to follow.85 Apart from respecting the typical etiquette of the period—“in the 1950s going to the restaurant was quite a formal occasion”86—Salvoni soon learned to welcome, but especially to understand her customers’ needs. Her memoir is indeed rich in testimonies of their esteem: once, for instance, she even received a book with this dedication: “For Elena Salvoni, who has done more for the arts in London than will ever be known. A small tribute to her wisdom, sympathy and glorious sense of life.”87 It had been written by the prolific Tamil novelist Ra. Ki. Rangarajan (1927–2012) and she would “treasure that moment all [her] life.”88 Working hard at Bianchi’s until 2nd June 1981, Salvoni finally took charge of the exclusive restaurant L’Escargot. The portrait that she gave of Soho in those years, though, also included interesting information about the Italian community: men’s clubs were generally “Italian-owned,” but what is more important, they shared their customers and services with the

 Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 148–149.  See both Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho, 37; and Besagni, A Better Life, 21, 55. 83  Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho, 56. 84  Colpi, The Italian Factor, 140–141. 85  See Alasdair Scott Sutherland, Spaghetti Tree. Mario and Franco and the Trattoria Revolution (London: Primavera Books Limited, 2012), Ch. 2, “2009: A Lifetime of Spaghetti,” par. 8. 86  Ibid., par. 13. 87  Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho, 99. 88  Ibid. 81 82

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most elegant and popular restaurants. Bianchi’s, of course, was one of them89: Most of these places had started out as clubs for the catering industry, somewhere for waiters and chefs to go between closing up after lunch and opening for dinner. They were men’s club mostly, few women would have gone, except, perhaps, the occasional accompanied actress. A lot of them were Italian-owned and the men played cards, darts and had a drink. A typical one was Cavalli’s, above the Café Bleu […]. Then there was the Campari Club at the top of Frith Street, which had a mixture of catering people, businessmen and journalists, and Sorrento’s, run by Nina, which had a little dancefloor so women were welcome there though not, as far as I remember, the ladies of the street. They were friendly, well-run places, but you had to be known to the management. A recommendation from Bianchi’s was sufficient […].90

Despite her continuous encounters with distinguished people from key social, cultural and political sectors, Salvoni always considered her success the result of her hard work and greatly valued her friendship with most of her customers. At the end of her career, when she was still managing the famous L’Etoile, her recipe for hospitality was “greet guests when they arrive, be there when they leave, remember their names and what’s happening in their lives, and offer a sympathetic ear.”91

4.3   Boarders and Hoteliers Writing when she was already a reference point in London’s catering industry, Salvoni was clear on the fact that she had learned the secrets of hospitality from her mother, who ran a boarding house and always had a friendly relationship with her lodgers. For her, they were all “aunts and uncles”92: unsurprisingly, after some time the family could expand the business, which shows that this represented another traditional area of excellence for Italian immigrants. As Terri Colpi maintains, this had been true since the late 1800s, when the Elenco Generale of 1895 reported that  Ibid., 88.  Ibid. 91  “Elena Salvoni is the Life and Soul of Old Soho,” Evening Standard, April 29, 2010, https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/elena-salvoni-is-the-life-and-soul-of-old-­ soho-6464485.html. Accessed 31 May 2023. 92  Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho, 25. 89 90

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in London there were “317 confectioners, 217 proprietors of ‘dining and refreshment rooms,’ 55 proprietors of boarding-houses and 39 hoteliers.”93 These numbers would of course grow in the new century: Peppino Leoni in I Shall Die on the Carpet, for instance, recounts that his first professional experiences were related to luxury hotels. Even in 1911, at the time when he had to return to Italy to fight in Northern Africa, he could not but dream about his bright future: The day would come when, on entering the dining-room of their hotel at Harrogate, St Moritz or Florence, there would be no Peppino Leoni to greet them. “Where is Leoni?” [the guests] would ask, disappointed, and the restaurant manager would reply: “Leoni? Ah, sir he has opened his own restaurant in London. I believe it is very good.” “We must go there when next in London. Have you the address?” “Indeed, sir.”94

A “visionary” who was strong and courageous enough to open his own restaurant in 1926, Leoni has demonstrated that even at that time there was a fruitful interchange of activities in the catering industry, and that hotels in particular often symbolically represented a turning point in Italian immigrants’ success. This was especially true for Baron Charles Forte. His father Rocco and several of his family members owned numerous businesses both in Scotland and in England: in 1934, though, at the age of seventeen, he decided to follow in Mr Macintosh’s footsteps, thus opening the Meadow Milk Bar.95 Despite the fact that the war had damaged all his premises, during the reconstruction he began to prosper again and decided to invest on new business ventures. He thus acquired one of the concessions at Heathrow airport—which proved extremely profitable96—and in 1958 he purchased his first hotel, the Waldorf. As he remembered at the age of seventy-nine, it was “a respectable upper middle-grade hotel,”97 which was part of Fredrick Hotel Ltd. Despite the fact that he had no experience in the field, he decided to take the challenge: “the Waldorf was the precursor of more than eight hundred hotels that [they] own[ed], leas[ed], or manag[ed],

 Colpi, The Italian Factor, 63–64.  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 96. 95  Charles Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte (London: Pan, 1986), 35. 96  Ibid., 84. 97  Ibid., 85. 93 94

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and its purchase opened a whole new chapter in [their] lives.”98 Thanks to John Lee, the “top-class manager” that he instantly recruited, he learned a lot about this new trade, which was extremely important for him.99 Unfortunately, in 1996, after a hostile bid, Granada succeeded in acquiring the Forte Group, and Sir Rocco Forte, son of Charles, created a luxury hotel group which includes over forty properties in key destinations all over Europe. Interviewed in 2019 with his sister Olga,100 he explained that they continue to follow their father’s values and especially to care about their guests: their aim is to create a friendly atmosphere, which can relate to the environment and the countries they are in. Speaking about their Italian origins, they confirmed that this part of their identity is still “very strong,” but that they are also “proud to be British.” In this sense, they will always share their father’s conviction that Britain is “the best country in the world to live in.”

4.4  Educators and Actors Thus, living or recounting stories of “prejudice, disaster and loss,”101 Italian British authors finally felt socially integrated and created a solid financial position for their families: this was true not only for those who eventually became even more successful in the catering industry, but also for those who decided to follow new and uncharted paths. Education clearly played a key role in this part of the process. Les Servini, for instance, who had been forced to abandon his studies,102 became a reputed teacher in the late 1950s. He had been “mixing concrete” from 1950 to 1957, but after attending his classes of “English and Literature, of Maths, Welsh and Geography” at Caerleon College, Newport,103 he followed his first teacher training course and made his dream come true. As we can read in his memoir, this course combined theory and practice:  Ibid., 90.  Ibid. 100  Rocco Forte and Olga Polizzi, “Interview by Michael Hayman,” Capital Conversation, 2019, YouTube video, 22.06, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-uU4CJ5foE. Accessed 31 May 2023. 101  This quote is taken from Dear Olivia, in particular from the letter that Contini addressed to her daughter. It has no page number. 102  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 11. 103  Ibid., 51. 98 99

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After only couple of months and at regular intervals thereafter, where we were “thrown to the wolves” or rather faced with a class of anything up to 36 pupils in the various schools in Newport and the area around the college for two to three weeks. […] My first post was at a Catholic Junior near the Docks. Great staff, lovely kids, many of mixed parentage, not the brightest, in quite poor housing, yet it touched my heart.104

He became a fully qualified teacher the year after. From that moment on, he enhanced his level of Italian and French and mostly served in secondary schools, helping students with special learning needs. The final part of his memoir is replete with episodes which show all his commitment and love for his job: when he retired at 65, Bryntirion School even dedicated two trophies to him, “one for languages, the other for slow learners”105; as a mark of gratitude and affection, he never missed any international assembly or retirement party. Each time he went there he “felt [he] was back to where [he] belong[ed].”106 Servini was always grateful for what he achieved. This was the result of his strong will and resilience, however, it is also true that at that stage, his family had not had the opportunity to take him back into the catering business. From this point of view, Anne Pia’s path was definitely more painful and difficult. Although her mother had strongly supported her university studies,107 her grandmother Mariuccia and her uncle Rico were determined to “put [her] behind a shop counter.”108 Their position was obviously related to gender stereotypes, which represented one of the reasons why she gradually detached from the Italian community in Edinburgh and its values: To aim for university was a defining aspiration. My choice of how to spend my free time, my choice of friends and my appearance, very different from that of my cousins, represented the beginning of a distancing I needed and wanted. This has only deepened over the years, for we no longer have a common language or terms of reference. I became someone my family could never encompass; unusual, “brainy” and certainly not one of them.109

 Ibid., 52–53.  Ibid., 64. 106  Ibid. 107  Pia, A Language of My Choosing, 104. 108  Ibid. 109  Ibid., 96. 104 105

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Teaching and laying the basis for a career in secondary rather than in primary schools thus contributed to this sense of estrangement from the contexts where she belonged. Unlike A Boy from Bardi, Language of My Choosing does not include any episodes of her activity or of her relationship with colleagues and students, yet the reader can immediately feel that her professional life always represented a gateway to self-realisation and freedom.110 It was in this way that she presented her important achievements in the school system: she could take an even greater distance from the culturally limited spaces of the Italian community—which made her case iconic in terms of women’s agency both in the private and the public spheres111— but more importantly, she had the opportunity to turn her experience as “someone” who was “on the margins of everything” into a more inclusive vision of education and teaching. Recalling those years of personal and professional development, she has recently written: Having always been someone on the margins of everything myself—Italian family, the daughter of a single mother in a Catholic school, the girl no one took home from a party, the one who struggled to make friends in her early school years; the one who was too shy to stand out in the classroom or anywhere; the one who allowed herself to be bullied in her career by men and also by women—I understood that it was the students who struggled either to learn from or to fit into the system, that I wanted to champion. It was their absent voices, the voices of the frightened, the under-­ confident, the angry and the frustrated young people, that I wanted to hear and make heard. I wanted to turn up the volume, give them the words, the opportunities and the power. I wanted to free them from oppression and the power of teacher over learner in a classroom, and from what is defined by the ruling classes and society as a whole, as a success.112

Contemporary history is replete with Italian British men and women who finally became leaders in different fields in the second half of the twentieth century. Pieri, in particular, confirms that apart from distinguished professionals and academics, there is Richard Demarco (1930–), one of  Ibid., 20.  See Mastoureh Fathi, Intersectionality, Class and Migration. Narratives of Iranian Women Migrants in the U.K. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 82. 112  Anne Pia, “It’s Time to Tell the Story,” Guest Blog (Part I)—Luath Press, February 27, 2023, https://www.luath.co.uk/bookbanter-blog/2023/2/27/its-time-to-tell-the-­­ story?format=amp. Accessed 31 May 2023. 110 111

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the founders of the Traverse Theatre and “a giant in the world of theatre and the visual arts,” as well as “stars of the stage and screen” such as Tom Conti (1941–) and Peter Capaldi (1958–).113 Their contribution to the Scottish cultural scene is still greatly valued, which shows that today Italianness equals with eclecticism and artistic excellence. It is however possible to find an equally rich cultural terrain in Wales. As Bruna Chezzi has recently demonstrated, together with popular painters such as Andrew Vicari (1932–2016) and David Carpanini (1946–), Roger Granelli (1950–) and Pino Palladino (1957–) are still popular musicians. Although we cannot of course ignore the fact that Hector Emanuelli had a strong attraction to drawing and design, Victor Spinetti Up Front … is centred on the actor’s artistic talent and especially on his sparkling career. It was 1948 when he first discovered that a “college of music and drama in Cardiff” had just opened: Monmouthshire County Council would give him a grant,114 which would soon allow him to leave Cwm and forget about his family’s heavy routine. His parents never understood his ambition and never accepted his decision. Written in a simple but entertaining manner, the chapters that Spinetti dedicated to his new life in Cardiff, in London and in different parts of the world express his love for this job. The beginnings were difficult for a young inexperienced actor like him, yet his extraordinary human and professional encounters were crucial in improving his skills and making his performances a success. Joan Littlewood, for instance—who was literally “his university”115—was a perfectionist and his most severe trainer, which explains why he never wanted to miss her long rehearsal sessions.116 However, despite his roles in numerous Shakespeare plays and early modern dramas, he finally achieved popularity thanks to the Beatles films. After playing in A Hard Day’s Night in 1964, he felt very proud when he could continue his collaboration: “You’ve got to be in all our films,” said George, seven months later, as we climbed aboard the plane that was to fly us to the Bahamas for the next Beatles film, Help! “Oh, George, thanks,” I said.

 Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 141.  Spinetti, Victor Spinetti, Up Front…, 69–70. 115  Ibid., 116–133. Here we refer to chapter 11, “Joan Littlewood: My University.” 116  Ibid., 120. 113 114

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“Well, if you’re not in them,” he went on, “Me Mum won’t come and see them because she fancies you.” I treasure that remark, firstly because it came true and secondly, because it was about the nicest thing that happened on that film.117

The very last section of Up Front … includes exceptional names from the world of contemporary art like Salvador Dalì and film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They too contribute to Spinetti’s detailed picture of his rich life; at a moment, however, when there seems to be no room for past memories or nostalgia, the Postscript shows how the Spinetti family developed, while symbolically representing the new face of the Italian community in Britain: As the train rolls on I think about my family. Mario is dead. Adrian, who works at Spar, rises at six every morning to drive up into the mountain with food past its Best Before date for animals who line up at a farm, their heads resting on the wall, waiting for him. Gianina ran a hairdressing salon, with my mother as receptionist. Henry, for six years, drummed for Eric Clapton. Now he drums for Katie Melua, and Paul who is car crazy, drives for a living. My cousin Megan, the one who loved to tell ghost stories, bore a son, Michael, who wrote a children’s book, SuperTed, and turned it into a cartoon series. I’m the voice of Texas Pete. Michael has his own animation studio in Hollywood now.118

Bibliography Primary Sources Arcari, Anita. The Hokey Pokey Man. Aberystwyth: Y Lolfa, 2010. Contini, Mary. Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006. Coraggioso, Cagliardo (D’Agostino, Eugenio). Wandering Minstrel, New Edition by Carlo Pirozzi. Woking: Nielsen Book Services, 2018. de Rosa, Domenica. The Italian Quarter. London: Quercus, 2013. Kindle. Di Mambro, Ann Marie. Tally’s Blood. Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2012. Emanuelli, Hector. A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman. Langenfeld: Six Towns Books, 2010.

117 118

 Ibid., 155.  Ibid. 255.

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Forte, Charles. Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte. London: Pan, 1986. Leoni, Peppino. I Shall Die on the Carpet. London: Leslie Frewin, 1966. Pia, Anne. Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2017. Pieri, Joe. The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2005. Pieri, Joe. Isle of the Displaced. An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2014. Kindle. Salvoni, Elena. Elena. A Life in Soho. With Sandy Hawkes. London: Quartet, 1990. Servini, Les. A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times. Cardiff: Hazeltree, 1994. Spinetti, Victor. Victor Spinetti Up Front… His Strictly Confidential Autobiography. With Peter Rankin. London: Robson Books, 2006.

Secondary Sources Berry, John W. and David L.  Sam. “Multicultural Societies.” In The Oxford Handbook of Multicultural Identity, edited by Verónica Benet-Martinéz and Ying-Yi Hong, 97–114. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Besagni, Olive. A Better Life. A History of London’s Italian Immigrant Families in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the 19th & 20th Centuries. London: Camden History Society, 2011. Black, Jeremy. A History of Britain, 1945 to Brexit. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. Brown, Pete. Pie Fidelity: In Defence of British Food. London: Penguin, 2019. Colpi, Terri. The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 1991. Colpi, Terri. Italians’ Count in Scotland. The 1933 Census. Recording History. London: The Saint James Press, 2015. Cook, Jennifer. “Transnational Migration and the Lived Experience of Class Across Borders.” In Handbook of Culture and Migration, edited by Jeffrey H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci, 232–247. Cheltenham: Elgar Publishing, 2021. Fathi, Mastoureh. Intersectionality, Class and Migration. Narratives of Iranian Women Migrants in the U.K. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Franchi, Nicoletta. La Via della Scozia. L’emigrazione barghigiana e lucchese a Glasgow tra Ottocento e Novecento. Lucca: Fondazione Paolo Cresci, 2014. Gentilcore, David. Italy and the Potato: A History, 1550–2000. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. Guzzo, Siria. A Sociolinguistic Insight into the Italian Community in the UK: Workplace Language as an Identity Market. With a Preface by David Britain. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. Hughes, Colin. Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. The Italian Community in South Wales 1881–1945. Bridgend: Seren, 1991.

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Panayi, Panikos. An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism since 1800. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. Panayi, Panikos. Spicing Up Britain. The Multicultural History of British Food. London: Reaktion Books, 2008. Kindle. Panayi, Panikos. Migrant City: A New History of London. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. Paolucci di Calboli, Raniero. I girovaghi italiani in Inghilterra ed i suonatori ambulanti. Città di Castello: Lapi, 1893. Quinzio, Geraldine M. Of Sugar and Snow. A History of Ice-Cream Making. Berkley: University of California Press, 2009. Rinaldi, Giancarlo. From the Serchio to the Solway. Dumphries: Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information & Archives, 1998. Scott Sutherland, Alasdair. Spaghetti Tree. Mario and Franco and the Trattoria Revolution. London: Primavera Books Limited, 2012. Kindle. Shankland, Hugh. Out of Italy: The Story of Italians in North East England. Leicester: Troubador Publishing Limited, 2014. Sponza, Lucio. Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Realities and Images. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988. Sponza, Lucio. “The Anti-Italian Riots, June 1940.” In Racial Violence in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, edited by Panikos Panayi, 131–149. London: Leicester Press, 1996. Tosi, Arturo. Immigration and Bilingual Education. Oxford: Pergamon Institute of English, 1984. Walton, John. Fish and Chips, and the British Working Class, 1870–1940. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.

Web Resources “Elena Salvoni is the Life and Soul of Old Soho.” Evening Standard, April 29, 2010. https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/elena-­salvoni-­is-­the-­life-­and-­ soul-­of-­old-­soho-­6464485.html. Forte, Rocco and Olga Polizzi. “Interview by Michael Hayman.” Capital Conversation, 2019, YouTube video, 22.06. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Q-­uU4CJ5foE. Pia, Anne. “It’s Time to Tell the Story.” Guest Blog (Part I)—Luath Press, February 27, 2023. https://www.luath.co.uk/bookbanter-­blog/2023/2/27/ its-­time-­to-­tell-­the-­story?format=amp. “Sagra del pesce e patate—Fish and Chips in Barga.” Barganews, August 13, 2022. https://www.barganews.com/2022/08/13/sagra-­del-­pesce-­e-­patate-­fishand-­chips-­in-­barga/.

CHAPTER 5

Italian Cultures, Traditions and Foods in Transition

Spinetti’s special family picture provides evidence of the Italian immigrants’ final social success. This was their reward for enduring isolation and prejudices while contributing to the cultural and economic development of Britain. This was true when they worked as street vendors at the end of the nineteenth century and first introduced their artisan gelato, and also when they “appropriated” a British national dish such as fish and chips. Achieving a higher level of education than most of their ancestors and family members, Les Servini and Anne Pia demonstrated that preparing the new generations for the future they could reverse the professional stereotypes connected to their community. The idea that even the initial phases of Italian immigration left an indelible mark in host countries such as Britain and America was first formulated by Donna Gabaccia in her seminal work Italy’s Many Diasporas.1 Ideally starting from the assumption that “illiterate stonemasons contributed to notable works of architecture across time and space,”2 this chapter will investigate the social significance of those Italian men’s and women’s work in their new hometowns, and more importantly the process of  See Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, 74.  Teresa Fiore, “‘Architextualizing’ the Italian Immigration Experience to the United States: Bricklayers and Writers in John Fante’s Works,” in The Cultures of Italian Migration. Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives, ed. Graziella Parati and Anthony Julian Tamburri (Madison, Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011), 109. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. D’Amore, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0_5

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cultural hybridisation that they gave form to during their long immigration experience. Once again, the literary works which have portrayed the Italian diaspora in Britain will help us to understand what of their original mores actually survived the contact with the English, Welsh and Scottish ways of life and what finally merged into them.3 The key concept of heritage transition4 will be applied to all the traditions which were represented by most Italian British authors, and which were so crucial in the construction of their transcultural identities. The opening section of this chapter will thus begin from their rural customs. As we have seen, some of their works provide a vivid picture of the life rhythms and culinary practices of Italy between 1860 and 1910. Socially emarginated for numerous years after they arrived in Britain, their protagonists continued to preserve that important part of their cultural heritage in order to remain in contact with their families.5 We can find evidence of these important dynamics not only in Contini’s Dear Olivia and Arcari’s The Hokey Pokey Man, but also in other parts of this underresearched textual corpus. The narrators’ descriptions of traditional regional costumes and modern urban clothing symbolically represent their passage from rural Italy to Britain and its consumer culture. Italian British literary writings are indeed powerful testimonies of the evolution of the immigrant community even from an anthropological point of view. The second section, for instance, will focus especially on the narratives which are set in central and southern Italy: they are rich in information about their members’ religious beliefs and the social norms that they respected, and what is more important, their authors—Laziale Scots, Laziale Welsh and Tuscan Scots—clearly show how these norms and beliefs hindered their process of integration in Britain. The product of a more mature vision of their families’ past, these touching parts of their narratives provide illuminating insights into these authors’ complex condition and their desire to find more personal ways of expression. 3  Cristina Amescua, “Anthropology of Intangible Cultural Heritage and Migration: An Unchartered Field,” in Anthropological Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage, ed. Lourdes Arizpe and Cristina Amescua (Cham: Springer, 2013), 107. 4  Sam Durrant and Catherine M.  Lord, “Introduction: Essays in Migratory Aesthetics. Cultural Practices,” in Essays in Migratory Aesthetics: Cultural Practices Between Migration and Art Making, ed. Sam Durrant and Catherine M. Lord (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 12. 5  See Jasna Č apo Žmegač, “Spanning National Borders: Split Lives of Croatian Migrant Families,” Migracijske i etnic ̌ke teme 23 (2007), 33–35.

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If religion and Italian traditional values were thus generally perceived as barriers, food culture was associated to warmth, affection and hospitality. A key component of Italianness, Mediterranean cuisine will be seen in contact with British traditions. Considering the latest scholarly studies, the concluding section will confirm that Italian British literary works represent a rich and unexplored textual basis. They refer to the main national dishes while showing its numerous regional variants. Incorporated in narratives—which, particularly in Leoni’s, Salvoni’s and Contini’s autobiographies and family stories also take the form of cookbooks—these dishes were gradually hybridised or laid side by side with British delicacies, thus becoming icons of Italian migrants’ transnational identities.

5.1   From Corn, Pigs and Ciocie to “Lace Chemises” and “Skinny Denim” We were a close community, poor hard-working peasants, “mezzadri,” that is, paying the landlord with up to a half of the yield of the few fields we tilled. Main crops were corn, grass and maize. Maize is called “granoturco” “turkish corn,” as compared with the English term—“indian corn” (now largely out of use). Nearly every family had an ox to do the ploughing, pulling of carts, spreading manure etc. Also a cow for milk and we even kept a pig which was fattened and killed every year. You can take it from me not a hair of that pig was wasted! The killing of the pig was an event, a table was erected in the yard, the pig was dragged out and tied onto the table. The slaughterman, who was our teacher’s husband would promptly despatch it by slashing its throat. A bucket would catch the blood which was used to make the “sanguinassi” a black pudding. The women were ready with lots of hot water for the skinning and cutting.6

The Servinis thus were mezzadri [“poor hard-working peasants”] from Bardi near Parma, who lived on “corn, grass and maize,” but who also had an “ox,” “a cow for milk” and pigs. At a time when Italian farmers could not afford to consume veal, these latter in particular were considered symbols of prosperity. We may understand why several Italian British authors provide joyful descriptions of their ancestors enjoying their tasty meat and blood on festive occasions like Christmas, Easter and at weddings. 6

 Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 2–3.

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According to the tradition, sanguinassi—or better sanguinaccio— represented the opposition between life and death, as well as the desire to “appropriate” the animal’s vigour.7 It may be of interest to note that, “chestnut polenta would normally be eaten with biroldo”8 in the Garfagnana in northern Tuscany, which formed a major part of the villagers’ diet until the outbreak of the Second World War.9 Indeed, this symbolic component was extremely important for men and women who lived in poor agricultural areas and faced great hardships and privations. As the narrator of Contini’s Dear Olivia recounts, the men dedicated themselves entirely to their work in the fields, which required “large periods away from their families either up on the pastures with the sheep or […] down on the plains at the coast, wintering their flocks away from the snows.”10 It was for this reason that after the unification of the country, when their condition worsened even more, the majority of them decided to emigrate to the main European cities and the Americas. They never forgot their traditions, though. Writing about the district of Lazio called Ciociaria,11 Contini and Arcari dedicate some colourful passages to their typical costumes.12 The “ciocie”,13 for instance, were “the footwear” that shepherds had worn “in [those] parts” for centuries,14 but which were also perceived as a symbol of their poverty. As regards zampogne or bagpipes, they were particularly popular at Christmas in regions such as 7  Vito Teti, Il colore del cibo. Geografia, mito e realtà dell’alimentazione mediterranea (Sesto San Giovanni: Meltemi, 1999), 163–164. 8  Biroldo salami is made from the pig’s head (boiled and deboned), heart, tongue and blood, seasoned with wild fennel, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon. For further details on the processing, see the website of Visit Tuscany, https://www.visittuscany.com/en/food/biroldo-salami-from-garfagnana/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 9  Moscardini, La Vacanza, 78–79. 10  Contini, Dear Olivia, 15. 11  As stated in chapter 2 of this book, the main borders of this area are the city of Rome, Naples and the National Park of Abruzzo. Apart from Frosinone, its main city, it has other important centres such as Fiuggi, Cassino and Alatri. 12  See Michele Santulli, Il costume ciociaro nell’arte europea del 1800 (Arpino: Edizioni Ciociaria Sconosciuta, 2009). Its main contents can also be found at http://inciociaria. org/2016/01/07/il-costume-ciociaro-nellarte-europea-del-1800/); and Roberto Salvatori, “Il costume tradizionale palianese,” Centro Studi Salvatori, http://centrostudisalvatori.blogspot.com/2018/07/il-costume-tradizionale-palianese.html. Accessed 31 May 2023. 13  They were originally made of large soles in leather and straps with which the leg was tied from the ankle to the knee. 14  Contini, Dear Olivia, 4.

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Lazio, Molise, Campania and Calabria.15 The narrator does not provide any details about the typical ciaramelle [shawms] or tamburelli [tamburines]16—and only refers to “barrel organs,” “shepherds’ songs” and “ballads”17—yet, Alfonso Crolla, the protagonist of Dear Olivia, always carried a zampogna: He was dressed in shepherd’s garb, with a roomy brown smock belted in at the waist over loose-fitting trousers. His legs were covered with white linen rags, tied criss-cross with leather straps that secured goat-skin soles under his feet. The footwear, le ciocie, was the same as that worn by shepherds in these parts for centuries. A thick sheepskin was draped over his back, with his bagpipes, zampogne, slung over his shoulder.18

Representing the principal sources of information on these costumes, nineteenth-century drawings and paintings confirm that this was how men dressed in southern Lazio. The costumes that can now be found in local museums are in too bad a condition to give a clear idea of their original components and colours,19 but we can find further details in Arcari’s The Hokey Pokey Man. In chapter 1, for instance, the narrator emphasises the exotic beauty of women as well as their clothes: they wore headscarves, “wide-sleeved blouse[s],” “long dresse[s]” called sciareche, as well as “voluminous yet practical dark apron[s] [which] covered the front of the skirts.”20 Considering the latest scholarly contributions and art books,21 we can clearly understand that this passage provides quite a standardised representation of women’s costumes. Aprons or zinali, for instance, were indeed of different colours depending on the numerous municipalities in the area: in Sora,22 for instance, they were black, whereas in Arpino23 they 15  Pierluigi Moschitti, Mo’ vene Natale. La tradizione natalizia e la musica popolare (Gaeta: Passerino Editore, 2020). 16  Ibid., 5–6. 17  Contini, Dear Olivia, 34, 16, 60. 18  Ibid., 4. 19  See Salvatori, Il costume tradizionale palianese. 20  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 17. 21  See Santulli, Il costume ciociaro. 22  Sora is a small town in the province of Frosinone. It is about 72 miles from Rome and 86 from Naples. Located next to Abruzzo, it borders with Arpino and other little villages in the Liri Valley. 23  Arpino was the birthplace of the Latin poet Cicero. Today it has about 8,000 inhabitants.

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were green. We may presume that Arcari could only rely on the iconographic representations that Italian and foreign painters left in the long nineteenth century: G.B.L. Maes (1819–1901), James Bertrand (1823–1887), E.F. Fines (1826–1884) and Antonie Volkmar (1827–1903), to name but a few, not only depicted that mountainous part of Lazio, but especially its population and civilisation. Within this perspective, Giovanni Fargioni-­ Tozzetti’s In Ciociaria: ricordi di usanze popolari24—which represents a perfect combination of memory and folklore—may be considered a literary transposition of their artistic work, as well as a precious anthropological resource. Interestingly, its narratives are mostly set in the main squares of numerous rural villages and are replete with portraits of southern Laziali. Although neither Dear Olivia nor The Hockey Pokey Man mention the popular Festa della Radica—which was held in Piazza del Plebiscito in Frosinone and celebrated the end of Carnival25—they respectively describe “La Maialata, the feast of the pig,”26 and the “Feast of the Madonna di Canneto.”27 The former was also celebrated in the nearby centres of Atina, San Donato and Alvito28 in early December,29 whereas the latter, which began as a tradition in 1639, was followed by numerous believers, who gathered first in the church of San Lorenzo in Picinisco and then in the eponymous Sanctuary in the heart of the National Park of Abruzzo. The narrator of The Hokey Pokey Man does not include any of the Laurentian litanies or chants which were sung during the procession after 1874,30 but 24  Giovanni Fargioni-Tozzetti, In Ciociaria: ricordi di usanze popolari (Livorno: Tipografia Giusti, 1891). 25  Ibid., 27-36. As has been said, Frosinone has always been the main city of Ciociaria. According to the tradition, its inhabitants toured the city holding a big leaf of agave as a tribute to the “dying” Carnival. Those who dared to join the procession without holding one were beaten and insulted. 26  Contini, Dear Olivia, 15. 27  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 41. 28  These three small towns are located in the Comino Valley, which was originally part of the ancient district of Terra di Lavoro. They border with the Apennines, the National Park of Abruzzo and the region of Molise. 29  Information about the “Maialata,” or “the feast of the pig,” can be found at https:// www.obiettivointercultura.eu/?p=170. Accessed 31 May 2023. 30  For a clear historical account of the feast of the Madonna del Canneto, also of religious chants such as Salve del Ciel, Regina, Ti voglio amare, Maria and especially Aniceto Venturini’s Evviva Maria [All Hail Mary], see http://www.madonnadicanneto.it/sito/ index.php/storia/cenni-storici#. Accessed 31 May 2023.

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carefully describes “the two enormous candles that flanked the cart which carried the statue of the Madonna, resplendent in golden robes and a crown of flowers.”31 Apart from the beauty and pathos of this particular scene, we may understand why the protagonists of these family sagas found it so difficult to adapt to big cities like London, Cardiff and Edinburgh, also why the Italian immigrant community continued to follow its traditions and wear their regional costumes. Even today, in fact, the feasts of the Madonna del Carmine in London and that of the Madonna del Rosario in Manchester are celebrated in July and attract numerous visitors,32 which show that this unique mixture of religious faith and folklore is still an important component of Italian immigrants’ cultural identity. Yet, clothes, also those that the Italian immigrants used to wear in their everyday life, soon became a symbol of their gradual transition to British culture. Starting from the “wool stockings” and “warm shawls,” that protected Maria Crolla from the sharp cold of Scotland when she joined her husband Alfonso in 1913,33 Dear Olivia includes numerous photos of her as proof of her personal growth and of the socio-economic advancement of her family. She was in Princes Street, La Strada dei Principi, when she first dreamt about the beautiful and stylish dresses and coats that she could see in its elegant shops: Maria was entranced. In the windows were statues, each wearing splendid dresses and coats, wide-brimmed hats and leather shoes with delicate stitching and slender heels. There were windows displaying babies’ clothes, beautifully embroidered in the finest wools and silks. In another window was a large tree decorated with red velvet bows and golden baubles with piles of gaudily covered boxes and ribboned parcels underneath. “What do you think? Isn’t this incredible? One day we’ll go in here and I’ll buy you a coat like that one with the fur collar. You’ll choose a hat to match, with the longest most outrageous feather it can hold!”34

 Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 40, 44–45.  The two feasts, which began in the closing decades of the 19th century, are respectively celebrated in early and mid-July every year. For further information, see Terri Colpi, The Italian Factor, 238-239. As Colpi points out, the routes followed by the processions trace out the old Italian quarters of Clerkenwell and Ancoats, even though few Italians still live in these areas. 33  Contini, Dear Olivia, 89. 34  Ibid., 89–90. 31 32

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Sticking to their roles as wives and mothers, and especially determined to maintain the same life routine that they had in the past, she and the other female characters of Contini’s family saga were finally able to make their dreams come true. The narrator clearly shows how long and difficult this type of transcultural transition was. On the one hand, for instance, they continued to celebrate the “Italian Flag Day” and to wear “national costumes”35; on the other hand, as their family photos show, they slowly followed British fashion. At the outbreak of the First World War, when clothes became more practical to wear, Maria36 wore either high collar blouses with simple decorations or plain shirts matching long and comfortable skirts. A few years later, in the early 1920s, Giovanni Emanuelli, who was posing with his wife Carolina Tedaldi, was elegant in his suit and rounded collar shirt.37 Evidence of Italian women’s interest in fashion can be found in one of the pictures in Olive Besagni’s A Better Life: “Sig.na M. Chiapponcelli” and “Sig.na Balestrieri,” both teachers at the Italian School in London, sported handsome fur-collared coats in winter.38 Wearing “a two piece suit” and “make up” “to go to business” in London in the 1930s,39 Yolanda Barroni, the co-protagonist of Melanie Hughes’s War Changes Everything, symbolically anticipates the changes in young Italian women’s style in the post-war years. At a time when Fascist songs were becoming increasingly popular in the immigrant community,40 young Barroni not only listened to the “gramophone” and purchased sophisticated gifts, but also had a clear political awareness. Although Emanuelli’s family and Contini’s ancestors were leading a much harder life and were entirely committed to their shops in Treorchy and Edinburgh,  Ibid., 126.  Ibid., 130; 132. Both photos depict Maria with her children and were taken in 1916. 37  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 10. Here the caption of the black and white photograph reads: “My father Giovanni Emanuelli and my mother Carolina Tedaldi in the early 1920s.” 38  Besagni, A Better Life, 18. The photo includes nine members of the staff of Italian school in 1923. 39  Hughes, War Changes Everything, 36–37: “Overnight, she [Jolanda] changed from a schoolgirl with ribbons in her hair and a shapeless old blazer to a smart young woman, who wore a two piece suit, a costume we called it then, to go to business. She wore make-up now, sporting bright red lips and nails and had her hair cut into a stylish bob. She looked wonderful, but very different.” 40   Considering our literary corpus, the most popular songs are Beneamino Gigli’s Giovinezza (1909) and Renato Micheli’s Faccetta Nera (1935). They are mentioned by Contini’s Dear Olivia and Di Mambro’s Tally’s Blood. 35 36

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the photographic inserts in A Sense of Belonging and in Dear Olivia clearly show that on festive occasions and in their free time, they continued to follow the latest fashion, wearing elegant suits as well as fedora and cloche hats.41 It was the early 1940s when Emanuelli took a picture of Alma and Irene Camparini in their regional costumes.42 Despite the Italians’ desire to keep their ancient traditions alive, the wedding in Glasgow between the Pelosi and D’Artino families43—where the three young brides were wearing stylish silk dresses and beautiful hairstyles—may be considered an emblem of their taste for fashion and of their resilience even in those tragic years. The end of the war greatly changed the situation of the Italian communities especially in Scotland. Contini’s description of Anna Di Ciacca in 1951 perfectly mirrors the economic possibilities and higher level of social integration that, thanks to their families, the new generations had reached. Here in chapter 14 of Dear Alfonso she is ready for an evening out in the centre of Edinburgh: She was all in black, naturally, but her suit was just darling. It had a pencil skirt, two perfect inches below her knees, and a tightly fitted matching jacket, nipped in at the waist to accentuate her curvaceous figure. She had the jacket closed over her lace chemise and a light silk scarf arranged modestly round her neckline, secured by three strands of freshwater pearls. She wore short black leather gloves and a nifty little hat perched on the pile of her thick dark hair, tipped to the right with a veil of lace just skimming her deep brown eyes. Her full lips were carefully painted with her favourite Montezuma Red lipstick from Elizabeth Arden.44

Building upon the principle that “migration can be considered a form of consumption” and that “migrants seek the symbolic and social capital of personal transformation,”45 we may perceive Pia’s “obsession for fashion”46 and creative style as a search first for a transnational, then for a  Contini, Dear Olivia, 231.  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 108. Here the caption reads: “The Carpanini Sisters. Alma on the accordion and Irene on the tambourine. Alma was my childhood sweetheart.” 43  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 90–91. 44  Contini, Dear Alfonso, 135. 45  Sasha Newell, “Migratory Modernity and the Cosmology of Consumption in Côte d’Ivoire,” in Migration and Economy: Global and Local Dynamics, ed. Lillian Trager (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2005), 183. 46  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 108. 41 42

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cosmopolitan identity. In this passage from Language of My Choosing, for instance, she uses the “new rimless glasses” and “Cacharel blouses,” which she had purchased in Montpellier in 1971, to show how she had adapted to her new routine and especially how she was gradually detaching from the Italian community’s stereotypes: And so with my French haircut, new rimless glasses, my pipe of Clan tobacco, my Gauloises Bleues, and my two Cacharel blouses, ill-afforded, having put the ugly old clothes I had arrived with into a trunk bound for Edinburgh, also at some expense, I created another identity and a currency. For whatever reason it came so easily. I was acquiring a taste for the outrageous on the one hand, an obsession with fashion on the other. Neither has ever left me. I enjoyed disrupting convention and expectations but also learned that it could only be done from a position of acceptability. Appearance was a marker of how well I fitted in. And I very much wanted to belong generally, and most especially in France.47

She continued to write about her passion for clothes in Keeping Away the Spiders: Essays on Breaching Barriers, which can be considered a further exploration of her transcultural identity. Firmly convinced that the Italians, the French and “the Edinburgh arty middle classes” interpret the concept of fashion differently, Pia explains that today she follows two principles when choosing her outfits: “What account do I wish to give of myself? What story do I want to tell?”48 Wearing “Topshop skinny denim,” “a recycled ’60s kipper tie,” or even “cross-dressing” “for impact or fun,”49 she can experiment with a range of possibilities which was unknown to her ancestors, but which gives her the chance to express her true self.

5.2   Catholic Rituals and Family Life in Britain Thus crossing geographic as well as social and economic borders, Italian immigrants in Britain faced numerous hardships and challenges. First, they adapted to their new “proletarian” condition, then they learned to use all their skills to start their commercial enterprises. In both cases, even after they freed themselves from their padroni, they experienced a complex

 Ibid., 107–108.  Pia, Keeping Away the Spiders, 45. 49  Ibid., 45–46. 47 48

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transformation,50 which made them victims of social prejudice and marginalisation. Olive Besagni in the introductory section of A Better Life is clear on the fact that in that phase, they found strength and courage in their close-knit community and its religious traditions.51 In Clerkenwell in London, for instance, St. Peter’s Italian Church was at the heart of all social activities: there are beautiful descriptions of its peculiar architectural style in Lilie Ferrari’s Fortunata,52 but the cultural role played by the parish was definitely more important. A reference point for immigrants from all over the Continent and a symbol of national and cultural unity, it also greatly contributed to the preservation of the Italian language.53 Taken from Arcari’s The Hokey Pokey Man, the following extract puts a special emphasis on the similarities between Tino’s Laziale dialect and Latin: “Now, didn’t your Mamma always tell you what good people do on a Sunday?” […] “Holy Mass!” he replied at least in mock exasperation. “At least we can all understand the Latin Mass and that includes you, too. But it’s back to work afterwards, don’t forget.” It was true that, unlike many people who celebrated Mass, even those from other areas of Italy, they could indeed understand much of the service. The dialect of their home village was much closer to Latin than it was to Italian, a direct legacy of the Roman influence hundreds of years previously.54

A linguist who wrote extensively on Italian dialects such as Roman or Romanesco, Tullio De Mauro in La cultura degli italiani55 explains that the language of the capital of Italy was heavily influenced by Tuscan and especially Latin, which was regularly spoken by the clergy. Starting in mediaeval times, and reaching its peak in the Renaissance, this process of contamination continued until the early 1900s, making Roman a rich and 50  On the concept of “contradictory class mobility” see Rachel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 118; and Jennifer A.  Cook, “Transnational Migration and the Lived Experience of Class Across Borders,” in Handbook of Culture and Migration, ed. Jeffrey H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci (Cheltenham: Elgar Publishing, 2021), 235. 51  See Besagni, A Better Life, 14–15. 52  Ferrari, Fortunata, 35. 53  Colpi, The Italian Factor, 230-232. 54  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 98. 55  Tullio De Mauro and Francesco Erbani, La cultura degli italiani (Torino: Laterza, 2015).

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potentially high language.56 We may understand why the majority of Italian British authors and fictional characters who had Laziale origins employed numerous phrases which are related to the Catholic faith. Alfonso Crolla, for instance, Mary Contini’s ancestor, asked for the Madonna’s intercession while he was on the ship heading to Dover. Several years later Rosinella, the female protagonist of Tally’s Blood, invoked “Sant’Antonio” and “San Giuseppe” when her husband Massimo was arrested on the 10th June 1940.57 The following extract from Dear Olivia, however, significantly incorporates an extract from Hail Mary: Alfonso went to the front of the top deck and watched the rest of the passengers filing on board. He waited as the ship’s anchor was pulled up: a loud, clanking clatter. His mood was sombre. He prayed to the Madonna. “Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi, peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte, Amen.”58

Interestingly, compared to the use of Italian in works that we have mentioned, this short extract is linguistically accurate. Apart from the religious practices in every Italian household, the majority of Italian British authors attended schools such as “St. Francis’” near the Gorbals area in Glasgow,59 “St. Joseph’” in Port Talbot60 and “St. Margaret’s Convent” in Edinburgh.61 Their experiences may not always have been positive, but it is undeniable that in those years they could learn even more about the strict norms and traditional rituals of the Catholic Church. Pia, for instance, was retrospectively critical about the education system of her school and of how deeply it influenced her approach to religion and her entire growth.62 It took the members of the Italian immigrant community a long time to hybridise and even detach from those norms and rituals. The description of the Church of St. Francis in late Victorian London may be perceived as a symbol of their desire to stick to their past in Italy, but it may also help to see how they developed a clear vision of the changes that had occurred  Ibid., 39–40.  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 68. 58  Contini, Dear Olivia, 73. 59  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 14. 60  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 10. 61  Pia, A Language of My Choosing, 16, 221. 62  Ibid., 144–150. 56 57

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in their lives. This “relatively new church” was located near “Pottery Lane” and “Hippodrome Place” and it was surrounded by “unmistakable signs of dire poverty”:63 on the one hand, young Tino D’Abruzzo was relieved that “many of the inhabitants still came faithfully to Mass,”64 but on the other hand, he could not but remember the tiny church of Picinisco with nostalgia. The photographic inserts in Italian British literary narratives clearly show that most of the immigrants’ lives were marked by religious festivities and the celebration of the Sacraments. Writing about different historical periods, both Di Mambro and Contini have drawn the readers’ attention to how young girls dressed on their First Communion and Confirmation: in 1935, for instance, during “the solemn feast of Corpus Christi” in Edinburgh, Filomena Crolla “looked like a little bride” “with her long white lace veil”65; in 1944, Rosinella used all her creativity and best fabrics to tailor Lucia’s white dress.66 There were neither solemn processions of priests and bishops, nor sacred music in war times, but the prospect of a future wedding still seemed bright: ROSINELLA: I know it’s late, hen, but I’m nearly finished. You’re lovely in it so you are. I’ll cut the lace off this wee party dress and make a nice collar out it. You mind this? / LUCIA: You got me it just before I started school. / ROSINELLA: It’s not what I would have wanted for your Confirmation but I’ll make it up to you. Here, try on the veil. […] By now Rosinella has finished putting the veil on Lucia and is preoccupied with it. She stands back and looks at her and gets the hanky out to wipe her eyes. LUCIA: What’s wrong? / ROSINELLA: You look just like a wee bride. I’m telling you this now, Lucia Ianelli, some day I’ll give you a wedding, I’ll give you a wedding like nobody here has ever seen before.67

Delineating the process of feminisation of Catholic rituals in Ireland—particularly of the First Communion— Cara Delay contends that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries dresses “signified more than wealth and status,” which “provide us with insights into [girls’] devotional and

 Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 101.  Ibid. 65  Contini, Dear Olivia, 248–249. 66  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 87–88. 67  Ibid. 63 64

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sensory lives.”68 The description of the dresses in Italian British narratives prove that they were made of precious fabrics, ribbons and flower decorations; this strong emphasis on the body and the senses would equally result in the projection of girls into their future as wives and mothers. It may be for this reason that, a symbol of intellectual and moral responsibility,69 the Sacrament of marriage is so central in most of the texts in this literary corpus. Robert Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart, for instance, recounts that children were “named after their grandparents and baptised as soon as possible after birth”70; as for marriage, it refers not only to the ius primae noctis tradition in central and southern Italy,71 but also, more importantly, to the way women provided evidence that their marriage had been consummated.72 Taken from chapter 1, 1897, the short extract below reveals all the sadness that “Babbo”—Fredo’s father—felt in his heart: “[T]omorrow morning mamma will drape the sheets out of the window. A few droplets of blood on the sheets will let everybody know that the marriage has been consummated.” Babbo took a deep breath.73

Despite the fact that the protagonist, young Fredo, saw this old practice as a “barbarita” [sic], “a barbaric ritual,”74 Italian immigrants continued to follow their ancient rituals to find a home and a supportive community

68  Cara Delay, “The First Communion Dress: Fashion, Faith and the Feminization of Catholic Ireland,” Nursing Clio, July 12, 2017, https://nursingclio.org/2017/07/12/ the-first-communion-dress-fashion-faith-and-the-feminization-of-catholic-ireland/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 69  See Peter McGrail, First Communion: Ritual, Church and Popular Religious Identity (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2016), 81; and Daniel Donovan, Distinctively Catholic: An Exploration of Catholic Identity (New York: Paulist Press, 1997). 70  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 73. 71  On this legend, which was created to reinforce the idea of obscurantism in mediaeval times, see among others, Angelo De Gubernatis, Storia comparata degli usi nuziali in Italia e presso gli altri popoli indo-europei (Milano: Treves, 1869), 197–205; and Friedrich G.  Friedmann, “Osservazioni sul mondo contadino dell’Italia meridionale (1952),” Quaderni di Sociologia 26–27 (2001): 13–26. 72  See Domenico Scarpati, Civiltà e vita contadina. Lavoro delle terre nelle Murge tra miti e riti, preghiere e proverbi (Lecce: Youcanprint, 2019). 73  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 18–19. 74  Ibid., 21.

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even after they settled in Britain.75 Di Mambro in her preface to the new edition of Tally’s Blood overtly admits that she frequently resented her strict Italian upbringing, which heavily hindered her process of integration.76 It was only in the post-war years that second-generation immigrants77 such as Joe Pieri, Les Servini and Hector Emanuelli could benefit from the new atmosphere of social inclusion in Britain and even found the courage to challenge their families’ convictions. Although most of them dedicated long descriptive passages to the beautiful venues of their weddings and their receptions,78 Emanuelli’s A Sense of Belonging depicts a joyful picture of his English bride and of their “nuptial Mass”79: Nuptial Mass was not performed very often at Goldenhill and the parish priest Father O’Connor took the opportunity of inviting the whole of the junior school to witness the ceremony. Joan and I were unaware of this at the time. The church was filled to capacity and as Joan walked down the aisle on her father’s arm a lump came to my throat. […] The reception was held at the George Hotel in Burslem, with one hundred guests from England, Wales and Italy. […] Father Ryan, by now an old friend of the family, sat at the top of the table together with Father O’Connor.80

Dominic Pasura and Marta Bivand Erdal contend that “migration and transnationalism are moulding the Roman Catholic Church, producing diverse spaces and encounters.”81 On that occasion, Father O’Connor had celebrated the wedding Mass and was one of the main guests of the Servini family: it is undeniable, though, that Italian immigrants were already 75  Tan Chee-Beng, “Introduction: After Migration and Religion Affiliation,” in After Migration and Religious Affiliation. Religions, Chinese Identities and Transnational Networks, ed. Tan Chee-Beng (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2015), xvii. 76  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 2. 77  Once again, the above-mentioned authors, together with Forte and Tognini, were technically 1.5G immigrants. See Paolo Ruspini, Migrants Unbound, 86. 78  See, for instance, Contini, Dear Alfonso, 222: “In the end the hotel [North British Hotel on Princes Street] was booked, the menu decided and the church hall, though provisionally booked, was cancelled. A four-course lunch would be served at 1 p.m. for 210 guests.” 79  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 125. 80  Ibid. 81  Domic Pasura and Marta Bivand Erdal, “Introduction: Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism,” in Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism. Global Perspectives, ed. Domic Pasura and Marta Bivand Erdal (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1–2.

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absorbing British cultural traditions, which would result in a gradual hybridisation even of this part of their customs. This is particularly true for funerals. They were traditionally simple in Italy where “corpses” were only taken “to the Church for Mass and after that straight to the cemetery”82: once immigrants settled in Britain, though, they started giving “parties” which were open to their relatives and friends.83 In 1922, for instance, Alfonso and Maria Crolla organised a little reception after the funeral of their little daughter Olivia84; sharing her memories of her grandmother’s death in 1964, Pia has showed how this new custom paradoxically made the members of the Italian community even closer. Apart from “the parish priest” who “arrived and continued to go throughout the period between the death and the funeral,” “some nuns from [her] school” and “a few old ladies, dressed in black,”85 the house immediately became filled with guests who generously helped both her mother and the whole Rossi family86: Such was the intimacy of the Italian community that the old way of visiting the house of the bereaved was customary even in Scotland among second and third generation Italians. There was no delay. Within the hour a queue formed at the door and down the street. The house became a thoroughfare. […] It was traditional for guests to take over the house, relation or not; to look after the children, answer the telephone and doorbell, wash dirty dishes or clothes, deal with the detritus from the death; principally to bring food and drink and serve the mourners and the bereaved family. […] It was also customary for two rooms to be used for the purpose: one room where the body was laid out […]; and another for social interaction.87

This shows that the Italians in Britain were united, but also open to change. Food consumption at funerals had been a way for English families and friends to “mark their loved one’s passing” since Anglo Saxon times88; further evidence of the transition of Italian immigrants to a more hybrid  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 74.  Contini, Dear Olivia, 175–176. 84  Ibid. 85  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 80. 86  Ibid., 81. 87  Ibid., 81–82. 88  Darra Goldstein, ed., The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 289. 82 83

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system of values can also be found in their tendency to adorn their homes with “weeping” “Madonnas” and pictures of saints, while attending Sunday Mass only according to “the demands of the[ir] shop[s].”89 Although most Italian British authors tend to define their principal characters—even themselves—as “devout Catholics,” we can find a far more critical approach in Pia’s Language of My Choosing. Here, in fact, she writes about the strict religious precepts that she was expected to follow for most of her life, also about her final decision to embrace Buddhism. At the end of a long intellectual and spiritual path she understood that “in her Italian home” Catholicism equalled “superstition” and “observance,”90 and that there could be far more authentic ways in which she could express her true self. Based on the charismatic figure of Thich Nhat Hahn (1926–), a Zen Buddhist “who preaches harmony, mindfulness and peace,”91 the chapter entitled “The Oak Tree” mainly focuses on the sense of awareness that she finally acquired in her fifties: I had travelled the years between my falling away from Catholicism in my thirties to the day in my fifties when I reconnected with my spiritual life, accompanied by the feeling that I was only living in one very narrow dimension, that half of me was dead. When certain triggers were present, I would melt with despair at the distance between what I was once, my expectations of myself, the years gone and who I had become. For there remained still that part of me which in my teenage years had glimpsed something else beyond the veil; a slumbering certainty to be nourished and substantially reawakened. But I gained certainty, assurance, and found my strength, my oak tree, there in Plum Village. I also found love and care after the childhood years and the loneliness. Most of all I felt safe.92

Her deep loneliness in those years certainly had its roots in the dynamics within her Italian home: although her grandmother had always been the matriarch of the family, who had complete control over their business, gender roles were still very clear and male figures imposed strict moral rules on women. It was significantly after her study experience in France that Pia began to shape her new lifestyle and also learned to accept her complex nature.  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 145.  Ibid., 144. 91  Ibid., 158. 92  Ibid., 160–161. 89 90

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Apart from Spinetti’s account of his early years with his parents,93 there is no evidence of this same sense of uneasiness and oppression in the rest of the Italian British literary works. Mostly based in Wales and Scotland, authors such as Les Servini, Joe Pieri and Hector Emanuelli recounted the hardships that their families had to face, but clearly presented them as united and solid. In short, they wrote about their fathers’ hard work in their shops, but also greatly valued their mothers’ commitment at home. Even though some of them also contributed to their family’s business, they were custodians of Italian original traditions and were very active in maintaining the relations with their relatives in their original hometowns. They were thus deeply attached to their origins: they preserved the rich linguistic and cultural heritage of Italy, and for decades, they were also reluctant to accept change. Considering this phenomenon from a historical and sociological perspective, Terri Colpi confirms, for instance, that, “out-­ marriage from the Community was not a feature” for “old” Italian families until the outbreak of the Second World War.94 We may understand why Rosinella in Ann Marie Di Mambro’s Tally’s Blood does not approve of the locals’ sense of family unity: FRANCO: Oh, they like that alright. All I have to do is say “Ciao Bella” and they’re all over me. […] ROSINELLA: Listen—these girls. (Lowers voice so Lucia won’t hear) Don’t think I don’t understand. You’re no different from all the other Italian men. You’re young, you’ve got the warm blood. But it’s one thing to play around with them, so long as you marry your own kind. You watch none of them catches you. That’s the kind of thing they do here.95

Despite the negative impact that this way of thinking had especially on the social integration of the younger generations, as time went by there was room for change and even for a more open and egalitarian idea of marriage. Ideally related to the latest studies on migration, gender and

93  See Spinetti, Victor Spinetti Up Front…, 69. There was a high level of tension between his parents. Furthermore, he could not bear their hard routine. In chapter 4 he writes: “The timing was perfect. Going to Cardiff would solve all my problems. I needed to get away. I needed to be independent and I needed some money to live. The grant came through and I went to Cardiff.” 94  Colpi, The Italian Factor, 193. 95  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 25.

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intersectionality,96 the following extract is taken from Pia’s Candid Life-­ Memoir. At a time—the early 1980s—when “hundreds of first-generation women were employed at the Meltis factory” in Bedford and did not have any leisure time,97 Pia, who was a teacher, paid for her own wedding98 and left not only her family but a whole system of values: My marriage was to be I thought, a definitive final ascent from that ghetto; a positive move, together with my husband, to create something of ours; our joint desire to leave the family, the system, and create our own professional, liberal lifestyle of equality, refinement, culture and the arts. I had a vision of a professional couple sharing, growing and learning every day; with each new baby, and each new career move, gaining distance from where we had been […]. And I saw an intelligent, artistic lifestyle, a family thriving within it, a life of gentle art and ideas, of idealism and creativity.99

5.3  The Past and the Present: Towards New Food Identities Interestingly, Pia’s breach with the past protected her from the suffering that she had felt, but equally gave her the opportunity of choosing responsibly the traditions that she wanted to “keep and share.”100 Thus confirming that food equals “belonging and dwelling,”101 she never forgot her family’s cooking practices, especially how her Italian grandmother “used to gently poach eggs in a sauce of fresh tomatoes which she reheated from [their] standard Sunday spaghetti.”102 Despite her conflictual relationship with food at different times of her life, now she contends that 96  Kathy Burrell, “Male and Female Polishness in Post-War Leicester: Gender and Its Intersections in a Refugee Community,” in Gendering Migration. Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-War Britain, ed. Louise Ryan and Wendy Webster (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2016), 71–87; and Helma Lutz and Anna Amelina, “Intersectionality and Transnationality as Key Tools for Gender-Sensitive Migration Research,” in The Palgrave Book of Gender and Migration, ed. Claudia Mora and Nicola Piper (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 55–72. 97  Colpi, The Italian Factor, 216–217. 98  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 49. 99  Ibid., 19-20. 100  Ibid., 198. 101  Meredith Abarca, “Foreword,” in Food Identities at Home and on the Move: Explorations at the Intersections of Food, Belonging and Dwelling, ed. Raúl Matta, Charles-Édouard de Suremain and Chantal Crenn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 8–16. 102  Pia, Keeping Away the Spiders, 93.

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what she eats and cooks determines her “degree of comfort within society and within [her] friendship and family circles.”103 The latest scholarly contributions in this field are clear on the necessity of re-discovering the immigrants’ contribution to the creation of new foodscapes in metropolitan spaces.104 Gabaccia, for instance, has explained that, “cuisines have always been a relatively open marketspace for expressing identities and building relationships,”105 yet it is undeniable that for a long period of time the Italian immigrant community could not share its members’ rich traditions with the locals. It was only after the Second World War that their cuisine began to be appreciated in London and in major British cities, which demonstrates that this part of their cultural heritage was gradually transformed into a business. This may partly explain why following the rich corpus of Italian British literary narratives, it is possible to see not only how southern traditions were maintained, but also how they changed. Contini’s family saga, Paulette Pelosi’s Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper and Pia’s Candid Life-­ Memoir, for instance, all contribute to a wide gastronomic picture of Ciociaria—especially of the Picinisco area—as well as of Naples. Despite the fact that it is always difficult to find a perfect coincidence between the official recipes of the most popular regional dishes and the authors’ culinary heritage,106 this is proof of their desire to build bridges between Britain and that particular part of Italy. Closely related to its rural origins and influenced by the traditions of the nearby regions of Campania, Abruzzo and Molise, Laziale cuisine is based on simple but high-quality ingredients such as legumes—peas, chickpeas, lentils and beans—herbs, as well as eggs, pecorino cheese and meat. Pork, as we have seen, was considered precious and was also utilised to produce the so-called guanciale; as for young lamb or abbacchio, it was traditionally cooked with oil, garlic, pepper and rosemary. The popular director of the Italian delicatessen shop Valvona & Crolla, Mary Contini  Ibid., 97.  See Eric Fong and Brent Berry, Immigration and the City (Cambridge: Polity, 2017); as well as Siria Guzzo and Anna Gallo, “Diasporic Identities in Social Practices: Language and Food in the Loughborough Italian Community,” in Food Across Cultures. Linguistic Insights in Transcultural Tastes, ed. Giuseppe Balirano and Siria Guzzo (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 71–98. 105  Here Fong and Berry are referring to Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, 89. 106  Angelika Dietz, Dimensions of Belongings and Migrants by Choice: Contemporary Movements Between Italy and Northern Ireland (Münster: Waxmann, 2010), 112. 103 104

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in Dear Olivia not only includes numerous “Recipes from Fontitune,”107 but also shows that the members of her family who resided in Fontitune, the little hamlet near Picinisco had a rich culinary repertoire. In May 1913, for instance, one of her ancestors, Filomena, put special care into the preparation of the abbacchio [young lamb]. Although this was—and continues to be—popular especially in Rome, she knew the tradition well: There was a lot to do but the women in Fontitune had prepared, cooking big pots of pasta e ceci, frittata with potatoes and onions, and guanciale con piselli, pork cheek cooked with spring peas, served with a rough home-made pasta. Extra loaves of bread had been baked, and the children had collected misticanza of salad leaves and herbs full of nutrients. Emidio and Pietro had gone down earlier to Picinisco to get two young lambs, abbacchii [sic]. They had carried them up on their shoulders ahead of the shepherds. After they had been born, the abbacchii had been strapped to the bellies of the sheep so that they had only been milk-fed, making their flesh tender and sweet. They had already been slaughtered and butchered. The men had dug a pit in the earth and covered the base of it with glowing embers. Filomena pounded garlic, wild rosemary, thyme and preserved anchovies with green cloudy olive oil in a wooden mortar. She rubbed the mixture all over the lamb then laid it on a grate over the embers. Covered with twigs, the lamb roasted slowly. Occasional whiffs of rosemary and garlic and sparks of burning splinters of wood escaped with the smoke, creating an extraordinarily good aroma.108

As the latest research has revealed, Juvenal, the Latin writer, greatly appreciated this dish.109 He was convinced that the extraordinary softness of this meat was due to the fact that the animal was young and that it had “more milk than blood.”110 Today we may add that another important factor is its diet, which is based on milk and fodder, as well as on a small quantity of grain. Typically related to Easter celebrations, the abbacchio, however, is not the only important dish in the Laziale cuisine. Anne Pia, for instance, remembers that on New Year’s Eve the menu included “chicken, roasted 107  Contini, Dear Olivia. The section entitled “Recipes from Fontitune” has no page number. “All recipes serve 4.” 108  Ibid., 60. 109  Francesco Duscio, La cucina tradizionale del Lazio (Roma: Fuoco Edizioni, 2020). 110  Ibid., 71.

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and boiled, spaghetti [and] bracciol (beaf olives),” but not a dessert, although “there was indeed jelly and ice-cream” “for children.”111 Again, in Lazio braciole are small pieces of pork which are roasted with oil, pepper and slices of homemade bread;112 as for dessert, the tradition in the Comino Valley is mainly based on ciambelle, crostatine, amaretti and pan pepato,113 which explains why Pia only considered ice-cream as their proper Italian “trademark.”114 She continued to write about her family’s culinary practices in the chapter of Language of My Choosing entitled “The Mammissima.” Blending English, Italian and Viticusar, she claims that at Easter the Rossis “had frittatas, ritualistic lemons”—“savouries” that she is still “unable to spell”—and “puff pastries encasing nutty prosciuttos.”115 It may be difficult to detect the exact name of these latter ham pastries, yet it is a fact that the traditional frittata paesana includes different types of vegetables, whereas the Rossis generally preferred to cook it with pasta. Apart from this particular family custom—which is, however, common all over Italy today—it may be of interest to note that Pia still associates her grandmother’s omelettes with the Italian cult of hospitality: I saw her often cooking a frittata for an unexpected visitor at eleven at night, whereas at that time of night, in a Scottish home, you might be lucky to get a cup of tea. For her, a welcome was the offer of food and drink. They were her currency. She made people feel warm and happy, and so they came often. I also learned that Christmas and New Year in an Italian home were about family. I do not remember wine or indeed alcohol. There clearly was wine, but it was of little importance. But I also learned something else. Every family needs a heart and a hearth.116

In point of fact, even considering that pasta “requires ceremony,”117 Pia still considers her wonderful pappardelle al sugo as a true act of love for her family. Her grandmother’s cooking repertoire was limited, but its main  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 63.  Duscio, La cucina tradizionale del Lazio, 188–189. 113   For further information about the Laziale culinary heritage, see the Gambero Rosso website https://www.gamberorosso.it/notizie/storie/prodotti-tipici-del-lazio-lespecialita-della-ciociaria/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 114  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 63. 115  Ibid., 191. 116  Ibid., 63. 117  Ibid., 197. 111 112

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recipes always remained engraved in her memory. Unsurprisingly, though, when she gave voice to her complex identity, she became more and more curious about other—definitely richer—foreign traditions. Thus starting from a “place where people survived on pan’ e cipoll’, bread and onions,”118 the Rossis—also Contini’s ancestors in Edinburgh— continued to use simple ingredients such as garlic, potatoes and lentils, as well as cooked “round paston[i],” which were “pies with egg, ricotta, cured ham and sausage.”119 Pasta e ceci and pasta e fagioli represented of course valid alternatives to introduce vegetable proteins into their daily diets. Yet, there were typical Italian products which could not be found in their new home country. For this reason, pecorino cheese, mortadella and salsiccie were sent in “amazing boxes”120 directly from Viticuso and Fontitune, which caused great joy and contributed to keeping the sense of family unity.121 At a time when they were encountering serious difficulties in their process of social integration, food reminded them of their roots and represented a solace from the suffering of isolation. As Susanne Wessendorf contends, this was crucial for them to continue to feel an integral part of their original communities.122 Sharing her most precious memories of the periods that she spent in Vallegrande, the small village near Picinisco where her father came from, Paulette Pelosi confirms that “food was a religion” in her Italian family in Swansea, which contributed to her sense of national belonging. The following extract, which is taken from Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper, puts a special emphasis on the “gorgeous aromas of roasted pepper, pasta and sauces,” which “would burst out in the streets” when her grandmother Carmela cooked for her and her father: Food was always a top priority for us all. I loved the indescribably gorgeous aromas of roasted peppers, pasta, sauces and soups which would fill the air in my Nonna Carmela’s house in Swansea. The delicious smells would burst  Ibid., 62.  Contini, Dear Olivia, 16. 120  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 63. 121  See Contini, Dear Olivia, 188-189; and Pia, Language of My Choosing, 63–64. 122  Susanne Wessendorf, “State-Imposed Translocalism and the Dream of Returning. Italian Migrants in Switzerland,” in Intimacy and Italian Migration. Gender and Domestic Lives in a Mobile World, ed. Loretta Baldassar and Donna R. Gabaccia (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 164–165. 118 119

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out into the street when the front door was opened to admit Papa and me after Sunday Mass. I was a real Welsh-Italian Bisto Kid, my nostrils dilated to inhale all the marvellous smells and aromas of my Italian grandmother’s culinary delights.123

A similar description can be found in Mary Contini’s Dear Alfonso. Here young Carlo, the author’s father-in law, “took deep breaths savouring” “the smells of cooking”124 in the “Rione Terra” in the little town of Pozzuoli near Naples. Even though the narrator refers to the tastiest ingredients of Mediterranean cuisine—“luscious fresh tomatoes,” “green oil and aromatic basil” “creamy onions” and peperoncino125—the emphasis is more on his mother, Annunziata Conturso, whom Contini first met in September 1979 during her honeymoon.126 At that time she was “a naïve 24-year-old who had visited Italy only twice before”127: the old woman’s cooking, especially her ability “to feed all her family, up to 20 people every day,”128 was a true “revelation” to her. Starting from tasty salads, but also including more popular “Spaghettini sciué sciué” and “Rum babà,” the rich appendix of “Annunziata’s recipes” blends touching family memories with precious culinary advice. The short introduction to “Insalata di Pane—Bread Salad,” may be considered the perfect link between the past and the present, also proof of her desire to promote Italian southern culture: In Pozzuoli bread was still bought from the baker by the kilo and lasted up to a week wrapped in a cloth in the kitchen, dark crusty chewy bread that was satisfyingly full of flavour. As the bread dried Annunziata enjoyed it more. When she was over ninety and had only one tooth left she dipped the hard bread in her wine and sucked on it all day, giggling with delight.129

The latest scholarly research in this field confirms that “the ritualised, gendered, ethnicised, and emotionalised memory of food” is a central

 Pelosi, “Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper,” 224–225.  Contini, Dear Alfonso, 5. 125  Ibid. 126  Ibid., 283. 127  Ibid. 128  Ibid. 129  Ibid., 286. 123 124

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element in the lives of Italian descendants.130 Time, though, as well as their involvement in the catering industry, slowly changed their family culinary practices. Of course, there was still room for their traditions, but it is undeniable that in the post-war years, the younger generations were open not only to different cultures, but also more importantly to products such as “Knorr chicken noodle packet soups,” “beans on toast” and “Mary Berry cake mix,”131 which were icons of the latest trends in contemporary British food culture. Once again, Pia shows how such different styles combined—even overlapped—in Italian British homes: Around this time, there was the first appearance of Knorr chicken noodle packet soups in my home. I remember the simple joy of tinned spam, the glossy jelly of tinned pork meat; beans on toast, though I really preferred late night beans on their own, Cheyenne-cowboy style; and eventually Mary Baker (not Mary Berry) cake mixes; Bird’s custard with tinned pears. Rich tea and Digestive biscuits found their way even into my Italian home. […] The small changes to what and how we ate at home due to a Scottish influence were partnered with the aroma of fried whitebait, begged or pre-­ ordered from the fishmonger; capons stuffed with forcemeat consisting of Italian sausage, garlic, raisins and breadcrumbs; camomile tea; broth with pasta and the discarded parts of the chicken (I particularly remember the brown scaly meat of the neck); fish coated in home-made breadcrumbs; eggs fried in olive oil; and the first Moka coffee-maker, brought straight from Italy by my uncle. We learned to make chips too, but an altogether better version was potatoes sautéed with onions and garlic.132

At a time when “want” became “plenty,”133 the Italians were thus not only changing their eating habits, but also raising the quality standards of their restaurants. There is clear historical evidence that they improved their quality standards while introducing the concept of haute cuisine. A collection of the most sophisticated dishes that Elena Salvoni proposed to her very special guests, Eating Famously134 may be considered the product of this long evolutionary process. The recipe that she dedicated to 130  Christa Writh, Memories of Belonging: Descendants of Italian Migrants to the United States, 1884–Present (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2015), 170–171. 131  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 69. 132  Ibid. 133  Panikos Panayi, Spicing Up Britain, Ch. 4, “Changes in British Eating Habits,” par. 1. 134  Elena Salvoni et al., Eating Famously. Elena Salvoni on Fabulous Food for Her Famous Friends and Diners… and a Lifetime in Soho Restaurants (London: Walnut West One, 2007).

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the English celebrity Jeremy Irons, for instance—“Field Mushrooms & Madeira Soup”—includes “field mushrooms,” “chicken stock” and of course “Madeira,”135 which clearly shows how the best Italian tradition provided the basis of a more European cuisine. Further traces of this syncretism can be found in the rest of the collection by this legendary maître d’: there is still of course room for “tomato and mozzarella terrine”—also for “gnocchi verdi”—but “chorizo and croutons” are at the heart of Dame Judi Dench’s favourite starter;136 Sir David Lean must have greatly appreciated her “Smooth Chicken Liver & Foie Gras Parfait with Armagnac.”137 Once again blending English, Italian, French and Iberian, Salvoni’s last book not only testifies to the greatest achievements in her career, but also to the multicultural trait of the L’Escargot restaurant in Soho. Yet, she never forgot the time when she “made her family delicious and nourishing meals of spaghetti, meatballs and stew”138: this was her personal way of linking her past hardships as a member of the Italian immigrant community to a present which was made up of great professional satisfactions and international recognitions.

Bibliography Primary Sources Arcari, Anita. The Hokey Pokey Man. Aberystwyth: Y Lolfa, 2010. Contini, Mary. Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006. Contini, Mary. Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2017. Di Mambro, Ann Marie. Tally’s Blood. Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2012. Emanuelli, Hector. A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman. Langenfeld: Six Towns Books, 2010. Ferrari, Lilie. Fortunata. London, New York, Toronto: BCA, 1993. Hughes, Melanie. War Changes Everything. Manningtree: Patrician Press, 2017. Moscardini, Bernard. La Vacanza. Kennoway: Spiderwize, 2009.

 Ibid., 46–49.  Ibid., 50–53. 137  Ibid., 70–73. 138  Ibid., 15. 135 136

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Pelosi, Paulette. “Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper.” In Even the Rain Is Different. Women Writing on the Highs and Lows of Living Abroad, edited by Gwyneth Tyson Roberts, 223–228. Aberystwyth: Honno Autobiography, 2005. Pia, Anne. Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2017. Pia, Anne. Keeping Away the Spiders. Essays on Breaching Barriers. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2020. Pieri, Joe. The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2005. Pieri, Joe. Isle of the Displaced. An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2014. Kindle. Rossi, Robert. Italian Blood British Heart. Independently Published, 2019. Kindle. Salvoni, Elena, Chris Wright, Mike Maloney and William Hall. Eating Famously. Elena Salvoni on Fabulous Food for Her Famous Friends and Diners… and a Lifetime in Soho Restaurants. London: Walnut West One, 2007. Servini, Les. A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times. Cardiff: Hazeltree, 1994.

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Cook, Jennifer A. “Transnational Migration and the Lived Experience of Class Across Borders.” In Handbook of Culture and Migration, edited by Jeffrey H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci, 232–247. Cheltenham: Elgar Publishing, 2021. De Gubernatis, Angelo. Storia comparata degli usi nuziali in Italia e presso gli altri popoli indo-europei. Milano: Treves, 1869. De Mauro, Tullio and Francesco Erbani. La cultura degli italiani. Torino: Laterza, 2015. Dietz, Angelika. Dimensions of Belongings and Migrants by Choice: Contemporary Movements Between Italy and Northern Ireland. Münster: Waxmann, 2010. Donovan, Daniel. Distinctively Catholic. An Exploration of Catholic Identity. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. Durrant, Sam and Catherine M.  Lord. “Introduction: Essays in Migratory Aesthetics. Cultural Practices.” In Essays in Migratory Aesthetics: Cultural Practices Between Migration and Art Making, edited by Sam Durrant and Catherine M. Lord, 11–20. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Duscio, Francesco. La cucina tradizionale del Lazio. Roma: Fuoco Edizioni, 2020. Fargioni-Tozzetti, Giovanni. In Ciociaria: ricordi di usanze popolari. Livorno: Tipografia Giusti, 1891. Fiore, Teresa. “‘Architextualizing’ the Italian Immigration Experience to the United States: Bricklayers and Writers in John Fante’s Works.” In The Cultures of Italian Migration. Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives, edited by Graziella Parati and Anthony Julian Tamburri, 109–126. Madison, Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011. Fong, Eric and Brent Berry. Immigration and the City. Cambridge: Polity, 2017. Friedmann, Friedrich G. “Osservazioni sul mondo contadino dell’Italia meridionale (1952).” Quaderni di Sociologia 26–27 (2001): 13–26. Gabaccia, Donna R. Italy’s Many Diasporas. London and New  York: Routledge, 2013. Goldstein, Darra. The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Guzzo, Siria and Anna Gallo. “Diasporic Identities in Social Practices: Language and Food in the Loughborough Italian Community.” In Food Across Cultures. Linguistic Insights in Transcultural Tastes, edited by Giuseppe Balirano and Siria Guzzo, 71–98. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Lutz, Helma and Anna Amelina. “Intersectionality and Transnationality as Key Tools for Gender-Sensitive Migration Research.” In The Palgrave Book of Gender and Migration, edited by Claudia Mora and Nicola Piper, 55–72. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. McGrail, Peter. First Communion: Ritual, Church and Popular Religious Identity. Abingdon: Ashgate, 2016. Moschitti, Pierluigi. Mo’ vene Natale. La tradizione natalizia e la musica popolare. Gaeta: Passerino Editore, 2020.

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Newell, Sasha. “Migratory Modernity and the Cosmology of Consumption in Côte d’Ivoire.” In Migration and Economy: Global and Local Dynamics, edited by Lillian Trager, 163–192. Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2005. Panayi, Panikos. Spicing Up Britain. The Multicultural History of British Food. London: Reaktion Books, 2008. Kindle. Pasura, Domic and Marta Bivand Erdal. “Introduction: Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism.” In Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism. Global Perspectives, edited by Domic Pasura, and Marta Bivand Erdal, 1–20. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Ruspini, Paolo. Migrants Unbound. London: Transnational Press, 2019. Salazar Parreñas, Rhacel. Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. Santulli, Michele. Il costume ciociaro nell’arte europea del 1800. Arpino: Edizioni Ciociaria Sconosciuta, 2009. Scarpati, Domenico. Civiltà e vita contadina. Lavoro delle terre nelle Murge tra miti e riti, preghiere e proverbi. Lecce: Youcanprint, 2019. Teti, Vito. Il colore del cibo. Geografia, mito e realtà dell’alimentazione mediterranea. Sesto San Giovanni: Meltemi, 1999. Wessendorf, Susanne. “State-Imposed Translocalism and the Dream of Returning. Italian Migrants in Switzerland.” In Intimacy and Italian Migration. Gender and Domestic Lives in a Mobile World, edited by Loretta Baldassar and Donna R. Gabaccia, 157–170. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. Writh, Christa. Memories of Belonging: Descendants of Italian Migrants to the United States, 1884–Present. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2015.

Web Resources Dealay, Cara. “The First Communion Dress: Fashion, Faith and the Feminization of Catholic Ireland.” Nursing Clio, July 12, 2017. https://nursingclio. org/2017/07/12/the-­f irst-­c ommunion-­d ress-­f ashion-­f aith-­a nd-­t he-­ feminization-­of-­catholic-­ireland/. Salvatori, Roberto. “Il costume tradizionale palianese.” Centro Studi Salvatori. Accessed 31 May 2023. http://centrostudisalvatori.blogspot.com/2018/07/ il-costume-tradizionale-palianese.html. Santulli, Michele. “Il costume ciociaro nell’arte europea del 1800.” In Ciociaria. org. Ciociaria sconosciuta. Accessed 31 May 2023. http://inciociaria. org/2016/01/07/il-costume-ciociaro-nellarte-europea-del-1800/.

CHAPTER 6

Languages in Contact: Italian, English, German and French

Made up of tasty ingredients of different cooking traditions, Salvoni’s syncretic, international cuisine may be considered symbolic of Italian migrants’ multi-layered identities. They were rooted in the cultures and languages of their original homeland, but gradually changed once they came into contact with British national and regional traditions. As time went by, it became natural for the younger generations to develop also a curiosity for other lifestyles and especially foreign languages: Spinetti’s success in America and Pia’s sojourns in France radically changed their future perspectives. From this point of view, their writings clearly reflect their vision of their transcultural condition and of themselves as world citizens. Proof of the close nexus between language development and social integration1 can be found in this corpus in A Boy from Bardi. Servini recounts that “for the first few months” after he arrived in Wales he “had not a word of English” and that he “only ventured out when taken to Mass”2: considering that his origins often represented a barrier in his process of integration, he proudly defined his reputation as a language teacher as the greatest achievement of his life.3 1  On the newly elaborated concept of English as an Additional Language (EAL) as a tool to promote social integration of migrants in Britain, see Michael Evans et  al., Language Development and Social Integration of Students with English as an Additional Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 2  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 10. 3  Ibid., 64–65.

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Joe Pieri in Isle of the Displaced ideally continued this important discourse putting an emphasis on his “bilingual upbringing,” his good ear for languages and especially on his “ability to mix and merge with persons of different nationalities.”4 When he was interned on the Île St. Hélène in Canada, for instance, he served as a translator also from German, which made his experience at Camp S more endurable.5 In the following years, when he could spend his summer holidays in his hometown in northern Tuscany, he had the opportunity to improve his Italian and reinforce the relations between the members of the Bargan Scottish community. Incorporating numerous positive linguistic experiences, Italian British narratives begin from their protagonists’ difficulties in adapting to English as a new a “sign-system.”6 The latest scholarly research has confirmed that in post-unification times—and until the First World War—Italian emigrants were generally uneducated7 and that they were not prepared to live outside national borders.8 For this reason, even when they began to learn English and its regional varieties,9 they continued to use their dialects to remain in contact with their relatives and feel part of their new communities.10 In a context, though, where far from their home country they could not improve their knowledge of standard Italian and did not have a clear vision of their linguistic “process of becoming,”11 they realised that learning to write represented a possibility of social redemption. For this reason, at the end of the nineteenth century the Società Dante Alighieri and the Società di Mutuo Soccorso organised an increasing number of literacy courses, which became popular also in the major Italian communities in Britain.12 Focusing on this first complex period of adaptation and closely referring to the forms of métissage which resulted from the contact between  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 7, “Divisions,” par. 8.  Ibid., Ch. 17, “Language,” par. 7–10. 6  On this specific topic see Stuart Hall, “The Work of Representation,” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London, Thousand Oakes, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997), 31–32. 7  Guzzo, A Sociolinguistic Insight into the Italian Community in the UK, 15. 8  Barbara Turchetta, Il mondo in italiano. Varietà e usi internazionali della lingua (Bari: Laterza, 2005), 5. 9  Tosi, Immigration and Bilingual Education, 58. 10  Turchetta, Il mondo in italiano, 6–7. See also Massimo Vedovelli, “L’ipotesi del parallelismo,” in Storia linguistica dell’emigrazione italiana nel mondo, ed. Massimo Vedovelli (Roma: Carocci, 2021), 51. 11  Fernando Kuhn, “Cartographies of Transculturality: Region as a Dialogue Zone,” 18. 12  Turchetta, Il mondo in italiano, 6–7. 4 5

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Italian, regional dialects and English,13 Barbara Turchetta has explained that the younger generations of immigrants found themselves in a better position.14 They were part of a social system which was based on education15 and gave them not only the opportunity to learn the language at a formal level, but also brighter prospects of life. Servini and Emanuelli could indeed leave the catering industry and became respectively a highly reputed teacher and an employee at a multinational company; as concerns Pia—who used the shield of silence to protect herself from her Scottish classmates16—she retired as an HM inspector of Education in 2009 and dedicated herself completely to writing. There is still a great interest in the phenomena connected to language contact,17 plurilingualism18 and in the Italian communities abroad.19 From this point of view, this chapter will show how the new generations learned Italian, and especially what remains of that heritage today: starting from the literary works in our corpus, it will focus on the language practices which were typical of Italian migrant contexts, while giving useful information about their authors’ background. We will thus begin from Italian and the dialects that the new generations in particular spoke with their families. Their narratives are replete with italianismi, which show their command of the language, but also include Neapolitan, southern Laziale and Tuscan. English-speaking readers will also find interesting elements related to their history and peculiar features, also more importantly, their strong cultural significance. Ideally recalling the previous chapters, the second section will focus on how the protagonists of Italian British narratives encountered English and Cockney, as well as Welsh and Scottish. The numerous words and phrases which are embedded in these literary narratives clearly represent the  Ibid., 8–9.  Ibid., 5–6. 15  See Tosi, Immigration and Bilingual Education, 56; and Turchetta, Il mondo in italiano, 5–6. 16  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 60. 17  See Tony Capstick, Language and Migration (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 186. 18  See Hans-Jürgen Krumm, “Multilingualism and Identity: What Linguistic Biographies of Migrants Can Tell Us,” in Multilingualism and Language Diversity in Urban Areas. Acquisition, Identities, Space, Education, ed. Peter Siemund et  al. (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2013), 164–176. 19  See also Margherita Di Salvo and Paola Moreno, eds., Italian Communities Abroad: Multilingualism and Migration (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). 13 14

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cultural shock that their protagonists initially faced, also the link between language acquisition and social integration. This chapter will finally show that their skills and flexibility helped them to survive during the Second World War: learning German in particular made their internment experiences definitely easier; as regards French, it symbolically created new opportunities of personal growth and development. Closely referring to our literary corpus and proposing contents from a markedly cultural perspective, this part of our intertextual path will encourage questions regarding language acquisition in migrant contexts, but more importantly it will provide further insights into Italian British authors’ complex identities.

6.1   Italian and Dialectal Forms as Icons of the Past We will thus commence from the numerous italianismi that they employed in their writings. According to the latest research, third-generation immigrants generally learn standard Italian outside the family contexts,20 which explains why the majority of the narratives in this textual corpus include greetings and goodbyes—Ciao, Buon giorno [sic], Buona sera [sic], Buona notte [sic] —basic expressions—Come stai?,21 Non ti preoccupare,22 C’è niente da fare [sic]”23—as well as a few longer phrases or proverbs like “Zia Maria è innamorata di Alfonso! Bacio! Bacio!”24 and “Moglie e buoi dai [sic] paesi tuoi.”25 Emphasised and translated into English, they also mark the different historical and cultural phases that the immigrant community went through since the late nineteenth century. Indeed, a significant linguistic area in this corpus is related to rural Italy: there are references to the mezzadri [“poor hard-working

 Turchetta, Il mondo in italiano, 10.  Contini, Dear Olivia, 52. 22  Ibid., 3. 23  Ibid., 50. The narrator translates these phrases as “Don’t worry” and “There’s nothing we can do.” 24  Ibid., 18. Literally “Aunt Maria is in love with Alfonso! A kiss! A kiss!” The text, however, reads: “This gave Alfonso every excuse to kiss her again, this time holding her so close she couldn’t breathe.” 25  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 69. The equivalent of this popular proverb in English could be “Better wed over the mixen than over the moor.” 20 21

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peasants”]26 and to the practice of transumanza [transhumance],27 but also to the colourful world of itinerant artisans, such as the arrotino [“the knife grinder”], the ombrellaio [“the umbrella mender”] and the seggiolaio [“the chair mender”].28 Traditional figures since 1800,29 they toured the whole area where they lived, thus giving the locals the opportunity to exchange information, establish new relations and comment on the latest news.30 In 1942 the young Moscardini was greatly fascinated by their technical skills and nomadic life. In this extract taken from chapter 8, for instance, his focus is on “the stagnino, literally tinsmith”: Late summer was the time of the year when itinerant artisans would visit the village. Sometimes they might come every year; if not, every other year. Chief among these was the stagnino, literally tinsmith, but he was really the proverbial tinker. He would arrive, after a rather arduous climb up to the village, laden with various pots and pans. He would stay one, two or three days however long it took. On arrival, he would go round the village ringing a hand bell and shout: “Stagnino, stagnino.” After ensuring that he had made his presence known to everyone, he would go and install himself in the piazza in the shade of one or two plane trees, ready for business. […] He never hurried his work for he was a real old fashioned artisan. It was fascinating to watch him work. He was always very cheerful. Full of spirit, greeting everyone joyfully.31

Providing a detailed description of the natural riches of the Barga area, as well as of farmers’ tools—“the metato, the chestnut-drying shed”32 was only one of them—Moscardini used Italian also to define his family’s staple diet. As we have seen, it “consisted mainly of polenta,” tasty salami and cheese,33 but also of tagliarini [“fresh homemade tagliatelle-shaped pasta  Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 2.  Contini, Dear Olivia, 47. 28  Moscardini, La Vacanza, 71–72. 29  See Giacinto Carena, Prontuario di vocaboli attinenti a parecchie arti, ad alcuni mestieri, a cose domestiche, e altre di uso comune per saggio di un vocabolario metodico della lingua italiana… (Napoli: Stamperia e Cartiere del Fibreno, 1854). 30  See Gian Luigi Bravo, La complessità della tradizione. Festa, museo e ricerca antropologica (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2005), 148–149. 31  Moscardini, La Vacanza, 71. 32  Ibid., 77. 33  Ibid., 78. 26 27

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strips cooked in a soup of borlotti beans and diced potatoes”]34 and traditional cakes. The necci, for instance, may also be filled with ricotta cheese,35 whereas the castagnaccio36 was flavoured with olive oil, pine nuts and rosemary. Not all Italian British narratives, though, seem to connect the use of Italian to specific ingredients or regional dishes. Domenica de Rosa’s The Italian Quarter and Melanie Hughes’s War Changes Everything, for instance, only mention popular types of pasta like spaghetti,37 gnocchi and tagliatelle.38 They were generally cooked “Al Dente” [sic]39 and commonly topped with “beef sugo”: as the narrative voice of Dear Alfonso recounts, on special occasions Carlo Contini’s mamma added “garlic and parsley” and “cooked so slowly it melted in his mouth. […] His stomach cramped.”40 Investigating the latest forms of Italophonia, Raffaella Bombi and Vincenzo Orioles have recently recognised food as a new and growing area of scholarly interest. In the past it was closely connected to the early migration fluxes; more recently, especially after an important event such as Expo 2015, it has become a wider cultural phenomenon which has reinforced the international appeal of Italy. Interestingly, today even nouns such as tiramisu, pesto and carpaccio have become so popular that they are respectively part of 23, 16 and 13 foreign languages.41 It must be also for this reason that cook books like Dear Francesca, an Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love, Valvona and Crolla: A Year at an Italian Table (2009) and The Italian Sausage Bible (2012) are still at the heart of Contini’s editorial success in the UK. Closely related to a type of society which took pride in its traditions and continued to preserve its beliefs and codes, malocchio or “the evil eye” is another Italian word which can be found in these narratives. Interestingly,  Ibid., 78–79.  See Mariù Salvatori de Zuliani, La cucina di Versilia e Garfagnana (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 1997), 35, 194. 36  Moscardini, La Vacanza, 79. 37  Hughes, War Changes Everything, 30. 38  de Rosa, The Italian Quarter, 20. 39  Ibid., 7. 40  Contini, Dear Alfonso, 67. 41  Raffaella Bombi and Vincenzo Orioles, “Fattori di attrattività della lingua italiana nel mondo: la nuova italofilia,” in Plurilinguismo migratorio. Voci italiane, italiche e regionali, ed. Raffaella Bombi and Francesco Costantini (Udine: Forum, 2019), 65. 34 35

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the very title of Cruciani’s book originally stemmed from “a discussion about Italian superstition”42 and about “owls” as symbols of “bad luck.”43 As regards the importance of rural rites in the centre-south of Italy, in Dear Olivia Alfonso Crolla and his friend Pietro used to protect their flocks “gathering the ashes from the previous night’s bonfires and spreading it in the area where the sheep would be milked in the spring.”44 Evidence that the Italians continued to follow similar rites even after they emigrated to Britain can be found in Pia’s debut memoir: “in order to break the spell of ‘the evil eye,’” Mariuccia Rossi “would put rice grains into a basin of water and determinedly ‘drown’ with her thumb, any grains floating on the surface.”45 Incorporating three different forms of this Italian word—respectively malocchio, mal’occhio and the Viticusar ‘gle mal’oiche’—none of these narratives refer to the numerous other expressions—occhio tristo [wicked eye] or occhio morto [eye of death] to name but a few—which are popular especially in southern Italy. As Eric Martone contends, also in Italian American communities “good luck symbols” were traditionally those which neutralised envy or jealousy.46 Although there is no reference to any magical formulas or protective amulets in our literary corpus, the latest research has shown that the Italians on the other side of the Atlantic largely employed them for their healing powers.47 Pia has shown the tight link between superstition and Catholicism in the culture of first-generation immigrants. We may thus understand why 42  Cruciani, An Owl in the Kitchen, 121–122: “The title for my book came from a discussion about Italian superstitions and their ongoing beliefs in omens and fears of the ‘evil eye’ or malocchio. […] Owls are considered malevolent in many cultures. They represent the souls of the dead and having a bird in the house is thought to bring bad luck, this belief being based on the denial of knowledge of Jesus by Peter ‘before the cock crowed three times.’ My owl in the kitchen represents my Italian ancestors’ efforts to make their home in a new country, beset as it was trial and error, their transiency, their need to fit in, and to some degree, their encounters with bad luck not least the reasons for them making their journeys in the first place. It also applies to my search for them.” 43  Ibid. 44  Contini, Dear Olivia, 22. 45  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 62. 46  Eric Martone, Italian Americans: The History and Culture of a People (Santa Barbara, Denver: ABC-CLIO, 2017), 172–173. 47  See Sabrina Magliocco, “In Search of the Roots of Stregheria: Preliminary Observations on the History of a Reclaimed Tradition,” in Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans, ed. Luisa Del Giudice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 176.

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the linguistic texture of numerous works includes invocations of God— “Oh Dio! Madonna mia! Oh Dio, aiutaci! [“God help us!”]”48—of saints—“O Sant’Antonio. San Giuseppe”49—as well as short extracts from Catholic prayers such as “Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte, Amen.”50 Associated to fear and situations of danger, they were mostly used on important social and religious occasions such as processions, First Communions, weddings and funerals. Terri Colpi in The Italian Factor has dedicated an entire section to the concept of “ethnic church,” discussing the role of priests and parishes in the preservation of Italian.51 More recently, though, Catholic rites have also been studied from the point of view of traditional mores. Translated by Pia as “how we present in the world,”52 the notion of bella figura53 was—and continues to be—crucial also in the practical preparation of those celebrations and represents an integral part of Italian immigrants’ public behaviour. Yet, this phrase can also express “the disjuncture between what appears to be the case and how things really are”54: centred on the Crolla brothers, the following extract is taken from chapter 7 of Dear Olivia. In May 1913 they are ready to embark on the ship heading to Dover, but Alfonso buys an expensive first-class ticket to make a good impression on the other passengers: “Alfonso, why did you have to buy first-class tickets? For God’s sake, that’s nearly half our money.” “Non ti preoccupare! Don’t worry, Emidio. You’ll see at the other end. We want to make sure we arrive in Britain with our best foot forward. La bella figura. Hai capito? Trust me. We need to pass the immigration officer in Dover with no questions asked. You don’t want to be sent back, do you?” “No, of course not.”

 Contini, Dear Olivia, 114.  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 68. 50  Contini, Dear Olivia, 73. This is a short extract from the Catholic prayer Hail Mary: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” 51  Colpi, The Italian Factor, 231. 52  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 28. 53  See, for instance, Pellegrino D’Acierno, ed., Italian American Heritage. 54   See Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019), 89. 48 49

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“We need to start as we mean to go on. We’ll travel first class because we, my dear brother, are heading for the top.”55

Gian Marco Farese in Italian Discourse confirms that bella figura is “a central metaphor of Italian life” and that it is untranslatable.56 Once again, there are no traces of its numerous uses in our literary corpus, yet it is undeniable that most lavoratori all’estero57 never forgot that “all their actions would be judged by the society.”58 Interestingly, also the later stages of these migrant narratives are rich in italianismi. There are extracts from the protagonists’ short letters to their relatives59—which show their desire to keep in contact with their Italian families—but also from national hymns60 and refrains of patriotic songs such as La campana di San Giusto (1915).61 On the eve of the First World War, the Italian community in Edinburgh significantly “toasted Garibaldi and the king, Vittorio Emanuele,” as well as “King George V”62: They sang the National Anthem and then substituted the words to include their new allies. Things became increasingly hilarious. “Dall’gli Alpi a Sicilia!” “Dall’ Fontitune a Dover!” “Dall’John o’ Groats a Picinisco!” Their allegiance to the Church and the family had expanded to take in an allegiance to their Motherland and their new adoptive country. They felt a purpose and a goal and were inspired with the idea of fighting. This was a chance to show their worth, a chance to prove themselves. Their call-up papers arrived over the next two weeks.63

 Contini, Dear Olivia, 72.  Gian Marco Farese, Italian Discourse: A Cultural Semantic Analysis (Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2020), 45. 57  Contini, Dear Olivia, 187. 58  Farese, Italian Discourse, 46. 59  Contini, Dear Olivia, 84. 60  Ibid., 147. Here the narrator refers to the “Hymn of Garibaldi” and the “Hymn of Mameli.” 61  Ibid., 148: “Le ragazze di Trieste, / Cantan’ tutte con adore [sic], O Italia, O Italia del mio cuore, / Tu ci vieni a liberar!” 62  Ibid., 117. 63  Ibid., 117–118. 55 56

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There are further examples of the immigrants’ linguistic hybridity in Italian British narratives. Considering the 1920s and the 1930s, though, it is undeniable that the majority of Italian words and phrases are referred to Il Duce and the Fascist organisation. Bernard Moscardini in La Vacanza, for instance, explains that “the terms figlio/figlia della Lupa (son/daughter of the she-wolf) referred to the famous legend of the orphaned twins Romulus and Remus, who, after being suckled by a she-wolf, grew up to found the city of Rome.”64 As for “Balilla”—which was how Italian children from 8 to 12 were called at the time—he adds that he was a little boy from Genoa who in 1746 became “a national hero” for rebelling against the Habsburg Empire.65 “This action proved to be a catalyst,” which” not only “galvanised the inhabitants into action,”66 but also became a symbol of national pride for Mussolini and his followers. Recalling the time when “all school textbooks were interspersed with paragraphs, verses and slogans praising the Fascist regime,”67 Italian British war narratives in particular include Mussolini’s famous mottos—Credere, Obedire [sic] e Combattere! [“Believe, Obey and Fight!”],68 Meglio vivere un giorno da leone che cent’anni da pecora [“Better to live one day as a lion, than a hundred years as a sheep”]69—and use Italian to increase the tension of some of the most iconic war scenes. Here, for instance, the Italian prisoners heading to Canada were terrified at the idea of crossing the ocean: Vinden listened impassively as Bonorino ran off a long list of complaints in Italian, then answered roughly in the same language. “Fatela finita con questi pianti. Non lo sapete che siamo in guerra? Voi Italiani siete buoni soltanto per cantare e per chiavare” [“Have done with these complaints, don’t you know that we are at war? You Italians are good only for singing and fucking”] Even if this was an accurate statement, it hardly justified being kept in such appalling conditions. He then turned brusquely and limped off. Bonorino shrugged stoically.  Moscardini, La Vacanza, 41.  Ibid. Here Moscardini actually refers to the “Austro-Hungarian Empire,” which was only formed in 1867. Considering political situation in 1746, it is definitely more appropriate to mention the “Habsburg Empire” or monarchy. 66  Ibid. 67  Ibid. 68  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 303. 69  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 10, “Mutiny,” par. 25. 64 65

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“A quello qualche Italiano gli deve aver fatto le corna.” [“Some Italian or other must have had it off with his wife”].70

Vinden’s and Bonorino’s contemptuous comments in Italian provide evidence of Pieri’s solid linguistic skills. He used capital letters for Italian adjectives of nationality, which is clearly related to English, but the rest of the nouns and phrases are mostly correct both from an orthographic and pragmatic point of view. Considering that he only spoke Italian, it would be interesting to know how he learned to write and if he had any external support when he published his works. Pieri died in 2012, so these questions will be left unanswered. As concerns the majority of Italian British authors, they seem to have a limited knowledge of written Italian, which explains why they cannot always use apostrophes, diacritic marks and grammatical gender. If we consider how they incorporated standard and non-standard forms in the linguistic texture of their works, we may also infer that, for them, authenticity was— and continues to be—far more important than accuracy. In a context where Italian is thus proposed as a key component of these authors’ multicultural background, we can also find a few traces of their original dialects. As Barbara Turchetta explains, second and third-­ generation immigrants are English mother tongues, who probably learned standard Italian outside their domestic contexts and who have a scant— crystallised—knowledge of their families’ original dialects.71 Once again, considering that there are no Lombard or Bardigiani expressions in Italian British narratives, we cannot but notice that this side of our linguistic corpus is strictly related to three important geographical areas: northern Tuscany, southern Lazio and the province of Naples in Campania. Considering Joe Pieri’s use of the noun loffari [“good-for-nothing”]72 and the equivalent of “idiot,” bischero,73 in Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart, we will soon realise that Tuscan as a dialect only plays a marginal role in Italian British narratives. As Anna De Fina contends, this traditionally represented the basis of standard Italian, which was spoken by 2,5% of the

 Ibid., Ch. 6, “The Ettrick,” par. 18.  Turchetta, Il mondo in italiano, 11–12. 72  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 16. It may be of interest to note that this epithet is typical of the Garfagnana area in northern Tuscany. 73  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 29. 70 71

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population.74 Interestingly, in Domenica de Rosa’s The Italian Quarter the fictional character of Cesare di Napoli puts an emphasis on its cultural prestige of the language of his homeland,75 thus also showing how his “posh” English had marked his social image.76 Famous Italian Scots, who operate in different intellectual and professional fields, Ann Marie Di Mambro and Mary Contini were the first authors of Laziale extraction, who employed nouns such as tratturi [“tractor”]77 and massari di pecori [“massari of the sheep”],78 as well as phrases such as “Vieni ca! Vieni ca!” [“Come on!”],79 Ma do sta? [But where is s/he, it?]80 and A do vai? [“Where are you going?”].81 These few inserts cannot convey the complexity of the evolutionary phases of Laziale dialects and of their features in post-unification times, but it seems undeniable that they add a special flavour which appeals to English-­ speaking readers, while giving Italians the chance to easily identify themselves with these characters. Thorough information about its romance origins, as well as about the role of Latin and Tuscan in its process of Italianisation can be found in Tullio De Mauro’s major studies.82 Putting a strong emphasis on its southern elements both from a cultural and linguistic point of view, Anne Pia has showed how Viticusar, the language that she spoke with her grandmother, marked the construction of her identity. Her narrative is replete with nouns and epithets—(’na) ciociar,83 (ne) cornud [“a womaniser”],84 (‘ne) fesse [“a stupid” man]85 and ’na puttan [“a slut”]86—as well as phrases and sayings 74  Anna De Fina, “Italian and Italians in the United States,” in Handbook of Heritage, Community, and Native American Languages in the United States, ed. Terrence G. Wiley et al. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 124. 75  de Rosa, The Italian Quarter, 106. 76  Ibid., 51. 77  Contini, Dear Olivia, 47. 78  Ibid., 57. 79  Ibid., 4. Consider, however, that the correct translation is “Come here!” 80  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 150. 81  Contini, Dear Olivia, 63. 82  Here we will only consider De Mauro and Erbani, La cultura degli italiani, 39–42; and Tullio De Mauro, Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita (Roma, Bari: Laterza, 2017). For further information about Romanesco, see pp. 44–46. 83  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 213. 84  Ibid. 85  Ibid., 214. 86  Ibid., 215.

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like Di’ lavor’ in n’or (Dio lavora in un ora) [“God works in an hour; an act of God”].87 Collected in the section entitled “Viticusar. The Language of Viticuso and Thereabouts,” where they are generally translated both in Italian and English, they are also associated with a brief description of their gestures. An introduction to this Viticusar-Italian-English “glossary,” the following extract explains why Pia wanted to pay her tribute to this “loveable and eccentric”88 language89: I have tried to give some sense of the distinct character of that dialect, the sound and music of it; its sayings, wisdoms and humour that is an essential element of it and of its people. I have listed here below, the words used in the book, as well as some of the sayings and other words or phrases that are so familiar to the people here in Scotland and also in Gl’ Vitratur (Viticuso) with whom I share the same origins. As far as I know, the language does not exist in written form and will probably, like my generation, in time become obsolete. I have wanted for many years to find a means of recording, setting down somewhere, this loveable, eccentric language. There is a kind of reluctance now to own and speak it and so I am taking this opportunity to give this aspect of our rich heritage a place and a voice.90

Published in 2017, Contini’s Dear Alfonso is in stark contrast with the dark shades of Pia’s Language of My Choosing. Starting from the popular Tu vuo’ fa’ L’Americano? [“You want to live in America!”]91—which can be found in Dear Olivia and ideally represents a bridge uniting Picinisco to Pozzuoli—the latest volume of the family saga of Mary Contini includes Neapolitan words and expressions. As Contini cannot speak this rich and traditional dialect, she could only employ nouns like scugnizzo [“a real lad of the streets”]92 and cascia ’e muorte [“coffins [sic]”],93 as well as popular phrases like ngopp’ a terra [“the top of the land”].94 Continuing to combine literary writing with  Ibid., 213.  Ibid., 211. 89  Ibid. 90  Ibid. 91  Contini, Dear Olivia, 31. 92  Contini, Dear Alfonso, 7. This noun can be found throughout the narration starting from the protagonist’s statement in Italian: “Sono una volpe, veramente uno scugnizzo!” 93  Ibid., 15. 94  Ibid. 7. Also this popular expression is largely used in the text. 87 88

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Italian regional recipes, the narrative, as we have seen, mentions the iconic spaghettini scieuè scieuè [a “quick plate” of pasta for “anyone who [is] hungry”],95 as well as friarielli96 and rum babà.97 Although they are given in Italian, zuppa alla marinara, frito [sic] di pesce, sfogliatelle and pastiera98 represent the main dishes of the Campanian tradition, which are listed by Peppino Leoni in I Shall Die on the Carpet. Before, however, drawing the readers’ attention to the numerous traditional recipes in the appendix,99 the narrative voice shows how Neapolitan as a dialect represents a fascinating mixture of exoticism, romanticism and melancholy. Interestingly, the following extract includes a quotation from Luigi Denza’s popular song, Funiculì, funiculà (1880): A sailor was rowing his boat to shore, a straw hat pulled over his face to shelter him from the glare of the sun. His naked chest was swaying with the boat as he pulled himself across the water, leaving a wake of white foam rippling out into the distance. As he raised his head towards the shore his melancholic voice carried up towards her, Quanne fa notte e ’o sole se ne scenne, me vene quase ’na malincunia When night comes and the sun sets, a gentle sadness comes over me. The sun was just turning to a glowing auburn, like a giant orange gleaming in the pale blue sky. “Surely heaven itself is no less beautiful,” she thought, as the church bell for evensong rang out across the Rione Terra.100

6.2  English, Cockney, Welsh and Scots: Encountering and Appropriating Linguistic Otherness Thus giving shape to a fascinating blend of sounds, flavours and images, the italianismi and the dialectal forms in these under-researched literary narratives also provide insights into their protagonists’ original culture and traditions. It is through, for instance, the numerous textual references to  Ibid., 194.  Ibid., 4. 97  Ibid., 38. 98  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 234. 99  Contini, Dear Alfonso, 285–307. Here we refer to Part Five, “Annunziata’s Recipes,” which includes seventeen regional and national dishes. 100  Ibid., 199. 95 96

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other popular songs like Santa Lucia101 that we understand that although they now resided in Britain, they never forgot their roots and continued to remain in contact with their families. Yet, there are of course other important linguistic components in their narratives, which are related to their experiences of learning acquisition, and more importantly, to their desire to pay tribute to the country where they could have a better life. The first Italian emigrant who wrote a literary memoir in English, Eugenio D’Agostino in Wandering Minstrel, for instance, contends that it took him a whole year to begin to speak the language.102 From this point of view, the narrator of Dear Olivia is more precise about the Crolla brothers’ learning process: when they arrived in Dover in May 1913 Alfonso and Emidio did not know “what they would do next” as “the signs were all in English” and “they understood only a smattering of words between them.”103 It was after they reached Edinburgh that they realised that it was necessary to learn the language to “help the Italians” and begin their new life.104 Surprisingly, they improved their skills in a few months. In November, when Maria arrived, Alfonso proudly spoke his first words in English: “Darling Maria,” “Darling wife.”105 The woman’s reaction perfectly reflected the sense of estrangement that she had felt during her journey to Edinburgh. She had not understood what the other passengers told her and now she could not even recognise her husband: Maria laughed. She hardly recognised him. He looked older, slimmer, different. He wore a dark jacket over grey trousers and a waistcoat. His white shirt was open at the neck, with a blue cravat tied jauntily round his throat. A white handkerchief flopped from the top pocket of his jacket. He looked very happy, proud to be welcoming his family to their new home.106

The narrator draws the reader’s attention to young Maria’s difficulty in adapting both to a new life routine and especially to a new language. She 101  Written in Naples by Teodoro Cottrau in 1849, and sung by the popular singer Enrico Caruso, Santa Lucia is cited by Marcella Evaristi in Commedia and Ann Marie Di Mambro in Tally’s Blood. See respectively pages 10–11 and 11. 102  Coraggioso (D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel, 63. 103  Contini, Dear Olivia, 76. 104  Ibid., 78. 105  Ibid., 88. 106  Ibid.

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could do her own shopping several months after she had reunited with Alfonso: her condition was very similar to that of the other women migrants in that historical period. Wives and mothers who looked after their homes, they had fewer opportunities to interact with the local population and were also “invisible” learners of English.107 It may be for this reason that, considering precisely that period of time, only male characters seemed to be willing to integrate fully in Britain: Zi’ Beppe in Arcari’s The Hokey Pokey Man and Fredo Baldini in Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart respectively decided to marry local women—Janey108 and Catherine109—who had always helped them with their businesses. Fredo in particular, who had already decided to spend the rest of his life in Scotland, did not want to have an Italian wedding as Catherine was English and called their first daughter Vera Catherine to make their family “truly British.”110 Once again, language was a key issue. This literary corpus shows that most of the characters were exposed to the main regional dialects of English; as a consequence, they became more and more immersed in their host culture and the younger generations inevitably lost their original language. Today we can only find evidence that Joe Pieri had a perfect command of Italian and that Anne Pia, who also quoted from Dante in her memoir,111 can still speak Viticusar. As regards the majority of the writers that we have mentioned, they only wanted to increase the level of realism of their works and refer to their original Italian heritage. We will thus start from their use of English and its regional forms. As Italian British writers also wrote in Cockney, Welsh and Scottish, our first focus will be on the narratives which are even only partially set in London. Lilie Ferrari’s Fortunata provides a vivid picture of Little Italy as a linguistic melting pot:

107  Stephanie Love and Dora Kotai, “The Invisible Learners in the Classroom: Macrolevel Politics and Microlevel Experiences of LESLLA in Italy,” in Low Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition, ed. Maricel G. Santos and Anne Whiteside (Morrisville: Lulu Press, 2015), 33. 108  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 93. 109  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 90. 110  Ibid., 92. 111  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 170. It is in the chapter entitled “The Mammissima” that Pia uses Dante’s expression “Caddi come corpo morto cade” and refers to “a selva oscura” as a “disturbing scenario.”

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Thus in a few streets in Soho she [Serafina] could hear the flat guttural sounds of Sicilian villagers, the soft musical accent of Northern Italy, and the harder, sharper edge of the Roman dialect. Added to this was a new and more exotic accent, acquired by the second generation: a strange combination of lilting Latin and the coarse nasal whine of Cockney, combined in a language that was almost Italian, but not quite. “Why do you not speak English like the others?” Serafina was fond of asking Fortunata. Fortunata would grin and shrug, very Italian. “I had to learn to talk posh, because of the shop,” she would say, and then, pushing her chin in the air she would mimic the upper-class ladies who condescended to her in the dress shop. “Good mornin’, gel,” she would say, in a strangled parody of the Home Counties. “Hurry along, young woman! I wish a yahd of thet dee-­ laight-­ful butter muslin for mai hat!” Then she would scowl at the memory. “I hate the English,” she would say. “Why?” the child would ask, and Fortunata would look at her, surprised by the question, since to her the answer was obvious. “Why? Because they hate us, of course. They hate all foreigners.”112

The first novel which shows the importance of sounds and gestural mimicry, Fortunata clearly represents the tension between the English and “foreigners.” Although Elena Salvoni contends that there was great solidarity among the different communities in the area, The Hokey Pokey Man by Anita Arcari initially utilises “the coarse nasal whine” of Cockney to demonstrate that this dialect even increased the cultural shock that the Italian immigrants experienced when they arrived in London. In point of fact, phrases like “Tuppence for a second class tepid bath an’ a penny for a cold ‘un!”—or “o’ course, you can go first class, if you’re willing to part with fourpence fer ’ot an’ a shiny thre’ penny bit fer cold!”113—may have been difficult to understand for the young protagonist Tino D’Abruzzo, who was new to the routine of the poor workhouse in Clerkenwell. Although in those first days he needed also Zi Giuseppe’s linguistic support, he could clearly feel the violence of racist slurs such as “All the bleedin’ same, you bloody foreigners. Bloody ’ead-cases!”114 “The most dialectal type of London speech” since the mid-1800s, Cockney is popular not only for its particular vocabulary, but especially for  Ferrari, Fortunata, 36.  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 81. 114  Ibid., 84. 112 113

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its pronunciation.115 From this point of view, the narrator of The Hokey Pokey Man is clear on the fact that Zi Giuseppe always kept his “thick accent” and that he used to “exaggerate the sing-song lilt” “when he wanted to avoid opposition or to get out of a tricky situation.”116 Further traces to Cockney can be found in the following parts of the narration. As time went by, Tino felt more integrated and happy with his new life, which may explain why this social dialect becomes associated to a feeling of enthusiasm and to positive interactions. Chapter 14, for instance, which recounts the great celebrations of the Golden Jubilee, is rich in comments of English girls and young women who are clearly fascinated by Tino’s Mediterranean look: “Eeh, reckon they likes you,” Kathleen nudged Tino. “Look at ’em, can’t take their mince pies off yer.” Although she was smiling, an unexpected pang of something she couldn’t quite identify crept over her. Tino glanced in the same direction as his friend. Long black lashes swept upwards, framing the deep brown depth of his eyes and the crowd of girls went weak at the knees. “Oooh, me Gawd!” one of them sighed. “’old me up before I faint.” Tino overheard and immediately averted his eyes, embarrassed by the attention. One of the gang, a pretty, petite blonde girl was pushed forward by the rest. She practically threw a small slip of paper towards Tino then beat a hasty retreat. Written in a childish, uneducated hand, it said, “me an me frends reely like you, av you got a sweet hart? If not wil you be ours.”117

Incorporating standard and non-standard forms of English, as well as Italian, The Hokey Pokey Man is probably the only narrative in our corpus which uses Cockney to increase its level of realism. Interestingly, apart from Janey and Kathleen, the two Londoners in the story, also Salv seems fluent in it, which confirms that even this under-researched branch of British migration literature mirrors the different responses of the Italian immigrants to the cultural and linguistic dynamics that they were exposed to.118 The rest of our corpus shows to what extent other dialects influenced Italian British authors and their writing. 115  See Alan Cruttenden, Gimson’s Pronunciation of English (London and New  York: Routledge, 2014), 90–92. 116  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 81. 117  Ibid., 171–172. 118  See Maggie Ann Bowers, “Global, National and Local Identities. The Trasformative Effects of Migrant Literatures,” in International Migration and Security: Opportunities and Challenges, ed. Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm (London and New  York: Routledge, 2005), 147–156.

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Interestingly, we can find very few traces of Welsh. Writing about the early years of his life in the Valleys, Victor Spinetti in his Strictly Confidential Autobiography recollects the time when the expression Awr y Plant [“Children’s Hour”]119 meant nothing to him. He was a young child who felt very frustrated because he “had a choice of two languages and didn’t understand either of them”120; in the following years, the situation radically changed as his accent became so strong that he was hardly ready to learn a foreign language. This extract shows that he was eager to write about his growth as a Welsh speaker, but that he did not want to include any other words or phrases: In class I began to feel drawn in. Mr Shuffrey, our French master, having listened to my Welsh Valley accent said, “Well, Spinetti, we’re going to have to teach you English before we can teach you French.” But I didn’t mind because “Spinet, Spinetti” had already happened, while Mr J F C Dicker, our history master would always insist on “TRAfalgar, not TraFALgar” and “HiMALayas, not HIMalayas.” Both teachers were giving me a map to help me find my way around Englishness.121

It was only during his sojourn in Monmouth that he finally “absorbed” English sounds. He was “doing the plays of Noël Coward” at the time, yet he could not forget the first time when he dropped the “H” from the word “hotel”: the Playgoers immediately asked him to join them, which he considered a great success.122 He wrote his memoir in English and only marginally in Italian: it may be indeed of interest to note that in the concluding chapter, where he shares his memory of his visit to his parents in Wales, he also mentions most of the members of his large family, but does not add any dialectal words or expressions. He was now a renowned actor, who had a solid position on the international scene, but what is more important, he saw himself as a citizen of the world. Shedding light on his plurilingual upbringing some years after the publication of Victor Spinetti Up Front…, Hector Emanuelli had a similar  Spinetti, Victor Spinetti, Up Front…, 12.  Ibid. 121  Ibid., 30. 122  Ibid., 44. 119 120

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approach to standard English and regional dialects. He was only six when he and his family emigrated to the south of Wales; after a few years, in the late 1920s, he moved to England with his family. It may be for this reason that we can only find three Welsh words in A Sense of Belonging: “briallu,” “blodau” and “melyn” [“primrose,” “flower” and “yellow”],123 the tongue-twisting Welsh place-names “Ystradyfodwg,” “Llwynypia” and “Tynewydd”124 and the school mottos “Hog Dy Fwallit” and “Whet Thy Axe.125 At a time when English was gaining importance in the region and also educational programmes encouraged the use of standard forms,126 these mottos in particular represented an “injunction to sharpen [students’] wits,” also the teachers’ efforts to keep the traditions of the country alive.127 Unfortunately, the young Emanuelli, who was living in a linguistic “Tower of Babel,” not only felt “confused,” but also suffered from a stutter128: Many of the miners who patronised my father’s refreshment house spoke Welsh, as did many of my classmates at school. My parents spoke their local Italian dialect to each other at home, but curiously they would switch to standard Italian—“il vero italiano”—when fellows Italians from their home town came to visit. With the other children Luigino and I spoke English, and at school the teachers were obviously keen to drum some Welsh into our young minds, all of which, unfortunately I have forgotten, although I can still give a pretty convincing rendering of tongue-twisting Welsh place-­ names such as Ystradyfodwg, Llwynypia and Tynewydd. All this linguistic confusion may have been one of the reasons for the stutter I suffered from when I was a young boy. I had a great difficulty getting out the words and preferred to say nothing when possible.129

The idea that Wales is a bilingual region, and that it was important to guarantee language parity between English and Welsh,130 probably has its  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 5.  Ibid. 125  Ibid., 33. 126  See Janet Davies, The Welsh Language. A History (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014), 74. 127  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 33. 128  Ibid., 5. 129  Ibid. 130  Here we refer to the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, whose aim was to “publish a five-year strategy which [could] promote and facilitate the use of Welsh.” See https:// www.torfaen.gov.uk/en/AboutTheCouncil/EqualityDiversity/WelshLanguageScheme/ Welsh-Language.aspx#:~:text=The%20Welsh%20Language%20(Wales)%20Measure,not%20 be%20treated%20less%20. Accessed 31 May 2023. 123 124

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roots in the interwar years when, as we have said, there was a situation of language shift and a dramatic decrease in the number of Welsh monolingual speakers.131 The presence of numerous immigrants even in that period of economic crisis made the linguistic picture of the region even more complex, which may explain why the majority of Italian Welsh writers finally used few or no dialect forms to express their multicultural identities. Was this only related to the marginal role of Welsh in the first half of the twentieth century? Generally based in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Italian Scottish writers, for instance, used standard and non-standard English, Scottish and Italian, as well as experimental forms of métissage. As a result, we can have a realistic picture of Scotland as a contact zone, while gaining a clear understanding of how the immigrant community responded to so many different linguistic stimuli. In Ann Marie Di Mambro’s Tally’s Blood Massimo and Rosinella Pedreschi combine non-standard English with typical Scottish forms such as wee, lassie, sweetie, awfie, yin and cannie. It is, however, at the beginning of Act II that Luigi Ianelli addresses himself to his daughter Lucia both in Italian and Scottish: “Mia piccoletta. My wee girl.”132 More samples of this linguistically hybrid text can be found in the following scenes. The extract below is taken from Rosinella’s conversion with Luigi about Hughie Devlin, the young man that Lucia would like to marry: LUIGI: Ma beve. Beve! Enjoy yourself, Ugo. Tomorrow’s the feast-day. Beve il vino. Accommodate-vi. My house is your house. (A beat / to Rosinella) Who is he, anyway? / ROSINELLA: Works in the shop. A good worker, an awfy good worker. An awfy, awfy, awfy, awfy, awfy good worker, so he is. You want to hear Massimo about him. Thinks there’s nobody like Hugh. Him and Lucia went to school together. / […] I know he’s no that much to look at. / […] And I cannie tell you a lie—he hasn’t got a penny to his name.133

131  Mercedes Durham and Jonathan Morris, “An Overview of Sociolinguistic in Wales,” in Sociolinguistics in Wales, ed. Mercedes Durham and Jonathan Morris (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 5–8. 132  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 97. 133  Ibid., 160–161.

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Although Scottish words and expressions are embedded in the linguistic texture of these works to show their characters’ level of integration, Anne Pia in Language of My Choosing not only shares her memories of the dynamics at home and at her family’s café The Copper Kettle, but more importantly confirms that “there exists an Italian Scottish way of speaking.”134 English was indeed the language spoken by the younger generations, “but with that slightly mellow, lilting delivery of people brought up in a home of Italian speakers.”135 Her Candid Life-Memoir,136 but also other Italian British narratives are replete with references to the Italians as victims of prejudice and verbal violence: a second-generation immigrant who had published his debut work almost 30 years earlier, Joe Pieri, for instance, was called names such as “dirty wee Tally”137; after him, Raffaela Cruciani in An Owl in the Kitchen recounted how difficult it was for her to feel accepted by her Scottish schoolmates. She had Italian origins, but had moved from England to Scotland after her parents’ divorce. It was only after she said that she had been born in Edinburgh that she felt free from her Italian English “stigma”: I followed my classmates down the stairs, and out of the door where a reception party awaited me in the no man’s land of the porch at the exit. I was surrounded by inquisitive faces. “Gonnae say sm’thing?” “Umm.” “You English then?” “I was born in Edinburgh, but I’ve lived in England for a while.” “You dinnae sound Scottish, you sound English.” “Oh.” “What team dae you support?” “Umm …” I churned out the “born in Edinburgh” line again and again as my only protection against the stigma of being “English” until my novelty wore off, and I managed to drop the South of England twang and adopt the odd “och,” “canny do that,” “I didnae,” and “aye.” My sister had a much easier time of it with the wee kids, and she fitted right in.138

 Pia, Language of My Choosing, 119.  Ibid. 136  Ibid. 137  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 1, “Origins,” par. 13. 138  Cruciani, An Owl in the Kitchen, 63. 134 135

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Although Italian children often used silence as a form of defence from a hostile environment, young Cruciani’s integration in Edinburgh depended on her capacity to drop the typical sounds of southern English. Of course, the condition of older immigrants was definitely more difficult: they were mostly employed in the catering industry and had to serve customers who only addressed to them in Scottish. In the early 1900s Fredo Baldini, the young protagonist of Robert Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart, finally decided to hand fish and chips to “three irate teenagers” who had promised that they would not pay: “Gie us three fish suppers, ya tally bastard,” shouted one of the group. Fredo ignored the insult and handed the first portion over, then the other two. “We’ve nae money, what you gonnae dae aboot it,” said the tall one, obviously the leader of the group. The other two laughed, one of them flicking his cigarette end in Fredo’s direction, the other throwing chips back towards the pan of boiling fat.139

Although the epilogue of this scene may be perceived as a form of defeat, there was one Italian who rebelled against this type of insulting behaviour. A Tuscan widow from Barga, who was living in the Cowcaddens in Glasgow at the outbreak of the Second World War, “Big Emma” is one of the strongest characters in Joe Pieri’s Isle of the Displaced and Tales of the Savoy.140 Her exchange with the Scottish hooligans who wanted to destroy her little fish and chip shop on 10 June 1940 not only is iconic, but surprisingly has a happy ending: “Mussolini, Mussolini, there’s a Tally shop, do it in.” She stretched to her full height and raised the chip basket, shook it at the crowd and roared in a thick Scots-Italian accent. “Fuck Mussolini. Fuck Hitler. Fuck you all. Don’t you touch anything, you bastards, You would all eat shite if I fried it!” This magnificent non sequitur stopped the crowd dead in its tracks. A hush descended and a laugh at Emma’s words rippled through the mob. A shout rang out. “Come on, we’ll find some place else to do in. Ye canny touch her, she’s a wumman.” And the mob drifted off in search of another Tally target.  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 52.  See Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 3, “Arrest,” par. 11–13; and Pieri, Tales of the Savoy, 137–143. 139 140

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For the rest of the war Emma kept her shop open and was never bothered or insulted again by her rough neighbours and customers because of her nationality. She did a record trade despite the lack of raw materials.141

6.3   Between Historical Truth and Identity: German and French Italian British narratives of the Second World War are rich in testimonies of the courage and strength of the Italians. Big Emma was certainly a heroine in those bleak times, but Dennis Donnini, the dedicatee of Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart, was “a mountain man” and “the youngest soldier in the Second World War to be awarded the Victoria Cross.”142 Luckily, after 1945 Britain gave more than one recognition to the members of the migrant community, which—as Pieri recounts in the closing chapter of Isle of the Displaced—was decisive for its members to complete their process of integration. We have already discussed this part of their difficult path, which also put Italian immigrants into contact with other forms of cultural and linguistic otherness. As Pieri recounts, this new part of their experience began in ships like the Ettrick, which took them to the Isle of Man or to Canada and Australia, as well as in internment camps: it was in these claustrophobic spaces that they offered the Italians the opportunity to learn from their German and Austrian fellow prisoners. Starting from the “blast of a sound that erupted into the bus” when he and the other internees arrived in Camp S on the Île Saint’Hélène— “Heraus, Heraus! Schnell! Out!”143—Pieri incorporates two more German phrases, which express at the same time his fear and sense of accomplishment: “Bitte, sprechen Sie langsam… please speak slowly, I am an Italian internee and I have never heard German spoken. Please, speak slowly and clearly.” The astonished captain looked at me with an open mouth, and with relief I understood my first spoken German words. “Mein Gott, Er spricht wie ein Buch” [“My God, he speaks like a book!”]

 Pieri, Tales of the Savoy, 142–143.  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 3. 143  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 8, “Reception,” par. 10. 141 142

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In a very short time, by dint of spending as much time as possible with the German PoWs, and a continuing intensive study of the language, I became as fluent in German as I had originally claimed to be, and I eagerly awaited every new German arrival so as to put my newly-acquired skill to use.144

Pieri, as we have said, soon became a translator, which contributed to make his confinement in Camp S fruitful even from a personal point of view. As regards the uses of German in later Italian British migrant writings, they are instrumental in increasing the level of realism of some important episodes. Robert Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart, for instance, includes the Nazi salute Heil Hitler,145 the threatening mantra “Kaput London, kaput Glasgow, kaput Liverpool, kaput Churchill,”146 as well as commands such as “British Soldiers, kommen sie, bitte, kommen sie bitte.”147 The following extract may be considered symbolic of the tension that “Fusilier Dino Baldini”—the fictional name of the hero Dennis Donnini—must have felt “at the German headquarters in Navirk”148: “I will tell Mr Churchill your war is over,” said the German with a sarcastic laugh. Alfred had sensed fear in the sentry guards when they gave their “Heil Hitler” salutes. “This guy really is the boss.” “Norway now belongs to the German Reich and soon your friends in your little navy will leave. They will not return for you.”149

Interestingly, the second part of the chapter entitled “Dino’s Story” contains more Italian and German, as well as some French. Once again, we can find short statements—“Niemand, nobody, Herr Colonel”—and heartfelt cries: “Colonel, kommen sie, kommen sie, wir haben die menshen gefunden” [“come, we have found some people.”]150 In a context where hope seemed to be lost, the appeal “Fraternite [sic], brotherhood, we’re in this together”151 is related to the Anglo-French alliance and has clearly a positive connotation.  Ibid., par. 12–16.  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 257, 294. 146  Ibid., 267. 147  Ibid., 256. 148  Ibid., 256–257. 149  Ibid., 257. 150  Ibid., 336. 151  Ibid., 328. 144 145

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Evidence of the strong human and military ties with the French in wartime can be found in Alfred’s exchanges with Josep. Short phrases like “Bien sur, [sic] of course”152 and “Non, Ce n’est pas possible”153 serve to clarify the narrator’s intent to reinforce the realistic trait of this part of the narration. It is in Pia’s Language of My Choosing and Keeping Away the Spiders, though, that French is given a more profound significance. Starting from the delicacies that she appreciated during her study year in Montpellier in 1971, in 2020 she confessed that the reason she keeps on returning to France is that she “wants to recapture” her “lost identity,” “something that [she] once had and that over the years has been eroded.”154 Interestingly, her solitary rediscovery of French plays a key role in such an intimate and internal process: [S]uddenly I thought “I’m thinking in French” and it was almost as if there had been so much packed in there during the previous days, and evidently so little space for any more, the words poured out, an eruption, slowly at first and then in a starburst… and like a mad thing, I began to speak the words in my words out loud, like an actor rehearsing lines, saying them over and over as I wondered around my little atelier, my work space: […] the French for light switch, bathroom pipe, laundry, clothes hanger, light bulb and then all the adverbs with which people seem to start their sentences: assurément, évidemment, justement, précisement. […] They just presented themselves, one by one, as if to say, we are here if you need us and there’s more there if you want.155

An “Italian Scot” who also used her knowledge in the field of Language Acquisition to explore her inner self, Pia has thus realised that her ability to “welcome in” “otherness”156 has been crucial in this important experience. On the one hand, the fact that Italian and French are both neo-Latin languages greatly facilitated the process; on the other hand, her experience in France metaphorically freed her from the restricted boundaries of her immigrant community. At the end of her “pilgrimage” she could finally treasure all the different components of her background, while showing all her pride to live in a culturally lively and inclusive region.  Ibid.  Ibid., 334. 154  Pia, Keeping Away the Spiders, 111. 155  Ibid., 112. 156  Ibid., 113. 152 153

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Bibliography Primary Sources Arcari, Anita. The Hokey Pokey Man. Aberystwyth: Y Lolfa, 2010. Contini, Mary. Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006. Contini, Mary. Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2017. Coraggioso, Cagliardo (D’Agostino Eugenio). Wandering Minstrel. New Edition by Carlo Pirozzi. Woking: Nielsen Book Services, 2018. Cruciani, Rafaella. An Owl in the Kitchen: The Discovery of My Italian Heritage. Bloomington: Xlibris, 2016. Kindle. de Rosa, Domenica. The Italian Quarter. London: Quercus, 2013. Kindle. Di Mambro, Ann Marie. Tally’s Blood. Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2012. Emanuelli, Hector. A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman. Langenfeld: Six Towns Books, 2010. Evaristi, Marcella. Commedia. Edinburgh: The Salamander Press, 1983. Ferrari, Lilie. Fortunata. London, New York, Toronto: BCA, 1993. Ghiringhelli, Peter. A British Boy in Fascist Italy. Stroud: The History Press, 2010. Hughes, Melanie. War Changes Everything. Manningtree: Patrician Press, 2017. Leoni, Peppino. I Shall Die on the Carpet. With a Foreword by Fabian of Yard. London: Leslie Frewin, 1966. Moscardini, Bernard. La Vacanza. Kennoway: Spiderwize, 2009. Pia, Anne. Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2017. Pia, Anne. Keeping Away the Spiders. Essays on Breaching Barriers. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2020. Pieri, Joe. Tales of the Savoy. Stories from a Glasgow Café. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2012. Kindle. Pieri, Joe. Isle of the Displaced. An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2014. Kindle. Rossi, Robert. Italian Blood British Heart. Independently Published, 2019. Kindle. Servini, Les. A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times. Cardiff: Hazeltree, 1994. Spinetti, Victor. Victor Spinetti Up Front… His Strictly Confidential Autobiography. With Peter Rankin. London: Robson Books, 2006.

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Secondary Sources Anderson, Herbert and Edward Foley. Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019. Bombi, Raffaella and Vincenzo Orioles. “Fattori di attrattività della lingua italiana nel mondo: la nuova italofilia.” In Plurilinguismo migratorio. Voci italiane, italiche e regionali, edited by Raffaella Bombi and Francesco Costantini, 53–76. Udine: Forum, 2019. Bowers, Maggie Ann. “Global, National and Local Identities. The Transformative Effects of Migrant Literatures.” In International Migration and Security: Opportunities and Challenges, edited by Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm, 147–156. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Bravo, Gian Luigi. La complessità della tradizione. Festa, museo e ricerca antropologica. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2005. Capstick, Tony. Language and Migration. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Carena, Giacinto. Prontuario di vocaboli attinenti a parecchie arti, ad alcuni mestieri, a cose domestiche, e altre di uso comune per saggio di un vocabolario metodico della lingua italiana… Napoli: Stamperia e Cartiere del Fibreno, 1854. Colpi, Terri. The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 1991. Cruttenden, Alan. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. London and New  York: Routledge, 2014. D’Acierno, Pellegrino, ed. Italian American Heritage. A Companion to Literature and Arts. New York: Routledge, 2021. Davies, Janet. The Welsh Language. A History. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014. De Fina, Anna. “Italian and Italians in the United States.” In Handbook of Heritage, Community, and Native American Languages in the United States, edited by Terrence G.  Wiley, Joy Kreeft Peyton, Donna Christian, Sarah Katherine K. More and Na Liu, 123–131. New York: Routledge, 2014. De Mauro, Tullio and Francesco Erbani. La cultura degli italiani. Roma, Bari: Laterza, 2015. De Mauro, Tullio. Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita. Roma, Bari: Laterza, 2017. Kindle. Di Salvo, Margherita and Paola Moreno, eds. Italian Communities Abroad: Multilingualism and Migration. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Durham, Mercedes and Jonathan Morris. “An Overview of Sociolinguistic in Wales.” In Sociolinguistics in Wales, edited by Mercedes Durham and Jonathan Morris, 3–28. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

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Evans, Michael, Claudia Schneider, Madelaine Arnot, Linda Fisher, Karen Forbes, Yongcan Liu and Oakleigh Weply. Language Development and Social Integration of Students with English as an Additional Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Farese, Gian Marco. Italian Discourse: A Cultural Semantic Analysis. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2020. Guzzo, Siria. A Sociolinguistic Insight into the Italian Community in the UK: Workplace Language as an Identity Market. With a Preface by David Britain. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. Hall, Stuart. “The Work of Representation.” In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall, 13–64. London, Thousand Oakes, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997. Kuhn, Fernando. “Cartographies of Transculturality: Region as a Dialogue Zone.” In Identity, Cultures, Spaces: Dialogue and Change, edited by Fernando Kuhn, 11–40. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Krumm, Hans-Jürgen. “Multilingualism and Identity: What Linguistic Biographies of Migrants Can Tell Us.” In Multilingualism and Language Diversity in Urban Areas. Acquisition, Identities, Space, Education, edited by Peter Siemund, Ingrid Gogolin, Monika Edith Schulz, and Julia Davydova, 164–176. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2013. Love, Stephanie and Dora Kotai. “The Invisible Learners in the Classroom: Macrolevel Politics and Microlevel Experiences of LESLLA in Italy.” In Low Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition, edited by Maricel G. Santos and Anne Whiteside, 30–49. Morrisville: Lulu Press, 2015. Magliocco, Sabrina. “In Search of the Roots of Stregheria: Preliminary Observations on the History of a Reclaimed Tradition.” In Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans, edited by Luisa Del Giudice, 165–182. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Martone, Eric. Italian Americans: The History and Culture of a People. Santa Barbara, Denver: ABC-CLIO, 2017. Salvatori de Zuliani, Mariù. La cucina di Versilia e Garfagnana. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 1997. Tosi, Arturo. Immigration and Bilingual Education. Oxford: Pergamon Institute of English, 1984. Turchetta, Barbara. Il mondo in italiano. Varietà e usi internazionali della lingua. Bari: Laterza, 2005. Vedovelli, Massimo. “L’ipotesi del parallelismo.” In Storia linguistica dell’emigrazione italiana nel mondo, edited by Massimo Vedovelli, 37–80. Roma: Carocci, 2021.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

I am fortunate in having been born in Italy of Italian parents, because it has given me a wider view of life. It gave me Italian heritage which goes back to two or three thousand years. When he was in his twenties, my father thought of his family’s future and came to Britain. My future lay here and nowhere else. If my father had left me in Monforte I could possibly have been looking after a few goats, although I like to think I would have found something better to do there as well. I believe I have contributed to this country by creating an international business and giving employment. In turn, this country has made me well-­ off, well-known, generally respected and a peer of the realm. I was playing a round of golf with Peter Alliss1 one day when he asked me one of his surprise questions. “Do you feel Italian?” “What do you mean—do I feel Italian? Of course I am Italian.” “Do you feel British?” he asked me tentatively. “Of course I feel British—I am one of the greatest Britishers! I replied. But this is a difficult question to answer. […] In Italy I am English but here I am Italian. My thoughts are not English; my movements are not English. But when I am in Italy I get homesick for London.”2

1 2

 Peter Aliss (1931–2020) was a famous golfer, as well as TV presenter and commentator.  Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, 219–220.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. D’Amore, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0_7

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Reflecting on his extraordinary human experience, Lord Charles Forte confirms that even in the transnational milieu where he lived, identity was one with difference, hybridity and impermanence.3 This was the result of his many cultural and language contacts, but also of the passing of time: writing as an octogenarian in the mid-1980s, he finally concluded that “[he] would not have been born differently”4 and that “[he] liked the way [he] was.”5 The literary corpus which is at the core of this volume has showed that Italian British writings are rich in similar stories of growth and self-­ acceptance. Published between 1938 and 2022, they express their authors’ desire to return to their roots, as well as their conflictual perceptions of themselves and of their process of integration. Today first and secondgeneration immigrants like Eugenio D’Agostino, Peppino Leoni and Joe Pieri symbolically represent those tireless “pilgrims”6 who could only obtain their reward at the end of their travels between two worlds. Incorporating elements of their original traditions and sharing intimate reflections about their inner selves, their autobiographical writings have also contributed to making their original heritage more visible. Indeed, social stigma, silence and oblivion were heavily influential on the history of the Italian community. Taking diverse literary forms, these writings are replete with references to the major events of late modern and contemporary times: they begin from the unification of Italy—and depict London during the closing decades of the nineteenth century—but especially focus on the most traumatic events of the first half of the twentieth century. The great majority of them testify to the sense of isolation and increasing marginalisation that the members of the Italian community became victims of in those turbulent times. Feeling shame and resentment,7 but equally trying to make their readers aware of the horrors 3  See Andrew Nyongesa, Cultural Hybridity and Fixity. Strategies of Resistance in Migration Literatures (Chitungwiza: Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2018), 84. 4  Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, 222. 5  Ibid., 221. 6  For the concept of migration as a “pilgrimage” we are indebted to Pia, Language of My Choosing, 21. 7  See, for instance, Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 21; Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, Ch. 2, “Allegiances,” par. 7–8; and Pia, Language of My Choosing, 68. Further evidence of the Italians’ condition, however, can be found in Rinaldi, From the Serchio to the Solway, 35–36: “The sooner they could forget about what had gone before the better. Prisoners of War tend not to talk about their experiences but it is symptomatic of the Italian attitude that they would pick up memories rather than dwelling on their suffering.”

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of the Second World War—particularly of the tragedy of the Arandora Star—they found the courage to revive and share their memories only when Britain began to value difference and became more open and inclusive.8 In the future it will be crucial to continue investigating this rich cross-cultural terrain to advance scientific knowledge in this field: connecting them to the wider context of Italian migrant literatures in the major English-speaking countries—and discussing the formation of a new literary canon—will give them full recognition. Thus starting from the table which is contained in the addendum to the introductory section, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain has presented a significant number of them and recounted their stories, while showing their dialogue with each other. At a time when the concepts of high and low/popular literature have been superseded,9 the reader will appreciate their level of homogeneity and consider them as key elements of a cultural tradition which has rarely attracted scholarly attention. Building solid cultural bridges between Britain and Italy, they will also supplement the numerous historical and sociological studies which have been published since the late 1970s. This is to say that this rich set of textual sources can serve as a basis for further research in different scientific fields. As we have seen, their authors’ desire to know more about their origins took them back to Italy on several occasions: some of them continued to spend their holidays in their original hamlets, while some others tirelessly toured the rest of the country to discover the diverse cultures and dialects of its regions.10 Although their vivid descriptions of little hamlets like Picinisco, Barga, Bardi and Cannero only represent some of the areas from where the major migrant influxes to Britain began, it is through the special mixture of geographical details and nostalgic memories that they gave form to that we can now gain a clearer understanding of their complex cultural universe. On the one hand, for instance, they overtly expressed all their pride for the natural and artistic riches of southern-central regions like Lazio and Tuscany, as well as of  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 84–85.  See among others Maurizio Ascari, Literature of the Global Age: A Critical Study of Transcultural Narratives (Jefferson: MacFarland, 2011), 26; and Iro Filippaki, Post-­ Traumatic Stress Disorder in Postmodern Literature (Cham: Palgrave, 2021), 63. 10  Here we refer to Anne Pia’s pieces of unpublished three-part prose On Home (Scotland), On Home (Italy) and Becoming and Belonging (France), which was specifically written for the webinar entitled Plurilingualism, Becoming and Belonging, which was held at the University of Catania on 13 April 2021. 8 9

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Emilia Romagna and Lombardy, but on the other hand, the majority of them insisted on their dire poverty and profound backwardness. Although their representations of the stark contrast with British urban areas should be considered symbolic of the cultural shock that they had to overcome before adapting to a new social system, they never regretted their lives in England, Wales and Scotland. This volume has showed that they proposed their narratives as “literary atlases”11 which aim at making all those places visible. From this point of view, we cannot but appreciate their ability to creatively combine verbal and visual forms of expression: taken from their family albums or carefully drawn to achieve a higher level of realism, the maps of the areas where their families settled—or of the camps when the majority of them were interned between 1940 and 1945—reinforce their transnational vision of history and spaces, also their vision of migration as a journey or “pilgrimage.” It is, however, undeniable that their lives in Britain represent the core of their writings. For this reason, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain has presented several happy-ending stories which confirm that they began as poor street musicians and hokey pokey men, but that they finally realised all their dreams. Their popular and sophisticated deli shops, restaurants and hotels clearly show how they contributed to the growth of England, Wales and Scotland. This is of course equally true for those authors who managed to leave the catering industry and wanted to dedicate themselves to the teaching profession, as well as to writing and even acting. Fighting against prejudice and all types of stereotypes, Italian British authors have thus symbolically given voice to all those who traversed national borders and increasingly opened themselves to otherness. From this point of view, their discussions on gender roles, as well as on conservatism and innovation in migrant contexts interestingly intertwine with iconic objects which testify to the great changes that they went through during their lives. Unsurprisingly, in addition to the colourful descriptions of their regional costumes and of their more urban clothing, food in particular became the symbol of their multi-layered identities: at a time when reproducing, perpetuating traditions reinforced their bonds with their homeland, they paradoxically contributed to the diffusion of one of Britain’s national dishes and added new delicacies to their diet, particularly  For the definition of Italian British narratives as “literary atlases,” see Chap. 3.

11

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on special occasions. Some of them continue to propose themselves as champions of Italianness, which explains why they also wanted to share the most popular recipes of their original hamlets: taking the shape of cookbooks, their works show all the pride that they still take in promoting such rich and ancient culinary practices. Interestingly, they achieved the same level of hybridity also from a linguistic point of view. Although they wrote and continue to write only in English, the standard and non-standard forms of Italian that we can find in their prose increases their level of authenticity, while representing their tribute to their origins. The concluding chapter of this volume has connected them to specific cultural areas, but in the future this particular side of Italian British literary writing will have to be studied to provide a more thorough representation of what has remained of Italian in migrant contexts in Britain. There are already scholarly studies which help to decode the communicative dynamics which are at the heart of these works, yet it will also be important to understand whether the forms which they have employed are crystallised in the past, and to what extent they are the product of the contact that Italian British authors continue to have with the language. It is, however, especially through their use of Cockney, Welsh and Scottish that they expressed the strong clash between identity and otherness. From this point of view, they not only reproduced the sounds which were unfamiliar to their forebears, but also represented the passage from initial forms of linguistic métissage to a complete process of linguistic assimilation. Again, it was thanks to education that especially second-­ generation immigrants became perfectly bilingual and developed a good ear for languages. The majority of them lacked the necessary competencies in the field of Language Acquisition, yet, for example, they associated the use of Scottish with their new sense of national belonging. In post-war times, after their internment experiences on the Isle of Man and in Canada, France and French became symbols of their openness to different cultures and of their desire to traverse new worlds. As we have seen, it was indeed when they could distance themselves from the traditional values of their community that they discovered new and hidden aspects of their complex nature. At that point, they could begin a more honest reflection about their true selves and choose freely how to invest both their creative talent and human potential. Caught between two worlds, they finally found internal peace and decided to share their experience for the benefit of future generations.

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They may have lived diverse and successful human and professional experiences, but more importantly, they distinguished themselves for their high social commitment. Awarded important titles and prizes by Queen Elizabeth II, the President of the Italian Republic and several prestigious institutions,12 they ideally stand side by side with established figures in the British literary scene such as Marcella Evaristi and Ann Marie Di Mambro. The “Italian factor” of their production will be decisive in projecting what we have tentatively defined as a “literature in the making” into the future. Waiting for its possible developments, we will have to consider that almost half of the authors who are included in this volume died between 1947 and 2022,13 and that therefore it will be important to focus on those who are more productive, as well as on the younger generations. These latter have not been included in the literary corpus of this volume, but our references to their production have emphasised its linguistic hybridity and their capacity to represent transnational identities through time. Eager to explore new and more creative paths, both Domenica de Rosa and Giancarlo Gemin have already achieved important recognition. After The Italian Quarter and a series of other novels which are set in Italy,14 the former, for instance, took the English pen name “Elly Griffiths” and is now an established writer of detective stories. As regards the latter, he began with Cowgirl (2014) and Sweet Pizza (2016)—which were both winners of the Tir Na n-Og Award15 in 2015 and 2016—and is carrying out new and more challenging literary projects, switching from children’s to adult fiction.16  Here we will only mention Peppino Leoni and Les Servini who were awarded the title of Cavaliere, Charles Forte, who was knighted by the Queen Mother in 1970, and Joe Pieri, who received the San Cristoforo d’Oro in Barga in 2005. As concerns Elena Salvoni and Mary Contini, they respectively got an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2005 and 2020. 13  It is not always easy to find precise information about the earliest generations of Italian British authors: Eugenio D’Agostino, for instance, died in 1947, Charles Forte in 2007, whereas Joe Pieri, Elena Salvoni and Victor Spinetti in 2012. Bernard Moscardini and Hector Emanuelli, instead, died only a few years ago, respectively in 2017 and 2022. 14  See among others The Eternal City (2006) Villa Serena. Falling in Love Italian Style (2007), One Summer in Tuscany (2017) and Return to the Italian Quarter (2018). 15  The Tir Na n-Og Awards were first established in 1976. They are the most popular awards for children’s literature in Wales. 16  See “Interview with Giancarlo Gemin, Shortlisted Author for The Rhys Davies Short Story Award,” Parthian, December 3, 2022, https://www.parthianbooks.com/blogs/ news/interview-with-giancarlo-gemin-shortlisted-author-for-the-rhys-davies-short-storyaward. Accessed 31 May 2023. 12

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We clearly expect to read and research more, not only on these two authors, but also on the others that we have discussed in this volume. In a context, however, where “things Italian” are greatly valued and are increasingly gaining attention, the history of the immigrant community, particularly of the war years, is also being recounted by British novelists who have close ties with its members, as well as by dramatists and theatre companies. In the introductory section we mentioned Anne Douglas, whose Ginger Street was inspired by Terri Colpi’s The Italian Factor, as well as Natalie Dye who wrote Arandora Star to pay tribute to the memory of Giovanni Tambini, one of the victims of the disastrous event. It is, of course, impossible to mention them all in this concluding section, but it is significant that especially British contemporary drama is now committed to representing the cultural identity of the Italian community. We will thus remember Penny Culliford’s Saffron Hill (2015), which was first put on stage at the Tricolore Theatre “to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Mazzini Garibaldi Club and of Garibaldi’s visit to London,”17 also Mali Tudno Jones’s and Geinor Styles’s The Arandora Star. “A true story exploring the life of Italians living and working in Wales during World War 2,”18 the latter is still part of the repertoire of the Theatr na nÓg and considered “perfect for Year 5 upward” for its core themes: “global citizenship,” “20th century conflict” and its “elements of translanguage Welsh, English and Italian.”19 The success of these plays provides clear evidence that the British artistic scene has now recognised the cultural and civic significance of the history of this immigrant community. At a time when the public is responding warmly to the pain that its members felt in the darkest of times, this first volume on Italian British literary writings has shed light on the productive terrain that their numerous authors have created, while launching new critical challenges. They are in line with the latest debates in the emerging field of Italian post-colonial literature and urge both specialist and non-­ specialist readers to take them as models of openness and inclusion. Their lives and their works will always be powerful testimonies of how they broke down barriers to cause social and cultural change.

17  Saffron Hill, which was directed by Anthony Shrubsall, was also supported by the Mazzini Garbaldi Foundation. For a short overview see the website of the Tricolore Theatre Company at https://www.tricolore.org.uk/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 18  We are quoting from the website of the Theatr na nÓg, http://www.theatr-nanog. co.uk/arandora-star. Accessed 31 May 2023. 19  Ibid.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Forte, Charles. Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte. London: Pan, 1986. Pia, Anne. Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot. Edinburgh: Luath, 2017. Pieri, Joe. Isle of the Displaced. An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2014. Kindle. Servini, Les. A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times. Cardiff: Hazeltree, 1994.

Secondary Sources Ascari, Maurizio. Literature of the Global Age: A Critical Study of Transcultural Narratives. Jefferson: MacFarland, 2011. Filippaki, Iro. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Postmodern Literature. Cham: Palgrave, 2021. Nyongesa, Andrew. Cultural Hybridity and Fixity. Strategies of Resistance in Migration Literatures. Chitungwiza: Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2018. Rinaldi, Giancarlo. From the Serchio to the Solway. Dumphries: Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information & Archives, 1998.

Web Resources “Interview with Giancarlo Gemin, Shortlisted Author for The Rhys Davies Short Story Award.” Parthian, December 3, 2022. https://www.parthianbooks. com/blogs/news/interview-­with-­giancarlo-­gemin-­shortlisted-­author-­for-­the-­ rhys-­davies-­short-­story-­award.

Appendix: Authors, Texts and Contexts

This appendix aims to provide further biographical and critical details about the authors who have been presented in this volume and their production. In order to indicate the development of Italian British migrant writing from a regional perspective, the contents of this section will be divided into three parts: “England,” “Wales” and “Scotland.” As already stated, each section will commence with an overview of the cultural-literary terrain that these authors have created, putting an emphasis on their interconnections. After that, the focus will be on them and their creative universe, as well on a significant sample of their works. These latter will be presented according to their years of publication. Structured in the form of a text-critical catalogue, and complete with specific bibliographical sections, this appendix will give specialist and nonspecialist readers the opportunity to appreciate Italian British authors’ unique forms of expression while contributing to their success.

England This volume has shown the common thread which unites Italian British narratives. Rich in historical and geographical references, and creating solid transnational bridges, these narratives follow the history of the immigrant community, while focusing on their protagonists’ path towards integration. It was generally after the Second World War that they considered © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. D’Amore, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0

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Britain as their home country and emphasised the national components of their complex identities: Pieri and Pia, for instance, defined themselves as “Italian Scots” in their memoirs, while Hector Emanuelli incorporated his migrant experiences in the subtitle of A Sense of Belonging. They had begun from the small village of Bardi near Parma, but also included the Valleys and the Potteries area, which explains why his were the “memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman.” Interestingly, this sense of national belonging is distinctive of Italian British authors. Their works clearly show how they absorbed the culture of the cities and countries in which they lived, yet now it seems even more important to question whether they ever represented homogeneous literary groups sharing the same experiences and transcultural project. On the other side of the Atlantic, for instance, where Italian American literature has deepened the concept of “spatiality,”1 there is a great interest in the ties between Italian Canadian writers and the macro-area of VancouverQuebec City.2 As the situation in Britain is still evolving also from the point of view of scholarly research, we will see how migrant writing developed in the main three countries and especially its interconnections. Our first focus will thus be on England. Despite the fact that the Italian communities in its major cities are culturally active even today, there seems to be no evidence of a coherent literary movement or of systematic exchanges among the authors who are part of this section. This is particularly true for Bernard Moscardini, Peter Ghiringhelli and Rafaella Cruciani, who respectively lived in Bedlington, Leeds and Bournemouth and who followed different human and professional paths: writing to fulfil their desire to discover their roots and recount their tormented past, they equally wanted to include detailed descriptions of the social milieu in which they lived. Moscardini and Ghiringhelli, in particular, focused on their Italian and English neighbours in the interwar years, particularly on the cultural role of Fascism3; as concerns Cruciani, who “lived next door to a pub” and retains vivid memories of “Guy Fawkes Night” in the1960s,4 1  See Eva Pelayo Sañudo, Spatialities in Italian American Women’s Literature. Beyond the Mean Streets (London and New York: Routledge, 2021), 2. 2  See Joseph Pivato, “Ethnic Writing and Comparative Canadian Literature,” in Contrasts. Comparative Essays on Italian Canadian Writing, ed. Joseph Pivato (Montreal: Guernica, 1991), 30–32. 3  See Moscardini, La Vacanza, 5–7; and Ghiringhelli, A British Boy in Fascist Italy, 14–17. 4  Cruciani, An Owl in the Kitchen, 68.

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she began to seek out her Italian family when she was an adult. The product of solitary and discontinuous literary ventures, La Vacanza, A British Boy in Fascist Italy and An Owl in the Kitchen are closely related to their authors’ transnational experiences. A multicultural city, which has represented an important pole of attraction for Italians since the early 1800s, London, instead, offered the inhabitants of Little Italy concrete opportunities of interchange. The rich historical outline in Olive Besagni’s A Better Life explains that the reason “why so many Italians settled in this particular area of [the city] is not clearly known.”5 At the beginning, in fact, it was a place of dirt and desolation; it was in the late Victorian era, when the Italian Benevolent Society (est. 1861)6 and La Società per il progresso degli operai italiani in Londra (est. 1864)7 were first set up, that the situation gradually improved. It may be of interest to note that in the years when these two charitable foundations supported—and even repatriated—“the Italians who were unable to cope with the hard life of the immigrant,”8 St Peter’s Italian Church (est. 1863) soon became the main centre of their religious and cultural life. Even today, the social club Casa italiana San Vincenzo Pallotti, which is next to the church, organises activities such as “schools of card playing, dancing, snooker and social evenings.”9 The literary narratives in this section are replete with descriptions of this iconic Church as a reference point also for other immigrant communities. As time went by, though, when the majority of Italians found their way in the catering industry, the Società italiana cuochi-camerieri (Italian Hotel and Restaurant Employees Benefit Society) (est. 1886) became extremely popular in Soho.10 In 1897, it had over 400 members and its  Besagni, A Better Life, 9.  This is “the oldest association of the Italian Community in London.” See Colpi, The Italian Factor, 42–43. 7  La Società per il progresso degli operai italiani in Londra was founded “under the joined presidency of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi.” It became The Mazzini-Garbaldi Club after the Second World War. As the “Welcome” section of its website reads, “La Società served the purpose of harnessing nationalist feelings among the Italian immigrant community in London at the time, thereby aiding the cause for the nationalist liberation of their homeland.” Mazzini’s brainchild, it reflected his core political principles of fraternity, education and love of country. See http://www.mazzinigaribaldiclub.org/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 8  Besagni, A Better Life, 11–12. 9  Ibid., 13. 10  See Colpi, The Italian Factor, 65. 5 6

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aim was “the welfare of Italian cooks and waiters.”11 Dedicating an entire section to its activities, the volume entitled Two Centuries of Soho contends that it was “self-supporting,” but that “its members were always ready to give generous help to any parochial undertaking needing their assistance.”12 Evidence of the strong solidarity and special network of contacts that the Italians could rely on can also be found in Peppino Leoni’s and Elena Salvoni’s autobiographical writings. The former in I Shall Die on the Carpet refers to the numerous men and women of the Cannero community who welcomed and supported him when he first arrived in London,13 and the latter in Elena. A Life in Soho joyfully remembers the warm atmosphere in which she grew up and began her career. Belonging to different generations, the two famed restaurateurs knew each other well and shared the same work ethic. In a lively environment where food represented a tool to promote Italianness and diverse intellectual and artistic forms, we should not be surprised that Salvoni in particular was close to Bruno and Olive Besagni, while representing another important reference point for the Norfolk writer Lilie Ferrari. She considered her knowledge of “London Italians”14 a solid basis of her literary works. Equally based in the capital, and only partially external to this lively context, the fourth-generation Italian Melanie Hughes is close to cultural associations such as the Tricolore Theatre Company,15 as well as to important university centres both in London and in Italy. It was there that she promoted War Changes Everything, her second successful novel; we may consider the Italian translation which appeared in 2022 as the product of her continuous transnational contacts. Made up of novels, family stories and autobiographies which appeared between 1966 and 2017, this side of the Italian British literary production 11  J.H. Cardwell, H.B. Freeman and G.C. Wilton, Two Centuries of Soho. Its Institutions, Firms, and Amusements (London: Truslove and Hanson, 1898), 104. 12  Ibid., 105. 13  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 59–60. 14  Ferrari, interview by author, November 15, 2022. 15  “Tricolore is a professional theatre company based in London and dedicated to the promotion of international culture, literature and language. It first appeared at the Italian Cultural Institute in February 2008, giving performed readings of three short plays by Pirandello, newly adapted by Robert Cohen.” Saffron Hill (2015) and Grimaldi’s Last Act (2022) are among its most successful plays. See https://www.tricolore.org.uk/about.html. Accessed 31 May 2023.

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thus revives the pains of the past while projecting its protagonists into the future. Interestingly, after they successfully completed their path towards integration, they enjoyed the fruits of their popularity, thus channelling their other artistic talents into new Anglo-Italian projects. 1. Peppino Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet (1966) This part of this text-critical catalogue will begin with Peppino Leoni. Originally from Cannero, a beautiful hamlet on the shores of the Lake Maggiore, he began to work when he was still a boy and lived important international experiences in Switzerland and in France. It was there that he began to dream of working in the catering industry in England. He had a special admiration for British people, particularly for their culture and politeness16: his long path towards the success began, significantly, in London in 1907. Full of hope and expectations, the young Leoni showed his mother that he was determined to leave his hometown and seek a better life: “You are going so soon? You are very young, Peppino, only fifteen, and it is wrong that you should go into a strange world so soon.” “I’ve given a week’s notice on the boat so I must go. Besides, the sooner I go, the sooner I shall have my own restaurant and be able to send you money regularly so that you won’t have to work so hard. I must go to Cannero—I have things to do.” I broke off the discussion because I could see that she was getting upset, and I did not want any more tears. Anyway, I was on the verge of them myself. […] I won’t bore you with details of the journey which took me several days whereas today, within a matter of hours, I can be in Milan by air and only a few hours later, I am back in Cannero. Of course I was too excited to sleep or even to eat much of the roast chicken I found in the food parcel my mother had prepared for me. […] All I can say is that I was glued to the window throughout the whole journey, even at night because railway stations, and the dark countryside, were both more exciting by night than by day. The unseen people chattering in strange languages at the dimly lit stations added glamour, while the passing glimpse of a light, glowing in a cottage window, reminded me instantly of home and the heads of my father, mother and sister, bent in a simple Grace before they ate their even simpler meal.  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 48.

16

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I had never seen the sea before, and the grey, tumbling, foaming waves of the narrow English Channel petrified me and the screaming of the gulls which, with seemingly little effort, followed us out into the Channel, added to the atmosphere. I was glad when we steamed into the calm of Dover Harbour. As the ship manoeuvred it turned its stern towards the land and would be taken back across the stormy stretch of water, and thus home. […] At last we came to Charing Cross. […] I turned right and it was straight until I came to—yes, Oxford Street. The twig-drawn map became clear in my mind but Charing Cross was confusing because it was not straight and there were many turnings off it. If I got lost I was done because I could speak no English and had not even had the sense to write down the address. […] After the bustle of Tottenham Court Road the street was quiet and there were few people about. I turned right and started watching the house numbers until at last I found the one I wanted. […] When the door opened and I had passed down the passage into the kitchen, my depression vanished because I was immediately welcomed by Italian voices. The owners of the lodging house were from Cannero so question followed question so fast that I was hard put to it to answer one before I was bombarded with another. It was nearly twenty-four hours since I had spoken to anybody, for the compartment of my train had filled with foreigners who spoke no Italian and I, a chatterer, had had to sit, small and silent, in my corner seat. […] Now my tongue was unleashed and I answered the questions at length, just for the pleasure of speaking Italian and hearing my own voice. […] When all the questions had been answered, it was my turn to ask a vital one. Turning to the man who owned the lodging house, I asked, “Have you found a job for me?” “Yes,” he replied, “at a restaurant owned by a Swiss-Italian at Canterbury.” “Where is that, and how much do I get?” “It’s in Kent, there’s a big cathedral there.” “Is there any chance of earning a little extra money serving at Mass?” “No. It’s not a Roman Catholic cathedral and anyway the English don’t pay the servers.” “Then, what do I get at the restaurant?” “Ten shillings a week, lodging and keep.”17

Leoni’s long journey from the extreme north of Lombardy, his internal conflicts—but also his openness to what he perceived as a completely different world—are symbolic of the Italian British writers’ difficult transition to their new life. As he recounts, his beginning was not very happy,  Ibid., 53, 56–60.

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but as time went by, he learned the language and increasingly improved his position. A “visionary”18 who always had a positive vision of the future, he generously fought for Italy when the government decided, “to occupy Tripolitania and Cyrenaica” in 1911–1912,19 and then, again, during the First World War. It was in 1926 that he finally opened his famous Quo Vadis. Recalling the new direction that he was taking, this Latin name was easy to remember and retained the flavour of Italy: from that moment on, he dedicated himself completely to a restaurant which soon became popular with celebrities and is still considered one of the best in London.20 Located at 26–29 Dean Street, this activity represented a fundamental part of his life for forty years, until 1966. Focusing, however, on the great sacrifices that he had to make to purchase and also redecorate the historic building which had been home to Karl Marx between 1851 and 1856, Leoni never wrote about the lively political atmosphere in Soho in those years. As Judith Walkowitz rightly points out, both he and the anti-fascist activist Emidio Recchioni21 were successful entrepreneurs who were contributing to “London’s escape from English cooking”22: their contrasting views on the Italian regime, though, clearly mirror the immigrant community’s responses to Mussolini’s propaganda. From this point of view, we should consider Leoni’s patriotism and loyalty to Italy as a distinctive feature of his writing: the images of Cannero in the early 1900s, and then, again, in 1948 clearly demonstrate that he always considered his roots important. Sense of belonging and commercial success apart, I Shall Die on the Carpet depicts the portrait of a man with strong ideas. He fiercely defended them in the bleakest of times, but his civil commitment was finally rewarded: he was named Cavaliere del Lavoro in 1936,23 then, in 1953 he became “Commenda dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica” [“Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic”]24 for “the charitable work  Ibid., 121.  Ibid., 94–95. 20  See the website of the Quo Vadis restaurant today https://www.quovadissoho.co.uk/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 21  On Emidio Recchioni, also called “King Bomba,” see Pietro Di Paola, The Knights Errant of Anarchy, 219. 22  Judith Walkowitz, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 91. 23  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 191. 24  Ibid. The correct title in Italian is “Commendatore.” 18 19

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that [he] had done in London” “to raise money [both] for the Italian Hospital in Queen Square” and Cannero.25 Although his name is closely associated with elegance, impeccable service and success, the latest publications in the field highlight his interest in art and his effort in turning Quo Vadis into a permanent exhibition of contemporary art. Hosting the most talented artists of the time since 1929, by 1935 Leoni had sold over 150 pictures, which shows that he also saw Italian food as a tool to promote visual art and culture.26 Like many Italian British writers, he dedicated himself to writing in the closing years of his activity: significantly beginning his narrative from his “enforced holiday” on the Isle of Man from 1940 to 1945,27 he too wanted to give shape to a hybrid prose which includes photos and recipes. A key testimony of the Italians’ long path of integration in Britain, I Shall Die on the Carpet is in line with other memoirs in this corpus also from a thematic point of view: the reader will find the same references to the main contemporary events, the same positive vision of the long path towards integration, also more importantly, the same traditional values. Despite the fact that he only wrote about the members of the immigrant community at the beginning of his autobiography, the specialist press confirms that he knew Elena Salvoni. For her, he always represented one of the most iconic figures of Soho: unsurprisingly, she continued to visit Quo Vadis until the end of her life.28 2. Elena Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho (1990) Charles Forte in his autobiography recounted that the catering industry in London even during the reconstruction was dominated by strong and charismatic Italians such as the Quaglino brothers, John and Ernest, and the “famous patron named Stocco, who ran the Café Anglais in Leicester Square”29: in such a male and competitive context, it is, however, impor Ibid.  For further details, see Antonio Caprarica, Il romanzo di Londra. Storie, segreti e misfatti di una capitale leggendaria (Milano: Sperling & Kupfer, 2014), 48–50. 27  Leoni, I Shall Die on the Carpet, 13–21. Here we refer to the title of chapter 1, “Enforced ‘Holiday.’” 28  Giustino Catalano, “Celebrating the Remarkable Elena Salvoni,” diTestadiGola, July 24, 2015, https://www.ditestaedigola.com/la-straordinaria-elena-salvoni/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 29  Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, 85–86, 88. 25 26

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tant to note that Salvoni was the only Italian woman who had success and who is still remembered as a “legendary” figure. There is detailed information about her and her sparkling career in her two books and numerous interviews. Released in 2010, the short video entitled “Elena Salvoni, A Lifelong Passion for Work”30 expresses all her strength and enthusiasm. Indeed, as she recounts, she began her professional path at the age of fourteen. At that time she was a promising seamstress who took great pride in supporting her family, but “really enjoyed making dresses for friends.”31 When the Second World War broke out, she found a job in the catering industry and was first employed by a “Mr. Paccino” and “Mr. Bossi”: it was then, after the two Italians appreciated her innate kills, that her career began. She worked at Café Bleu in Old Compton Street until a terrible fire destroyed it. Then, she moved to Bianchi’s in Frith Street, where she soon “took over as restaurant manager.”32 After thirty years, at the age of 65, she decided not to retire, but to invest all her energy and expertise in famous restaurants such as L’Escargot, L’Etoile and Elena’s L’Etoile. Rightly defined as the “Queen” of Soho restaurants, she continued to work until just a few weeks before she died. For Chef Jeremy Lee, “to hear Elena still clacking her heels on the Quo Vadis floor [was] something special”: she was indeed “a huge part of [her staff’s] lives,” giving them “encouragement, belief, kindness and hope.”33 The model that she provided in her over seventy-year career—and which is deeply rooted in the Italian concept of warmth and hospitality—is still followed by the members of her team. In point of fact, Salvoni was born in Clerkenwell to parents from the north of Italy. Her house, as she recalls, “was full of visitors” and her “mum used to ask everyone who walked through the door if they’d 30  Elena Salvoni, “Elena Salvoni: 90s, Maitre d’,” No Country for Young &Old Women, December 20, 2010, YouTube video, 0.23: 0.33, https://nocountryforyoungwomen. com/2010/12/20/elena-salvoni-90s-maitre-d/. Accessed 31 May 2023. This interview is divided into two different clips: “Elena Salvoni, A Lifelong Passion for Work” is the first one. 31  0,50: 0,57. 32  Mark Lewis, “The Caterer Interview – Elena Salvoni,” The Caterer, February 9, 2011, https://www.thecaterer.com/news/foodservice/the-caterer-interview-elena-salvoni. Accessed 31 May 2023. 33  Amanda Afyia, “Elena Salvoni Dies after a Short Illness,” The Caterer, March 21, 2016, http://www.thecaterer.com/news/restaurant/elena-salvoni-dies-after-short-illness. Accessed 31 May 2023.

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eaten.”34 First as a talented waitress, and then as a maître d’, she always looked after her clients, thus creating a friendly relationship with most of them. She expressed her philosophy of life and the values that she believed in Elena. A Life in Soho. One of the earliest memoirs in the Italian British literary production, it was co-written with the English journalist Sandy Fawkes (1929–2005) and was followed, as we have seen, by Eating Famously: Elena Salvoni on Fabulous Food for her Famous Friends and Diners. In both cases, Salvoni shared her long but rewarding experience, which confirms that hard work, good humour and efficiency were the keys to her success. She was awarded the MBE in 200535: throughout her life she witnessed not only the dramatic changes in the London restaurant scene, but also those of food culture in Britain. Her decision to dedicate herself to writing is rooted in her desire to show how her numerous professional and human encounters helped her to make her cuisine more international and appealing. Taken from chapter 2 of Elena. A Life in Soho, the following passage recounts the beginning of her extraordinary story: A few months back I walked down Eyre Street Hill, a little curved road not far from St Peter’s Italian Church on Clerkenwell Road; it was a sentimental journey and I counted the gratings in the pavement until I came to the place where, on 29 April 1920, I was born, and where I lived for the first seven years of my life. Then I crossed the street, went up the hill a little and gazed in turn at the house where [my husband] Aldo was born and lived for the first seven or eight of his. The area is derelict now but the memories are as vivid as ever; it was a wonderful street filled with life, noise, the smells of cooking and the vitality of a close community. The houses were small, jam-packed together with front door slap on the street and always open. I suppose we were all poor but as children we weren’t aware of it and we were always welcome in each other’s houses. […] I suppose I learned to work hard from Mama’s example; there were no such things as mod cons in those days. The toilet was out in the back yard and the washing was done in huge concrete copper in the scullery. The water had to be poured in from buckets and a fire lit under it; when the sheets had boiled they had to be lugged outside to be mangled, then hung on the line to dry, then folded and ironed with a flat-iron heated on the kitchen range—you had to spit on it to see if it was hot enough. The kitchen  Ibid.  Giustino Catalano, “Celebrating the Remarkable Elena Salvoni.”

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stove had to be cleaned with black lead and polished till it shone like a mirror; rugs were hung on the line and beaten by hand and the lace curtains, bought from Indian door-to-door salesmen had to be bleached and starched. No wonder those women had backache. On top of everything else they had huge meals to prepare. Food was invariably home-made and the pasta, the sauces, all had to be ready to serve up when the bread-winner came home. Mama made wonderful risottos and my “auntie” across the road made gorgeous pizzas so we would eat in each other’s houses: it was a marvellous childhood. The area we lived in is a small triangle between Clerkewell Road, Rosberry Avenue and Farringdon Road, and we children knew every inch of it. Wandering round I can still remember who lived where just as when I look at our old school photos I can recall the names of all the children. […] We’ve all done well but we aren’t ashamed of our humble background, far from it. […] The reason why people worked so hard was that they wanted to move up in the world. I suppose it’s still the same. Our achievements were modest; when I was nine we moved up the street from number 21 to number 8 which had been the landlord’s house. He and his family were moving up in the world. We didn’t need a Pickfords’ van, just the help of our neighbours. Our new status symbols were an inside toilet and a copper gas-fired boiler in the yard—which meant we could heat the water for the tin bath without sweltering in the summer. We still had no electricity round Clerkenwell. A nightmare for any child was to be sent to the shop to buy a gasmantle [sic]; I would say the responsibility was about as great as delivering £50,000  in cash nowadays. They were very fragile things made of a sort of woven powder suspended in a cardboard box and they cost 1/6d each. If the slightest damage happened to them on the way home you were to blame. You didn’t even speak to a friend, you just watched the pavement and the box because the tiniest break in the network meant they wouldn’t function. It was an ordeal that was only over when the thing was installed, the match lit, the tap turned on and there was light. Mama’s boarders moved with us to number 8 and by 1933 she and Papa had saved enough to buy a house in Islington, the house where I still live, about a mile up the road from Clerkenwell. I still went to St Peter’s Italian School and to evening classes as well, oddly enough in order to learn proper Italian as our parents spoke with a broad dialect. We used the evening classes as a social occasion, learning to mix with the boys as the sexes were separated both in classes and playgrounds during the day. […] In the summer of 1934, at the age of fourteen, I left school and a week later I started my first job.36

 Salvoni, Elena. A Life in Soho, 24, 26, 29–31, 34–36.

36

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Following a strict chronological order and written in a simple but appealing manner, Salvoni’s memoir can be considered the story of a woman who had the capacity to face the most disastrous events of contemporary times. It was in the post-war years, for instance—especially after the tragedy of the Arandora Star—that she became the first and most acclaimed female maître d’ in Britain. Her narrative includes both unknown people and celebrities, but her glittering descriptions of Soho are definitely more important. Praised by critics and historians of costume for their vividness, they testify to the strong transcultural trait and openness of the city of London. Starting from Jancis Robinson’s Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover,37 the latest scholarly contributions38 have demonstrated that there is a growing interest not only in her as an outstanding figure in the British catering industry, but also in her legacy, which means that in the future it will also be important to reflect on her writing in a more systematic way. Indeed, both Elena. A Life in Soho and Eating Famously convey the same vision of migration as a challenging and rich human experience. Together with Besagni’s iconic A Better Life, they represented a precious resource also for Lilie Ferrari. Interestingly, the dedication of Angelface, her second novel, reads: This book is dedicated to all Italians who have worked and played in Soho, and in particular to my father, Stan Ferrari, my aunt and uncle, Olive and Bruno Besagni and to Elena Salvoni and Romano Viazzani, with thanks for generously sharing their memories with me.39

3. Lilie Ferrari, Fortunata (1993) Highlighting these special family and intellectual relationships, in 2020 Anne-Marie Fortier defined Angelface as the only written account of the “other” Little Italy.40 The story is set in the post-war years—precisely between  Jancis Robinson, Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover (London: Viking, 1997).  We will consider Dan Cruickshank, Soho: A Street Guide to Soho History, Architecture and People (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2019); Johnny Homer, A-Z of Soho and Fitzrovia: Places, People, History (Stroud: Amberly Publishing, 2021); and Christopher Fowler, Bryant and May’s Peculiar London (New York: Bantam, 2022). 39  Lilie Ferrari, Angelface (London: Signet, 1994). The dedication has no page number. 40  Anne-Marie Fortier, Migrant Belongings, 155. 37 38

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1947 and 1954—and the protagonist, Marionetta Peretti, uses all her strength not only to survive, but also to be respected in “gang-land Soho.”41 In the following years Ferrari continued to dedicate her major production to London, focusing in particular on the Italian immigrant community. She always considered this as an important tribute to her heritage. Born to an English mother and an Italian father, whose forebears had emigrated from Borgo Val di Taro near Bardi in 1880, she started researching the “London Italians” at the age of twenty-five.42 The historical and social background of Fortunata, her debut novel, can be considered as the result of her direct contacts with the paternal side of her family, and also of her capacity to combine her studies with the stories that Bruno and Olive Besagni told her about the immigrant community: they were respectively her uncle and aunt and also shared their war memories with her. It was in this way that she thus created a solid historical background for her novel. A feminist who always respected Italian women for their strong personality, though, she also wanted to choose the right name for her protagonist. “Beautiful,” “sophisticated”43 and endowed with a natural charisma, Fortunata—who had emigrated from the Laziale village of Nemi in 1920—was indeed “the lucky one.”44 In fact, fighting for her ideals and her happiness all her life, she finally realised all her dreams. Taken from chapter 2, 1922, the following extract ideally represents the beginning of her engaging story. Serafina Florio, the daughter of her future husband, had just arrived from Italy and greatly admired her; as regards the anarchist Emidio Recchioni, he was committed to his fight against “the blackshirts.” It is in such a stimulating context that Fortunata first met Joe O’Connell, the Irish activist who was close to the Sinn Fein leader Michael Collins (1890–1922), and with whom she immediately fell in love. Once again, the scene is set “in the heart of Soho,” precisely at 37, Old Compton Street, where Signor Recchioni owned his historic deli King Bomba. At that time his commercial and subversive activities also combined with those of the clandestine “Arditi del Popolo Movement”45:  Ibid.  Ferrari, interview by author. 43  Ferrari, Fortunata, 71. 44  Ferrari, interview by author. 45  On this anti-fascist movement, which started in Rome in 1921 and was not related to any Italian political party, see Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe After the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 93–95. 41 42

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They were now in Old Compton Street, the heart of Soho, where the delicious smells of other continents wafted from the upstairs windows—coffee, newly baked croissants, hot chocolate. The many nations of Soho were having a late breakfast as Fortunata and Serafina arrived at King Bomba, the great glass-fronted grocers. Serafina stood gaping at the mountain of goods heaped there inside the shop. Baskets full of eggs stood next to bins of crusty grissini on the counter, gleaming jars of caramelle jostled for space on the crowded shelves with great greasy vats of black olives, bags of dried peas and lentils; and swathes of salciccie hung like huge bloody fingers from hooks in the ceilings. […] Fortunata took over at the typewriter, where she proceeded to hammer efficiently at the keys. Serafina had ceased to be surprised at Fortunata’s seemingly endless abilities, so the revelation that she could type as well as cook, sew, argue, pray and look effortlessly beautiful came as no great shock to her youthful admirer. “Well, are you going to gawp, or are you going to help?” […] Eduardo showed her how to gather together the two sheets of paper, one from one pile, one from another, how to fold them once, then again, so that they fitted the envelopes exactly. When the envelopes were filled, the letters were piled in a cardboard box ready for sealing after. “Why do they send so many leaflets? Don’t they have enough customers?” Serafina inquired of her companion. He gave her a pitying look. “They’re not about the shop, stupid. They’re about the blackshirts.” “Oh.” Serafina did not like to ask what this was, for fear of revealing yet more ignorance. She applied herself to the task contentedly, glad that Eduardo did not appear to want to talk. This gave her the opportunity to observe the many comings and goings, the business and bustle of the room. It was not clear to Serafina what the many visitors who came and went were doing. Some seemed to be bringing boxes of produce for the shop, stacking them in piles by the door, men with pencils behind their ears and clip boards with order forms for Signor Recchioni to sign. […] Other people arrived waving newspaper cuttings or carrying books. These would join the group by the window, where heated political debate was punctuated by intense moments of silence, when heads would be lowered over some piece of writing, and adjustments would be made to the prose. Then an argument would slowly rise up again, gathering momentum, until someone would break the tension with a joke, and their laughter and groans would carry over to the table where Eduardo and Serafina continued to fold newsletters.

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Fortunata seemed in her element. Hammering away at the typewriter she looked radiant. Young men crossed the room to flirt with her, pretending to be interested in the text she was typing. Grinning, they leaned over the table, too close, until Fortunata pushed them away laughing. Serafina felt proud. Fortunata was so beautiful in her cream lace blouse with tiny pearl buttons, the matching pearl drops in her ears, the black curls framing her face, it was no wonder that all the young men wanted to be close to her, and no wonder that she pushed them away. None of them were good enough for her. Only a knight, or a prince on a white horse would be worthy of Fortunata’s attention. It was obvious that Fortunata didn’t care for young men—when they wandered away her eyes returned to her work and she became immediately engrossed again. Not for the first time, Serafina pondered on the idea of her father as Fortunata’s suitor. He wasn’t a proper prince, of course, but he was a hero of “the struggle” (whatever that was), and surely in Fortunata’s eyes, that was better… The noisy scene of combined political and commercial activity continued uninterrupted until almost lunch-time, when suddenly Signor Recchioni ushered in a new visitor and proceeded to introduce him to the men gathered by the window. […] The tall stranger who had come in clutching his cap was not Italian. Serafina wondered for a moment where he came from. She heard his soft lilting accent as words drifted across the room, “Michael Collins… County Cork… Sinn Fein.” […] Serafina looked across at Fortunata, suddenly realising why the atmosphere in the room had changed so. Fortunata was no longer typing. She was sitting, immobile, her fingers frozen on the keys, staring at the stranger. Then Signor Recchioni remembered Fortunata and, taking the stranger’s arm, drew him across the room to make introductions. “Forgive me, Fortunata. This is a good friend and supporter of our cause, Joe O’Connell. Joe, this very beautiful and intelligent young woman is Fortunata Vialli.”46

The novel includes more passages which describe the atmosphere of tension between the two characters. In an effort to find a compromise between the patriarchal laws of the Italian community and her right to be happy, Fortunata will marry Giuseppe Florio, while continuing to feel a profound love for the Irishman. It will only be at the end of the novel, after the death of Giuseppe, that the two lovers will reunite and get married.47  Ferrari, Fortunata, 37, 39–41.  Ibid., 241.

46 47

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“An exhilarating novel,” as its blurb reads, which is set in 1920–1990, Fortunata has often been considered a fictional version of the stories collected by Ferrari’s aunt, Olive Besagni, in A Better Life. Indeed, apart from the scenes of sensual passion48—which represent a unicum in this branch of Italian migration literature—the rich social and cultural milieu in which Fortunata operates is carefully reconstructed. There are beautiful descriptions of St. Peter’s Church, of the religious feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, as well as of important Catholic rites. From a merely cultural point of view, the narrator’s reference to the Mazzini-Garibaldi Club of London49—also to the Anglo-Italian Worker’s Association, whose leader in the 1930s was Decio Anzani (1882–1911)50—adds to the liveliness of the Italian immigrant community in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet, the connection between Besagni’s “history of London’s Italian immigrant families in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy” and Fortunata can also be found in popular figures like “Signora Viazzani” or “Mr Terroni.” The Viazzanis—who had emigrated from Brato, near Pontremoli in Tuscany, in 1881—ran a public house called The City Arms and by the 1920s had already created a solid economic position.51 As regards the Terronis, they organised annual processions such as that of St. Lucia.52 Both contributing to the colourful milieu of Little Italy, “Signora Viazzani” in this novel is a staunch traditionalist who does not approve of Fortunata’s rebellious character,53 whereas “Mr Terroni” is presented as a minor character, whose “delivery cart” during the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel attracted children’s attention.54 Interestingly, in the 1960s a younger member of his family, Cav. Terroni, became treasurer of the Mazzini-Garibaldi Club of London.55 More Italian names can be found throughout the narration, especially in the chapters dedicated to the Second World War and the Arandora Star tragedy.56 Bleeding scars on the soul of the Italian community, these two  Ibid., 84.  Ibid., 95. 50  Ibid., 109. 51  Besagni, A Better Life, 31. 52  Ibid., 103. 53  Ferrari, Fortunata, 45. 54  Ibid., 81. 55  The history of the Mazzini-Garibaldi Club also includes the figure of Cav. Terroni. See http://www.mazzinigaribaldiclub.org/history.html. Accessed 31 May 2023. 56  Ferrari, Fortunata, 147, 149, 151. 48 49

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events are carefully described also thanks to the narrator’s reference to the main newspapers and periodicals of the time.57 Going beyond this detailed historical and cultural background, however, the focus of the narration is on the protagonist’s character and her anti-conventional behaviour. A victim of a traditional vision of gender roles, but determined to follow her nature, she definitely represents an alternative model of femininity. In fact, Fortunata, who does not consider herself “a good wife” and “a good mother,” will never feel grateful to England for giving her “a better life.”58 Starting and finishing in Nemi, a little village near Rome, this novel includes several subplots and has a circular structure. In the following years Ferrari used her skills as a storyliner59 to give shape to the eight members of the Di Marco family in the iconic series EastEnders. Introduced early in 1998, and based in the fictional borough of Walford in the east of London, they run the Italian restaurant called “Guiseppe’s [sic]” and “were heralded as the family who would rival the Mitchells.”60 Once again, Ferrari gave a prominent role to Rosa, the “matriarch” of the family, putting special care in the representation both of their domestic and professional milieus.61 Ferrari continued not only to contribute to other popular series like The Clinic and Eldorado, but also to write new novels. After Fortunata and Angelface, she published The Girl from Norfolk with the Flying Table (1996), Joanna and the Weatherman (2002) and The Interrupted Bride (2013). Her new projects include a six-part series called Dancing in the Dark. Centred on The Ballet Continental, an international ballet troupe operating in east London, it also refers to the condition of Italian emigrants during the Second World War, which provides evidence of the fil rouge uniting her major production.62

 Ibid., 270–279.  Ibid., 211. 59  See Lilie Ferrari, Come funziona una soap opera. Meccanismi e strutture della lunga serialità drammatica (Roma: Audino, 2004). 60  On the Di Marcos and in particular on the special character of Rosa, see the website of Fandom at this link https://eastenders.fandom.com/wiki/Rosa_di_Marco. Accessed 31 May 2023. 61  Again, we refer to Ferrari, interview by author; as well as to the email exchanges of 17th November 2022. 62  Ferrari, interview by author. 57 58

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4. Bernard Moscardini, La Vacanza (2009) Close to Elena Salvoni, Lilie Ferrari is thus one of the few writers of Italian descent who have experimented with different forms of writing and media. After her, London-based Melanie Hughes expressed her talent also through acting; on the other side of the Atlantic, the Italian American Adriana Trigiani (1969–) became—and continues to be—both a best-selling novelist and an established scriptwriter.63 It is undeniable, though, that this branch of Italian migration literature is mostly made up of war memoirs. Celebrated by national and local Italian newspapers as a key testimony of the Second World War, La Vacanza by Bernard Moscardini first appeared in 2009. By that time, the Italian Scot writer Joe Pieri had become popular in the Barga area: the publication of this new piece of autobiographical writing showed that it was possible to recount historical facts from a different perspective, thus providing further insights into the transnational trait of Garfagnana in Tuscany. Unsurprisingly, the “absorbing story”64 of a child who had emigrated to Bedlington, and who returned to Italy with his mother and brother in 1940, immediately had success. It was translated into Italian and launched on 26th December 201665 to celebrate the anniversary of the tragic battle of Sommocolonia.66 The following year, on 25th April, it was not only reprinted by the Association Cento Lumi di Barga, but also mentioned by the national press as one of the most unique war narratives uniting Italy and Britain67: compared to Joe Pieri’s Isle of the Displaced or Peter 63  Trigiani’s numerous novels are all inspired by her Italian American heritage. See Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson, Listen Here. Women Writing in Appalachia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 596–598. 64  Here we are quoting from the blurb of the book: “Thus begins the absorbing story of a child’s life in wartime Italy and his daunting experiences when Sommocolonia becomes the front line during the German retreat from Italy in 1944.” 65  The first newspaper article which launched the Italian translation of Moscardini’s memoir is “Il 26 dicembre a Sommocolonia tra memoria e attualità,” Il giornale di Barga e della Valle del Serchio, December 27, 2016, https://www.giornaledibarga.it/2016/12/il26-dicembre-a-sommocolonia-tra-memoria-e-attualita-249011/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 66  On Boxing day, 26th December 1944, the village of Sommocolonia near Barga was the scene of “Operation Wintergewitter,” an offensive conducted on the Gothic Line by the Germans and the Repubblica sociale italiana against US troops. See Solace Wales, Braided in Fire: Black Gls and Tuscan Villagers on the Gothic Line 1944 (Louisville: Knox Press, 2020). 67  Here we refer to Ilaria Lonigro, “25 aprile, la guerra vista dagli occhi meravigliati e innocenti di un bambino: è La Vacanza di Bernard Moscardini,” Il Fatto Quotidiano, April 25, 2017, https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/04/25/25-aprile-la-guerra-vista-dagliocchi-meravigliati-e-innocenti-di-un-bambino-e-la-vacanza-di-bernard-moscardini/3543346/. Accessed 31 May 2023.

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Ghiringhelli’s An English Boy in Fascist Italy, it expresses the protagonist’s vision of Italy as an “archaic” and “sweet” world,68 while showing how the dramatic events of contemporary times finally changed its eternal, immutable order. Written in a lucid and pleasurable style, La Vacanza thus combines personal memories with minute details about the ancient customs of Sommocolonia and northern Tuscany. In chapter 8, for instance, young Moscardini is fascinated by the itinerant artisans who visit the village at different times of the year and learns a lot about the hard manual work that chestnut farming practices required. Interestingly, though, after listing the main local delicacies, he refers to the rich imaginary universe of these poor but strong men and women: 1942 was a very hard year for us. We had no land and therefore had to rely purely on the rations allocated by the government. There were only about three or four other families in Sommocolonia who, like us, were landless and therefore often had to go hungry. It was particularly bad for Mother because she would frequently go without any food in order to feed her two children, Aldo and me. The food situation was so bad that you could not even buy any on the black market. […] Our staple diet consisted mainly of polenta made with chestnut flour. It was called polenta di neccio or polenta dolce (sweet polenta). All the mountains and hills surrounding Sommocolonia were covered in chestnut trees. In fact chestnuts had been providing the main staple diet of the region since time immemorial. The chestnut ripened and fell in October. Late October was the time of the harvest. Every able-bodied man, woman and child would be recruited to help pick up the chestnuts from the ground when they had fallen. It was a backbreaking job bending down all day gathering chestnuts. Also you had to [sic] very careful because the outer husks have very sharp painful spines. […] A sufficient number of sacks of chestnut flour would be retained for personal consumption throughout the year. It would be stored in large wooden chests (made of chestnut wood of course) in the basement. The remaining chestnut flour was then treated as a cash crop and would be sold on the open market. It was undoubtedly a very useful source of income for those families who had large tracts of chestnut woods. Chestnut polenta formed a major part of villagers’ diet at the time. It would be eaten at least once and sometimes twice a day in the winter. It would also be eaten frequently in the summer. It would normally be eaten  Ibid.

68

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hot with biroldo (black pudding), or local cheese, either cow’s or sheep’s (pecorino). […] I always looked forward to chestnut harvest time because whenever you were asked to help with the harvest you were assured of being well fed. At lunchtime, of course, it would be polenta with biroldo or cheese, but in the evening you would go back to their house for the main meal of the day. This was very often tagliarini, which I always looked forward to eating. Tagliarini is a local dish consisting of fresh homemade “tagliatelleshaped” pasta strips cooked in a soup of borlotti beans and diced potatoes. Tagliarini eaten with homemade wholemeal bread is a delight, which I relish to this day: truly one of the great peasant dishes of the region. At chestnut harvest time we would eat ballucci, boiled chestnuts, in the evenings. Families who owned chestnut woods would set aside one or more sacks full of selected chestnuts. These would be used for mondine (roast chestnuts), in the winter. On long winter nights it was custom to go to the veglia, to spend the evening in a neighbour’s house chatting about various matters. If we were lucky the host family might decide to have a roast chestnut evening. So a large capacious pan shaped rather like a frying pan with holes in the base would be filled with chestnuts. This pan had a long wooden handle and it would be placed over a roaring wood fire. […] When the roast chestnuts were ready the pan would be removed from the fire and placed on the stone floor in the middle of the room. Then everyone was invited to help him or herself. The roast chestnuts would be washed down with vinella, local wine with a rather low alcohol content. The children were also allowed to have some vinella suitably watered down. Frequently, someone would read stories out loud from a book, because many of the older people could not read. I remember being asked on several occasions to read a book for the benefit of everyone gathered around the roaring fire. It seemed that I had a good reading voice at the time. Also by the very dim light of an oil lamp one needed the keen eyesight of youth to be able to clearly see the small print in the book. At other times people would just tell stories: fairy tales or ghost stories. The ghost stories were really the most popular. For some strange reason human beings seem to revel in being thoroughly scared by ghoulish tales.69

Moscardini recounted the two tales that he remembered more clearly. In doing so, he ideally anticipated the Italian Welsh writer Hector Emanuelli, who in A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh Italian Englishman, shared his memories of the myths of the  Moscardini, La Vacanza, 76–80.

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village of Bardi. As we have seen, this latter too was located in a poor agricultural area: although Emanuelli only occasionally spent his holidays there, those passages express the same type of stupor and enchantment.70 Despite such enriching contacts with his family and rural culture, however, he was always very happy when he returned to Britain. This was true also for Moscardini in 1944. Until that moment, he had conformed to his family traditions, treasuring the festive occasions of Sommocolonia. It was only when the village became a battlefield that he and the local inhabitants lost their habitual peace. The lesson that he learned in that dramatic situation is that mutual care and affection are indispensable when facing fear and danger. Moscardini never forgot the moment when the Germans attacked Barga and they were taken to a refugee camp in Lucca during the battle: “it was anything but welcoming” and the food was “completely inedible.”71 Luckily, after some time they went to stay in “Nella’s house in the San Donato district of Lucca”72 and then they moved to Barga. Uniting the Barga area and Bedlington—the small city in Northumberland where his father still lived—the concluding chapters of this narrative focus on the post-war period. Interestingly, when he was repatriated with his mother and brother early in 1945, he experienced “a strange feeling of unreality”73: on the one hand, he was happy—he was also impressed by the new, more advanced technology which he had found in England74—but on the other hand, he “was a little apprehensive that perhaps the following morning [he] might wake up to find [himself] still in Sommocolonia.”75 He was, however, aware that “[l]a vacanza era finita, (the holiday was over).”76 Divided into twenty-three chapters and an epilogue, La Vacanza has recently been mentioned by Solace Wales in Braided in Fire: Black Gls and Tuscan Villagers on the Gothic Line 1944. The author includes references to her interview with Bernard Moscardini and some of the members of his family in July 1987: at that time, Moscardini was working as a teacher of Modern Languages in a girls’ Grammar School in Taunton, Somerset, and  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 16–17.  Moscardini, La Vacanza, 164–165. 72  Ibid., 166. 73  Ibid., 208. 74  Ibid., 207. 75  Ibid., 208. 76  Ibid. 70 71

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regularly visited his Italian family.77 As he finally showed, he could never forget the long and difficult path that most of its members had followed: although he was always grateful to England for offering him the opportunity to live a long and successful life, he remained faithful to his native culture and mourned the decline of Sommocolonia. Blending Italian and English, as well as prose, poetry and pictures, La Vacanza is not only an important contribution to this branch of Italian migration literature, but also a testimony of the transnational identity of the Barga area. 5. Peter Ghiringhelli, A British Boy in Fascist Italy (2010) This is an account of my years in Italy under Nazi occupation and of the series of events that took me there. It is, of course, an account of my own personal experience but I hope it will give some idea of what the Italian people suffered in 1944  in the Fascist Republic of Salò, during the later stages of the Second World War.78

Another dense and iconic war memoir, A British Boy in Fascist Italy is the product of a long period of elaboration. It was November 2003 when Peter Ghiringhelli first contributed to WW2 People’s War, a BBC archive of World War II memories, which contains over 47,000 articles and 15,000 images. His “A Childhood in Nazi-Occupied Italy” was immediately well received and “in late 2008 Sophie Bradshaw, a commissioning editor for the History Press, having read it, contacted [him] and suggested that he should expand [it] for publication.”79 He thus started from that 2,000-word account and decided to accept the Editor’s proposal. Fully aware of the fact that “memory is fallible,”80 he exchanged ideas and documentary materials with close friends like Clara Fortunelli, Roberto Rivolta and Pancrazio De Micheli, who had lived his same experiences and who could help him to correct the inaccuracies in the 2003 contribution.81  Wales, Braided in Fire, 170–171, 445.  Peter Ghiringhelli, “A Childhood in Nazi Occupied Italy,” WW2 People’s War. An Archive of World War Two Memories, BBC, November 8, 2003, https://www.bbc.co.uk/ history/ww2peopleswar/stories/03/a1993403.shtml. Accessed 31 May 2023. This quote is taken from the first section entitled “An Account of My Life in Italy, 1940–1946.” 79  Ghiringhelli, A British Boy in Fascist Italy, 9. 80  Ibid. 81  Ibid., 10. 77 78

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A soldier in the British Army until 1953 and a retired officer of the Immigration Service at Folkestone and Heathrow, Ghiringhelli thus focused on historical facts and wanted to provide a truthful representation of the Second World War. The following extract in particular represents a testimony of the dramatic consequences of Mussolini’s decision to declare war on Britain. It was 10th June 1940 and the members of the Italian community suddenly became victims of a series of restrictive measures to their personal freedom: Arrest and internment generally followed the same pattern: two or more police officers, either plainclothes Special Branch or uniformed officers, would call and make the arrest and arrange conveyance to a local police station, followed by finger-printing and a couple or more nights in a police station cell. Special tribunals would decide what category the arrested person fell into: “A”—high security risk; “B”—doubtful cases; and “C”—no security risk. But tribunals differed widely in their interpretation of this. Manchester and Croydon seemed to favour “C”, while in Leeds you were lucky to be classified “B,” with hardly anyone deserving a “C.” The prisoners were then transferred to various collecting points after which most were sent to Warth Mills, a large disused cotton mill near Bury in Lancashire, used as a transit camp. This was the worst part as they were ill-prepared and there was minimal sanitation—some sixty buckets in the yard and eighteen cold water taps for 2,000 men of all ages. There was no electricity or adequate bedding, most sleeping on the floor. From there they were transported to the Isle of Man, where accommodation was considerably better. Afterwards, on the whole, treatment was humane (with, as always, exceptions). Much of the anti-alien hysteria was inflamed by the press, the foremost being the Daily Mail. They even printed a letter from a retired brigadier suggesting that all aliens, presumably the families of internees, should be made to wear armbands clearly stating their country of origin—hardly an original idea: shades of the Nazi yellow Star of David armbands here? Pondering on all of this later, it made me better understand what Jews have had to endure for 2,000 years, and how quickly normal, sane people can be whipped up into a baying, mindless mob. Four days later, mid-morning on Friday 14 June, without any warning, my father appeared on our doorstep. He had been released under escort for repatriation to Italy. My mother, sister and I were British citizens, but we could accompany him if my mother so chose. She had no hesitation in deciding to do so, and within minutes we were frantically packing. We were allowed one suitcase each, and I remember our dash to my grandmother’s house to get two large suitcases.

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It meant leaving all my books—I had quite a collection by then. My mother allowed me to select three; I chose a Natural History of the World, Odham’s The New Pictorial Atlas of the World and another that I valued most of all but unfortunately now can neither remember the subject nor title. I also grabbed my stamp collection album. While my father remained at home, we returned to my grandmother’s to say our tearful farewells; the parting hit my mother particularly hard. United once more back home, we made our way to Leeds City station to await our special train to an unknown port. Unknown to us, on 4 June the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Galeazzo Ciano—Mussolini’s son-in-law—and the British Ambassador in Rome, Sir Percy Lorraine, had agreed that should war be declared there would be an orderly exchange and repatriation of their respective nationals. Details were arranged in London on 6 June, when the Italian First Secretary, Cristoforo Fracassi, and another senior diplomat, Egidio Ortona, went to the Foreign Office to discuss a suggestion made a few days earlier by Fracassi that, given the impossibility of crossing embattled France, embassy staff should travel by sea and the exchange made in neutral Lisbon. […] The special train that picked us up in Leeds was sealed; once on no one was allowed off. It had started in London from Euston Station the previous evening, 13 June, at about 10 p.m., stopping at various cities to pick up Italians. So far as I can remember we were the only ones to board the train in Leeds. […] We knew that our destination was Glasgow, but we didn’t go to the city station; instead the train continued along to the docks at Greenock on the Clyde, stopping right alongside a towering ocean liner.82

Emphasising the points that British anti-alien restrictions had in common with Nazi and Fascist racial laws, Ghiringhelli’s narrative retains clear elements of uniqueness. Its twenty-three chapters include detailed information about the author’s life in the northern Italian village of Musadino in the province of Varese, even though the main focus is on the rise and fall of Fascism. As concerns form, A British Boy in Fascist Italy is both a war memoir and a travelogue, which alternates writing with maps and family photos. The initial sections—“Pre-War Days in Leeds,” “The Phoney War” and “Italy Declares War”—are based on Ghiringhelli’s vivid memories of the atmosphere of tension in which he lived as a child. In the poor agricultural villages of the Val di Taro in Emilia Romagna and of the Lake Maggiore

 Ibid., 32–35.

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area in Lombardy “[l]ife was hard but the people were happy”83: considering what Moscardini reported in La Vacanza, we can now infer that in the first half of the twentieth century there was little or no difference between the rural areas in the north of Italy and those in central regions like Tuscany. Yet, the main points of interest of A British Boy in Fascist Italy lie in the chapters respectively entitled “Musadino,” “Fall and Rise of Il Duce,” “Race Laws and Persecutions of the Jews” and “The Republic of Salò Slides into Civil War.” Here Ghiringhelli’s approach is definitely more political: his father was a convinced fascist, who was a member of the circles in England and even kept photos of Mussolini at home.84 The extracts from rare documentary materials, which are embedded in the narration, provide evidence of the Duce’s intention to deprive Italians of their freedom.85 For this reason, their commitment to guiding Jews to safety after the publication of the Manifesto of Fascist Racism in 1938—as well as the Partisans’ Resistance in the following years—are greatly emphasised. Ghiringhelli understood that the war was finally over on 24th April 1945: he was in the small village of Sarigo when he heard “a great pealing of bells.”86 He never forgot the atmosphere of happiness, of euphoria, which pervaded the entire area: even though there were a few sporadic outbursts until the end of May, all resistance officially came to an end on 25th April. He returned to Leeds in 194687: although, once again, he was forced to leave most of his favourite books and friends,88 he enjoyed every minute of the long journey through the Italo-Swiss border, France and the English Channel.89 This represented a new beginning for him, even though he had not completed his primary education90 and he was in search of new reference points. He found them once he arrived: ideally following Moscardini’s description of Sommocolonia and the Barga area in the following years, Ghiringhelli dedicated the concluding passages of his work to his memories of Musadino in the late 1960s. It was still a small village, but endowed  Ibid., 48.  Ibid., 29. 85  Ibid., 105–112. 86  Ibid., 43. 87  Ibid., 170–171. 88  Ibid., 169. 89  Ibid., 170–171. 90  Ibid., 173. 83 84

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with every comfort. Furthermore, “many of the old people [he] had known had since died, and the war seemed a world away. Even the Germans had returned, but now as welcome tourists.”91 6. Rafaella Cruciani, An Owl in the Kitchen. The Discovery of My Italian Heritage (2016) Writing retrospectively about his childhood in the tormented cadre of the Second World War, Ghiringhelli also voiced the suffering that he felt for his origins, as well as the pride that he took in being able to move between two worlds. His parents were both Italians, even though his mother Dina “had grown up near Newcastle-upon-Tyne and considered herself English.”92 As Solace Wales contends, “[s]he was irked at herself for never bothering to obtain English citizenship.”93 “Plain,” “unvarnished” and “unheroic” like most traditional war memoirs,94 A British Boy in Fascist Italy combines memory, historical facts and significant insights into his multi-layered identity. Unlike Ghiringhelli, who never questioned his roots, Rafaella Cruciani published An Owl in the Kitchen at the end of a ten-year “path of discovery” about her family.95 As she writes in chapter 2, “Those Elusive Italians,” she commenced her search from Italy. Her father’s forebears were originally from southern Lazio, which means that she soon had to face numerous linguistic difficulties and tour new geographical areas to know more about her forebears.96 Following a trial and error system, she gradually became more methodical and consulted countless parish records and national censuses, which finally demonstrated that her father’s family were originally from Atina near Picinisco and arrived in Britain in the mid-1800s. In this way, she could not only arrange part of the pieces of her complex family picture, but also offer insights into the earliest Italian immigration fluxes in Britain. Taken precisely from this chapter, the following extract is centred on her great great-grandparents, Nunziato Gizzi and Maria Grilli, who  Ibid., 176.  Wales, 170. 93  Ibid. 94  Here we refer to Samuel Hynes, On War and Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 34. 95  Cruciani, An Owl in the Kitchen, 1. 96  Ibid., 2. 91 92

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crossed the Channel in search of a better life. The visual and textual inserts in the narrative provide evidence of Cruciani’s intention to share the final results of her research: My great, great grandfather, Nunziato Gizzi, was one of many Italians from the south who migrated out of necessity to provide for his family and to make “a better life.” In the 1881 census, his wife and eight children were listed as musicians—most Italian migrant families from Picinisco were listed as musicians or ice cream vendors. It is without doubt that music played a large part in their lives, as it was a cultural and recreational pass-time [sic] in their home country; but in the UK, as was common in that era, it was a business that migrant Italians could employ as a means of income in a foreign land. In Britain, children were given tambourines and box organs and taught to play and sing. Presumably, there was an inherent ability, so these were the street musicians scratching out a life in their new home. Those who did not sing operated a barrel or street organ in order to make a living. Of course, some families turned their hands to different occupations—dependent upon the area in which they lived and the reception they got from the public or the law. The common thread between the Italian migrants was their resourcefulness. Whether they were organ grinders, street musicians, ice cream vendors, plaster statue makers, Terazzo [sic] workers, or labourers, they worked hard and made the most of what they had to offer. My ancestors were mainly street musicians, organ grinders, and ice cream vendors, and they were part of the large community in Birmingham known as “Little Italy” who lived alongside other migrant families—many from the same general area of Italy and some closely related. They must have arrived sometime before 1877, as Nunziato’s two youngest children were born in England. […] Although I can find little information about my great, great-grandparents, particularly Nunziato, I was amazed to come across a newspaper article from the Lichfield Mercury—a Warwickshire publication dated 22 March 1878 regarding a family of Italian migrants who appeared in court. The piece is entitled “Strange Scene in the Lichfield Police Court” and contains the following: “The party numbered five, old Gizzi Chitz Nunziati and his wife Maria Chitz Nunziati, with their three children, the lad, a smart looking boy of ten summers; the girl, a bright-eyed minx of about the same age; and a baby, which the mother tended throughout the hearing. Old Nunziati was dressed ‘a la’ an Alpine brigand, his legs being encased in characteristic gaiters, surrounded by large coils of ornamental cords. His face was fine, though roughly cut, and a firm defiant look was plainly perceptible. Indeed, this was a feature on his otherwise pleasing countenance.

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The woman wore a necklace of blue beads, and her head was wrapped in a plaid covering of a brilliant colour. The daughter was similarly costumed, and the lad, who had his ‘box organ’ on a seat in the court and was habilitated [sic] in similar fashion to his father, displayed during the earlier part of the proceedings a good deal of bravado, evidently testifying that the precincts of a gaol were not unknown to him. […] The offence was proved, the parents admitting that they encouraged the traffic, although, it must be stated that the entire family were engaged in similar occupations.” […] I wondered about the lives of my migrant ancestors in those early days, as there have been very few stories related to me about their individual personalities, but their tenacity and perseverance gave me an idea of their determination to make it work. In Italy, they were predominantly subsistence farmers. My ancestors farmed olives, grapes, vegetables, and kept livestock. To come to Britain in the mid-1800s at the peak of the industrial revolution must have been an absolute revelation to the largely agricultural workers of Southern Italy. In Britain, they had to be creative with their skills, as there were few farming jobs available. Victorian England was so far removed from rural Italy, and so austere by comparison it seems hard to believe that they would have fitted in at all. However, their popularity as street musicians and ice cream vendors provided some colour in an otherwise grey and dreary landscape. […] I have a sense of admiration and pride to be a descendant of those innovative and hardworking people who gave up their homeland, the familiarity of their town and villages, language, and families for the grimy and overcrowded streets of the cities of Britain. They were often viewed with suspicion. They looked and spoke differently, but wherever they went, they left their indelible mark on society.97

Tracing her ancestors’ further migration journeys in America in the early decades of 1900,98 Cruciani continued her search in the hope of discovering more about her mother’s family.99 Once again, she had to tour England to reconstruct that other part of her story; however, she dedicated her last two chapters, “My Story” and “Life Goes On,” to her personal experience in England and Scotland, also to her painful, often conflictual relationship

 Ibid., 24–25, 31–33, 38, 41.  Ibid., 48, 74–78. 99  Ibid., 4–8. 97 98

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with her divorced parents. It was only as an adult that she found peace and enjoyed the fruits of her long and difficult search. There is scant information about Cruciani as an author: An Owl in the Kitchen is still her only published work, but we cannot but appreciate her ability to combine historical facts with insights into her rich inner world. Her plurilingual memoir, which includes samples of Italian and Scottish, as well as a reflection on the learning skills of her forbearers, maybe considered in line with Pieri’s and especially Pia’s works. In those cases too, readers are taken to a transnational world which can cause suffering and a sense of estrangement. Ideally counterbalancing her family’s winding migration itineraries, her orderly prose and solid narrative structure unveil her true self. 7. Melanie Hughes, War Changes Everything (2017) Published in 2017, War Changes Everything confirms that historical and documentary research is at the heart of this side of Italian British literary writings. It was indeed after Melanie Hughes discovered the rich archive of letters, photographs and diaries which belonged to her motherin-law, Nita Serracante Bruce, that she decided to make a tribute to her memory and to research the immigrant communities of 1930–1950 London.100 She was of Spanish origins, but her best friend, Yolanda Barroni, was Italian: endowed with a “robust courage,”101 this latter “ripped open Nita’s horizons, taking her away from the narrow, bigoted world she knew.”102 Interestingly, the depth of the two young women’s friendship reminds us of Fiorella De Calce’s Vinnie and Me. A Novel (1996), which is still praised for its “sensitive treatment of the relationship between teenagers Vinnie Andretti and Piera D’Angelo” “in Quebec’s multicultural society.”103 Thanks to Yolanda, in fact, Nita gradually developed a clear political vision and came into contact with numerous extraordinary figures: the Indian academic and diplomat Krishna Menon (1896–1974), Gandhi’s successor, Nehru (1889–1964), and the philosopher Bertrand  Ibid., 207.  Hughes, War Changes Everything, 25. 102  D’Amore, “In Conversation with Melanie Hughes,” 207. 103  Kenneth Scambray, The North American Italian Renaissance. Italian Writing in America and Canada (Toronto, Lancaster: Guernica, 2000), 75. 100 101

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Russell (1872–1970).104 On the purely Italian side, she also witnessed the activities of the anti-fascist leader Emidio Recchioni and founded the first weekly newspaper on the Spanish Civil War with his son Vero (1915–2001). Again, as the following extract shows, her process of transformation began in the interwar years and was closely related to her friend’s contacts and activities: The threat of world Fascism was growing at a rate no-one could ignore, but here, in London, the police often turned a blind eye to Fascist violence. Prominent left-wingers and anarchists were beaten up and their premises broken into and vandalised. Many feared for their lives. Bearing in mind what was going on in Italy and Germany, it was a credible fear. Vero Recchioni, after being threatened by gunmen on more than one occasion, changed his name to Vernon Richards, hoping this anglicised identity would make him a less obvious target. But what finally brought it home to me, literally, was the sight of our Grenadier guards carrying the swastika draped coffin of the German Ambassador down the Mall, while Mosley’s Blackshirts lined the route giving the Fascist salute. After that, I began accompanying Yolanda to meetings, not just at Bomba’s, but all over London, often in cold, dusty church halls where the debates were long and impassioned. It was a world away from the Waldorf. At first, I felt horribly out of place. They all seemed so daunting. Many of them—men and women—were dressed like tramps, but they had much more than a few fancy clothes. They were bright and well-informed. Their minds and arguments had been honed in the debating halls of ancient universities. They were frighteningly well-read. Suddenly, I felt like a painted doll. The kind you cut out and stick on cardboard. I looked all right, but I had no substance. There was nothing to me; I felt shallow and stupid. While I had been fannying around, thinking I was so daring for earning a decent wage and getting my hair permed, they were engaging in the great issues of the day, trying to do something that mattered, not just hiding in an office between canyons of paper. I often felt I was the only person at these gatherings who did not have a point of view. So I didn’t speak because I didn’t dare to. I would just clutch my glass of battery acid, as Yolanda called the wine, and listen. At one of these meetings that took place in a private flat in Judd Street, I noticed a slim, dark man of about thirty-five sitting silently on the periphery. Like me, he listened intently but contributed nothing to the debate. Until another man opened it all out. He took the argument neatly away from the  D’Amore, “In Conversation with Melanie Hughes,” 206.

104

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Spanish particular and launched into a tirade against the “great powers”— Britain, France and America—who prided themselves on being “bastions of freedom,” whilst ruthlessly repressing any spark of it in their colonies. At this the silent dark man came to life. He was from India, he informed the group, and an active member of the India League. He wanted freedom for India and he wanted it now. He felt that India should not passively wait for her current masters to dole out liberty in dribs and drabs; she had an intrinsic right to self-determination and should assume her place in the world as a free nation, not dependent on the by your leave of any other. Suddenly the room fell silent and I felt as if he were talking to me alone. I stood up. I had something to say. I knew about this. For the first time I spoke up. I said it was no use touting for freedom for the West alone, that freedom was either the birthright of all people in all places or it was just a fanciful notion, endlessly chewed over by those who had it but would not grant it to those who did not. It was a bit muddled politically speaking, and I don’t know how I dared, but as far as India was concerned, I knew my stuff. All those hours reading in the library had paid off. I spoke of Ghandi and the Salt March, the Amritsar Massacre, the imprisonment of both Ghandi and Nehru and the historical legacy of the Mutiny. I could, and did, quote facts, figures and dates. Then I noticed that everyone in the room was listening to me and I ground shakily to a halt, appalled at my outburst. I stopped abruptly in midsentence and sat down. The hubbub built up again around me. I stared down at my shoes, watching my legs shake. Adrenalin or fear, I wondered. Then I heard a voice. The dark man was standing in front of me. “Well done! Well spoken. You have parted the waves for us here.”105

She could thus enjoy her first public success thanks to all that Yolanda and the Barronis had given her. The family’s home in Mornington Crescent could be crowded and noisy, but it had a cosy and warm atmosphere106: although “Papa” and “Mama B.” retained some of the most typical elements of the London Italians in those years—they “owned a business in Soho, importing pasta, olive oil and salamis to West End hotels and restaurants”107 and were fervent Catholics—they believed in the transformative power of education and invested most of their resources on this part of their children’s upbringing.

 Hughes, War Changes Everything, 75–78.  Ibid., 26. 107  Ibid. 105 106

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In point of fact, Yolanda was a brilliant and charismatic student, who attended the prestigious Godolphin & Latimer School,108 but who was always sensitive to Nita’s hardships and strongly supported her. As she grew up, the image of her “wearing a two-piece suit” and “sporting red lips and nails”109 sharply contrasted that of the majority of Italian women in Britain at that time: she was left-wing and was part of several avantgarde circles. In this respect, she reminds us of Ferrari’s Fortunata, who distinguished herself for her style and charisma, as well as for her anti-fascist activities. Yolanda Barroni’s death represented an irreparable loss for Nita,110 who continued to follow her teachings. We may understand why Hughes considers the first part of the story the most significant of the novel: it shows “the power and compassion of those who do not wilfully blind themselves,”111 but more importantly it gave her the opportunity to know more about her Italian roots. Her great grandfather, “Giuseppe Bacchiochi” [sic], was a maritime lawyer who arrived in London in 1860, and whose family had “offices in Southampton, Nice and Genoa”.112 Although it was finally thanks to Allan Rogers (1932–)—her uncle and former Member of the European Parliament—that she learned more about him and the matriarchs of her Italian family,113 she never forgot her great-aunts, Beatrice and Sybilla, who transmitted their “love of opera,” of “Renaissance art” and Italian cuisine.114 A member of the Actors and Writers London (AWL), Hughes—who began writing for Kurt Russell, but then became a script doctor and a specialist researcher also for the BBC115—is now fruitfully collaborating with cultural institutions like the Tricolore Theatre Company in London.116 Her first published book was Mrs Fisher’s Tulip (2009); War Changes Everything—which Arturo Croci translated into Italian in 2022117—is still  D’Amore, “In Conversation with Melanie Hughes,” 208.  Hughes, War Changes Everything, 37. 110  Ibid., 186. 111  D’Amore, “In Conversation with Melanie Hughes,” 209. 112  Irina Krot, Figure femminili nella letteratura della migrazione italo-britannica: da Elena Salvoni a Anne Pia, BA Thesis, (University of Catania, 2021), 127. 113  Ibid. 114  D’Amore, “In Conversation with Melanie Hughes,” 210. 115  Ibid., 206. 116  Ibid., 211. 117  Here we refer to Melanie Hughes, La guerra cambia tutto, trans. Arturo Croci (London: Patrician Press, 2022). 108 109

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at the heart of numerous lively debates in prestigious academic and research centres across Italy and the UK. Hughes continued Nita’s story in Midnight Legacy (2017). Her future plans include the publication of a novel called Delhi—City of Spies, which is set in India in the post-Independence years. Yet, she is also beginning “to research a book on the subject of Dino Grandi and Emidio Recchioni and the struggle they had for the hearts and minds of the Italian community”: she is indeed “fascinated and inspired by the research [she] did for War Changes Everything and is looking forward to learning more.”118

Bibliography Primary Sources Cruciani, Rafaella. An Owl in the Kitchen: The Discovery of My Italian Heritage. Bloomington: Xlibris, 2016. Kindle. Emanuelli, Hector. A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman. Langenfeld: Six Towns Books, 2010. Ferrari, Lilie. Fortunata. London: BCA, 1993. Ferrari, Lilie. Angelface. London: Signet, 1994. Forte, Charles. Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte. London: Pan, 1986. Ghiringhelli, Peter. A British Boy in Fascist Italy. Stroud: The History Press, 2010. Hughes, Melanie. War Changes Everything. Manningtree: Patrician Press, 2017. Hughes, Melanie, La guerra cambia tutto. Translated by Arturo Croci. London: Patrician Press, 2022. Leoni, Peppino. I Shall Die on the Carpet. London: Leslie Frewin, 1966. Moscardini, Bernard. La Vacanza. Kennoway: Spiderwize, 2009. Salvoni, Elena. Elena, A Life in Soho. With Sandy Fawkes. London: Quartet Books, 1990. 118

 D’Amore, “In Conversation with Melanie Hughes,” 213.

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Secondary Sources Ballard, Sandra L. and Patricia L. Hudson, eds. Listen Here. Women Writing in Appalachia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. Besagni, Olive. A Better Life. A History of London’s Italian Immigrant Families in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the 19th & 20th Centuries. London: Camden History Society, 2011. Caprarica, Antonio. Il romanzo di Londra. Storie, segreti e misfatti di una capitale leggendaria. Milano: Sperling & Kupfer, 2014. Cardwell, J.H., H.B. Freeman and G.C. Wilton. Two Centuries of Soho. Its Institutions, Firms, and Amusements. London: Truslove and Hanson, 1898. Colpi, Terri. The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain. Edinburgh and London: Mainstream, 1991. Cruickshank, Dan. Soho: A Street Guide to Soho History, Architecture and People. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2019. D’Amore, Manuela. “In Conversation with Melanie Hughes: War Changes Everything (2017).” In Migrazioni e appartenenze. Identità composite e plurilinguismo, edited by Antonietta Bivona and Cettina Rizzo, 203–214. Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis, 2022. Di Paola, Pietro. The Knights Errant of Anarchy. London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013. Ferrari, Lilie. Come funziona una soap opera. Meccanismi e strutture della lunga serialità drammatica. Roma: Audino, 2004. Fortier, Anne-Marie. Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Fowler, Christopher. Bryant and May’s Peculiar London. New  York: Bantam, 2022. Gerwarth, Robert and John Horne. War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe After the Great War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Homer, Johnny. A-Z of Soho and Fitzrovia: Places, People, History. Stroud: Amberly Publishing, 2021. Hynes, Samuel. On War and Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Krot, Irina. “Figure femminili nella letteratura della migrazione italo-britannica: da Elena Salvoni a Anne Pia.” BA Thesis. University of Catania, 2021. Pivato, Joseph. “Ethnic Writing and Comparative Canadian Literature.” In Contrasts. Comparative Essays on Italian Canadian Writing, edited by Joseph Pivato, 15–34. Montreal: Guernica, 1991.

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Robinson, Jancis. Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover. London: Viking, 1997. Sañudo, Eva Pelayo. Spatialities in Italian American Women’s Literature. Beyond the Mean Streets. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. Scambray, Kenneth. The North American Italian Renaissance. Italian Writing in America and Canada. Toronto, Lancaster: Guernica, 2000. Wales, Solace. Braided in Fire: Black Gls and Tuscan Villagers on the Gothic Line 1944. Louisville: Knox Press, 2020. Walkowitz, Judith. Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Web Resources Afyia, Amanda. “Elena Salvoni Dies after a Short Illness.” The Caterer, March 21, 2016. http://www.thecaterer.com/news/restaurant/elenasalvoni-dies-after-short-illness. Catalano, Giustino. “Celebrating the Remarkable Elena Salvoni.” diTestadiGola, July 24, 2015. https://www.ditestaedigola.com/la-straordi naria-elena-salvoni/. Ghiringhelli, Peter. “A Childhood in Nazi Occupied Italy.” WW2 People’s War. An Archive of World War Two Memories—Written by the Public, Gathered by the BBC, November 8, 2003. https://www.bbc. co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/03/a1993403.shtml. “Il 26 dicembre a Sommocolonia tra memoria e attualità.” Il giornale di Barga e della Valle del Serchio, December 27, 2016. https://www. giornaledibarga.it/2016/12/il-26-dicembre-a-sommocolonia-tra memoria-e-attualita-249011/. Lewis, Mark. “The Caterer Interview—Elena Salvoni.” The Caterer, February 9, 2011. https://www.thecaterer.com/news/foodservice/thecaterer-interview-elena-salvoni. Lonigro, Ilaria. “25 aprile, la guerra vista dagli occhi meravigliati e innocenti di un bambino: è La Vacanza di Bernard Moscardini.” Il Fatto Quotidiano, April 25, 2017. https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/ 04/25/25-aprile-la-guerra-vista-dagli-occhi-meravigliati-e-innocentidi-un-bambino-e-la-vacanza-di-bernard-moscardini/3543346/. Salvoni, Elena. “Elena Salvoni: 90s, Maitre d’h.” No Country for Young &Old Women, December 20, 2010. YouTube video, 7:46. https:// nocountryforyoungwomen.com/2010/12/20/elena-salvoni-90smaitre-d/.

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Wales Lilie Ferrari’s and Melanie Hughes’ new editorial and research projects testify to the vitality of this branch of Italian migration literature. Mostly writing between 1990 and the early 2000s, its authors reconstructed the history of their community, thus sharing the memories of its most dramatic phases. The persecution and violence of the war years, for instance— especially the tragedy of the Arandora Star—served as a fil rouge ideally linking their novels and autobiographical writings. Yet, even their geographical and topographical dimension is crucial to a realistic representation of Italian immigrants’ identities: originally from the most remote villages of the province of Frosinone in Lazio and of Lucca in Tuscany, they settled in London, as well as in other cities. It was there that they wanted to begin a new and better life. Interestingly, it is possible to find similar traits also in Italian Welsh literary narratives. Published between 1994 and 2010, they contributed to the vibrant and inclusive cultural milieu of the region, while giving voice to the desire of the older generations of immigrants to transmit their past traditions and experiences. In fact, these were the years when especially the city of Cardiff was promoting multi-culturalism and Italian heritage through a number of important exhibitions and initiatives.119 The most successful ones were “Butetown Remembers the Home Front” (8 October 2005–29 January 2006), “Italian Memories in Wales” (2 February 2009–4 January 2010) and especially “Wales Breaks Its Silence: From Memory to Memorial,” which was inaugurated on 1st July 2010 and was curated by the Arandora Star Memorial Fund.120 This section will show how this latter exhibition in particular resulted in the publication of literary and non-literary writings which contributed to the promotion of a stronger sense of civic awareness. Thus, the period between 1990 and the first decade of this century was decisive for the flourishing of a new branch of Italian migration litera  Bruna Chezzi, “Cultural Representations of Italians in Wales (1920s-2010s),” Ph.D. Diss. (Cardiff University, 2013), 74–77. 120  On the process which started in 2008 and lead to the creation of the Arandora Star Memorial Fund in Wales (ASMFW), see Bruna Chezzi, “Wales Breaks its Silence: from Memory to Memorial and Beyond. The Italians in Wales during the Second World War,” Italian Studies 69 (2014): 376–393. 119

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ture.121 According to Chezzi, its five voices should be associated to two different “waves” or generations: that of the “patriarchs” and that of the “daughters-writers.”122 Apart from the social and professional success that they finally achieved, it is undeniable that they expressed not only their own vision of the past, but also of gender culture. The representations of masculinity of Les Servini, Hector Emanuelli and Victor Spinetti may indeed be considered in line with those of the Italian Scot Joe Pieri; belonging to a later generation, Paulette Pelosi and Anita Arcari have distinguished themselves for their social commitment and their way of recounting the past. The former in particular shared her feelings about her transnational identity and her memories of the little Laziale town where her family came from; as regards Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man can be defined as a semi-fictional family saga which begins in post-unification Italy and depicts the Italian community in Wales in the first half of the twentieth century. Once again, the lengthy sections that each of these five authors dedicated to the Second World War represent one of the strongest links with the rest of Italian British literary writings. Servini and Emanuelli were imprisoned as enemy aliens and interned on the Isle of Man; one of the members of the Arcari family was a victim of the Arandora Star tragedy. Although the majority of the characters of these stories suffered immensely for being persecuted, they finally conveyed positive messages of courage and resilience, overtly expressing a profound gratitude to Britain. Written by non-professional authors, who intended to leave a durable mark in the cultural history of the Italian community in Wales, the five works which will be discussed in this section propose the hardships of their protagonists as a basis of their future success. It may be for this reason that, compared to other more complex representations of multi-layered identities, they are still neglected by academia. In the future it will be important to continue the scholarly work which began at the University of Cardiff thanks to Elizabeth Wren-Owens and Bruna Chezzi, and to value the special features of these literary narratives. They represent their protagonists’ path towards integration, while showing the openness and multicultural trait of Wales even today.

 See also Wren-Owens, “The Delayed Emergence of Italian Welsh Narrative.”  Chezzi, “Cultural Representations of Italians in Wales,” 81.

121 122

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1. Les Servini, A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times (1994) Yet, the process started in 1994 when Les Servini published his A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times. The short foreword lists the three most inspiring works which encouraged the author to share his memories123: Colin Hughes’ Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla, Terri Colpi’s The Italian Factor and, from a specifically literary perspective, Catrin Collier’s One Blue Moon (1993). At a time when Italian immigrants and their culture were also at the heart of British authors’ narratives, Servini was thus “urged by several Italian friends to add his little contribution.”124 He decided not to carry out “any research” and to “write from actual, factual experience”125; he may have forgotten important names or events—and he may have added his “personal opinions”—but he wanted his reader to have a clear vision of how “he had lived.”126 In this respect, A Boy from Bardi shows that he finally had success and realised all his dreams: after several years of manual work, he—the son of a café owner and an ice-cream maker who had settled in Port Talbot in 1921—became a reputed teacher of foreign languages.127 Taken from Chapter Two, “Aberavon,” the following extract is clear on the fact that his family “knew poverty”128 when they still lived in Grezzo, one of the hamlets just a few miles from Bardi. He and his mother reunited with his father in Port Talbot after a long journey through the north of Italy and France. After a short period of isolation—which was due to the fact that he could not speak English—young Servini went to school and began a new life. He greatly enjoyed the experience, yet he soon had to abandon his studies to help in his family’s business. It was only in 1957—after he was interned on the Isle of Man and faced an unsuccessful business venture— that he was admitted to a teacher training course at Carlton College and had a “happy career at Llwynderw, Heolgam and Bryntirion schools”129:

 Servini, A Boy from Bardi, 1.  Ibid. 125  Ibid. 126  Ibid. 127  Ibid., 57–65. 128  Ibid., 10. 129  Here we are quoting from the blurb of Servini’s memoir. 123 124

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As was the accepted custom my mother and I lived with my father’s parents, as did Uncle Peppino’s wife, my mother’s sister Maria. Grandmother ruled the roost, the girls worked, learned and obeyed. Meanwhile, the Berni’s had given my father a shop to run at Port Talbot, and on his untimely death it went to his brother Peppino. My mother was granted a pitiful pension but we knew poverty, so it was decided when Uncle Peppino wanted his wife to join him that my mother and I would go as well. Our tearful goodbyes over, we set off by train from Piacenza to Milan then via the St. Gothard to France. We stopped at Paris to pick up young Maria, a girl who was going to work for my aunt Matilde now at Seven Sisters with Uncle Tony. I am told I was almost lost in Paris, gazing in awe at the shops and the traffic. Remember I had never seen lights, or a train or crowds, certainly never a city! We reached Port Talbot after five days, quite exhausted, it was late May 1921. For the first few months I only ventured out when taken to Mass, I had not a word of English and was still nervous of the traffic and bustle, but I did get the occasional bar of chocolate and ice-cream. In September I was registered at St. Joseph’s school. It was hard, the pupils were mostly of Irish descent, the teachers were patient and in that totally English speaking environment I learned quickly. The Head was Mrs Crowley, and we had Mrs Barry, Mrs Ryan, two Miss Foleys, Miss Dunstan and later Will Greenway and Jim Welsh. Perhaps I had a little flair for language, because at 12 I was admitted to Port Talbot County Grammar opposite our shop in Station Road. I did reasonably well at Grammar School, language came easily, English, French, Latin, Welsh, the other subjects entailed much toil, and, in my own defence, I had to help at home with the ice-cream and the shop. […] Many years later I realised my ambition and became a teacher, but that is another chapter. Now I was selling ice-cream, teas, cigarettes and sweets. I was in a family concern, I knew only long hours, no boy’s life. […] For a while I ran the business well, bought modern ice-cream equipment, we worked like Trojans, the children were growing up and starting to help. Somehow then something came over me, the years of unremitting toil, the discipline, the weight of responsibility on young shoulders, set up a reaction, I joined clubs, began to go out, neglected the business, I drank, not to excess but very regularly. I even had a girlfriend! Inevitably, the ship, without a captain, began to rock, finally Station Road shop and houses were sold off, to my shame! My mother, Aunt Maria, Teresa and Lina ran the better remaining shop at High Street. There were reasons, but I lost the chance to be a successful business man. Fortunately I pulled myself together, I got a job with a firm who were building coke ovens at Margam. Hard work, my hands bled until the corns formed but I made a go of it. The family had taken a large flat in Church

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Street, behind Water Street, and I lived there. The clouds of war were gathering, there was more work now, Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, Italians even here in Wales joined the fascist Party, I had none of it. I had become friends with Lui Abretti a young Italian from London. He worked in Terrazzo for Peter Bersani and lodged with John Corbezzi, who was later to have a well known [sic] shop in Cardiff. When war finally came, Lui’s sister, Irma, who had met with an accident in a cafe where she worked, came to her brother in Port Talbot. He introduced us, the attraction was instant and mutual, she was a lovely girl and I knew she was “the” one. Fortunately she liked me too. We were inseparable, but, very soon fate was to separate us, our love was to be sorely tested by events beyond our control. […] The ltalian community did keep an identity. We had social events, outings, rare dances. We had little part in these, come to think of it we never had time, like the WINDMILL, we never closed! I did have Welsh friends; Will, Cyril, Eric, Stan, George, Arthur and Jim. We went to a pub once or twice a week, lots of fun, never any trouble! A few pints, fish-and-chips, then home. To think that I am the only survivor of that happy group. One thing rankles still, I was the only one of the family who was never given the chance to go back to Italy. Still, I’ve made up for it since!130

Expressing the author’s enthusiasm for the challenging experience of education, this extract includes the names of his numerous friends. They were both Italian and Welsh, but what is more important, they formed “a happy group,” who never got into “trouble.” His light prose and also his systematic use of exclamation marks confirm that it was thanks to his friends that he could bear his heavy work routine. We may consider the positive spirit which pervades this extract a distinctive feature of this first Italian Welsh narrative. Indeed, it is only in chapters 3 and 4—where Servini recounts the tragic events of the Second World War—that the tone becomes more sorrowful and that there are even traces of resentment towards the British government and the Welsh police.131 Writing fifty years after the end of the war, he still saw his imprisonment and internment as a form of betrayal and an injustice. Yet, in those hard times he defined himself “lucky.” He “was young and resilient, [he] had little jobs to relieve the boredom, and was released long before most of the others.”132 Again, putting an emphasis on the positive  Ibid., 10–11, 14–16.  Ibid., 21. 132  Ibid., 33. 130 131

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side of his experience, he admitted that, even though he had been deprived of his liberty, he “learnt” not only “to live with all kinds of men,” but also “how to be firm and compassionate.”133 The photographic inserts enriching particularly chapter 4, “Isle of Man,”134 testify to his profound sense of community and the happiness that he felt when he could finally get married. The rest of the narration focuses on the highs and lows of his life, while providing minute details about the members of his family and his closest friends. A choral piece of writing, A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times offers an alternative, definitely positive vision of the migration experience. Indeed, starting from chapter 1, “Roots”—in which he writes about his forebears and his early life in Italy—Servini shows his difficult path towards professional success, but heroically finishes with a positive projection into the future. His message is full of optimism and hope: he reminds the reader that “[t]here are people who care, organisations that promote charity,”135 and that “there is still Mother Theresa, and countless others, who […] are living testimony that God still cares.”136 “Desiderata,” the “parchment-like document”137 which he wanted to attach at the end of the book, clearly shows what was at the root of his personal happiness. A pedagogist who firmly believed in his own qualities, he suggests that “life” should always be considered “beautiful” and “full of heroism,” and that it is vital to “[s]trive to be happy.”138 2. Paulette Pelosi, Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper (2005) Servini completed his only literary work with another brief section called “Some Things to Think About”139: again, he contended that “our world is filled with […] many wonderful things” and that even the simple joys of Nature can cause “admiration and wonder.”140 Further traces of the positive spirit which pervades A Boy from Bardi can be found in most of the memoirs which Italian Welsh authors published in the following  Ibid.  See Servini’s photos on pages 26–27, 34. 135  Ibid., 79. 136  Ibid. 137  Ibid., 82. 138  Ibid. 139  Ibid., 83. 140  Ibid. 133 134

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years. Although their lives were completely different, Spinetti and Emanuelli in particular recounted their path towards success and expressed the same sense of achievement. A key component of migrant literature, memory, however, can also intertwine with nostalgia and is decisive in the construction of transnational identities.141 This was true for Paulette Pelosi, one of the most active members of the Italian Welsh community, who significantly contributed to rescuing the victims of the Arandora Star tragedy from oblivion. It was in 2005 that she collected her most suggestive images of Italy in Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper, which she published in the “anthology of short stories” entitled Even the Rain is Different: Women Writing on the Highs and Lows of Living Abroad. Interestingly, Pelosi’s prose is part of the section “Where Do I Belong?,” which specifically ties the travelling experience to the discovery of hidden but important parts of women’s “personal and national identity.”142 In point of fact, Pelosi’s journey to her family’s original hometown in southern Lazio represents a precious occasion of personal growth. A strong sense of expectation pervades the first narrative sequences, yet the idea that there was a perfect correspondence between her father’s descriptions and what young Pelosi could see and experience is proposed as a source of great joy.143 Clearly set in time and space—it was 1992 when Pelosi could travel to Italy and visit the little town of Collemorelle in the Picinisco area in southern Lazio—Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper surprisingly becomes more and more evocative. There were “hospitable ghosts”144 in her family home and she could even “glimpse her father, the boy Mario Luigi, pulling out a mattress to spend a night under the stars.”145 The final vision that she had was related to sounds, those of “the words of the rosary in all the voices together.”146 The following extract is centred on this special human and cultural experience, also on the mark that it left on her transnational identity:

 See among others Sprio, Migrant Memories.  Pelosi, “Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper,” 221. 143  Ibid., 226. 144  Ibid. 145  Ibid. 146  Ibid. 141 142

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But at last, in 1992, I had an opportunity to accompany my father on his first return visit in sixty years to his beloved Italy. As my father and I went through Arrivals at Fiumicino Airport in Rome, the crowds of Italians waiting at the barriers for their returning families seemed to hold eye contact immediately… brown eyes to brown eyes. I felt we were at home together. This feeling got stronger throughout the holiday. Up the beautiful Comino Valley of Lazio I remembered the words said in Wales: “It will have all changed.” Things had mostly remained fundamentally the same, thank God—the same as my father had described them. We shopped for delicious fresh produce at the Monday market at Atina just as my grandmother had done. The family home of Collemorelle was still standing; the thick walls, the balcony and the cantina sent out hospitable ghosts to greet us. As I looked out from the balcony I was sure I glimpsed my father, the boy Mario Luigi, pulling out a mattress to spend a night under the stars; as I looked into a downstairs room I’m sure I saw them all gathered round the fire of oak logs, pignata of water coming to the boil, the words of the rosary in all voices together, the young and not so young. A million little things marched with our own ways of doing things. Everything connected with food was a religion in itself, and quality, quantity, temperature and presentation were of prime importance—the culinary commandments were obeyed on every occasion. Food was not to be played with and did not have to be moulded into cartoon shapes and colours to entice children to eat. Children ate the same food as adults from an early age. People held eye contact, were constantly and effortlessly tactile, reacting visibly to joy and sadness. Young people had no problems respecting the old and genuinely seemed to choose and enjoy the company and wisdom of their elders. We seemed to know how we were being received, and not have to go over the events of each day anxiously in our heads and wonder if we had done the right thing and people liked us. Holiday’s end: we returned to Wales. We felt the rain in our fingers and toes, even when it was August. Pa insisted on wearing his jacket. Even the rain seemed cruelly different. In Italy Pa had pointed out that “the rain came down, apologised and went away.” He wrote in his diary: “I’m back now, coping with mild holiday hangover. It’s not going too well. It’s almost a week since I got back and I feel I need decompressioning [sic], like a diver.” This happened increasingly each time we returned to our lovely friendly Wales Pa and I just felt more and more unsettled, and seemed to know the differences more and more.147

 Ibid., 225–227.

147

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The idea of difference thus pervades the second part of the narrative: linking her short autobiographical writing to the main theme of the collection, Pelosi symbolically evokes the gentle traits of “the rain” in Italy to explain why every time that she and her father returned from their original hometown, they felt “more and more unsettled.” They could not find any elements in common between Italy and their “lovely friendly Wales”148 and they felt caught between two worlds. Interestingly, the concluding passage highlights Pelosi’s irresistible desire to go back to her roots, also, however, her necessity to “swing back to her pedestal base,”149 which is the place where she lives. Although she considers that her future is open— —“one day part of [her] own equation may change or be removed,” and “[she] will stop”150—the numerous social and cultural activities in which she was engaged actually show her sense of commitment to her community in Wales. She became heavily involved in promoting knowledge about lupus within a national charity,151 but more importantly, in 2008 she devoted herself to the creation of the Arandora Star Memorial Fund in Wales,152 and in 2011 to the road show exhibition called “Wales Breaks its Silence: From Memory to Memorial.” Considering writing “as one of many personal survival tactics,”153 she edited the commemorative booklet together with David Evans,154 thus contributing to the restoration of the dignity of fifty-three Italian Welsh victims. Surrounded by visual and artistic materials related to the history of the immigrant community in Wales, Pelosi thus became a reference point for all those men and women who had remained silent about the tragedy for almost seventy years: her commitment, and that of the other members of the Arandora Star Memorial, generated a series of creative, literary responses to the tragedy.155 In 2011, for instance, Theatr na n’Og in  Ibid.  Ibid., 228. 150  Ibid. 151  Ibid., 251–252. 152  Chezzi, “Wales Breaks Its Silence,” 378. 153  Pelosi, “Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper,” 252. 154  Paulette Pelosi and David Evans, eds., Arandora Star Memorial Fund in Wales Booklet (Llanelli: Mike Clarke Printing, 2010). 155  The complete list of cultural events which were related to the exhibition titled “Wales Breaks Its Silence… From Memories to Memorial” can still be found on the website of Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, https://museum.wales/news/697/Wales-Breaks-itsSilence-at-the-National-Waterfront-Museum-/footer/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 148 149

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Cardiff produced a play aimed at schools and colleges based on the experiences of an Italian family living in Wales156; several years later, in 2016, the Italian Welsh writer Giancarlo Gemin published a new children’s story called Sweet Pizza, which is based on the fictional character of Vito Perelli, but closely refers to the sinking of the Arandora Star. As we can read in the acknowledgements, Gemin is clearly indebted to Colin Hughes’ seminal Lime Lemon & Sarsaparilla, as well as to Paulette Pelosi’s and David Evans’ project and publication: A special thanks to Paulette Pelosi and David Evans who have been extremely helpful in my research of Italians in Wales and the Arandora Star tragedy (www.arandorastarwales.us). I’m also grateful to the late Colin Hughes for his wonderful book, Lemon, Lime and Sarsaparilla (Seren Books), about the Italian community in Wales.157

3. Victor Spinetti, Victor Spinetti Up Front … His Strictly Confidential Autobiography (2006) Collected to promote a deeper historical knowledge and social awareness, the memories of one of the most tragic events of the Second World War thus inspired even one of the youngest Welsh writers of Italian descent. Born in Cardiff to Italian parents who emigrated in the 1950s, Giancarlo Gemin, has recently published The Valleys of Venice: Memories of an Italian Immigrant in Wales, which can be found in the anthology edited by Steven Lovatt and is entitled An Open Door: New Travel Writing in a Precarious Century.158 Apart from contributing to making the immigrant community more visible, Gemin’s short story in particular—as well as Pelosi’s—is part of the legacy of the transgender writer Jan Morris. Rooted in her numerous travel experiences and naturally transcultural, works like Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001) reinforce the links between Wales and Italy, while emphasising the tight interconnection between identity and otherness.

156  The Sinking of the Arandora Star, which was first performed on 29th September 2011, is also remembered by Bruna Chezzi in the cited article “Wales Breaks Its Silence,” 393. 157  See Giancarlo Gemin, Sweet Pizza (London: Nosy Crow, 2016). Kindle. See the Acknowledgements section, par. 4. 158  Giancarlo Gemin, “The Valleys of Venice: Memories of an Italian Immigrant in Wales,” 64–73.

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Also Victor Spinetti Up Front… His Strictly Confidential Autobiography shows the long migratory journeys of the author’s family, as well as his travels to America. As an actor who achieved worldwide fame through prestigious artistic collaborations, Spinetti always took great pride in his immigrant origins. It was in 1965, after his Beatles films— A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965)—that he was invited to participate in the David Frost show with the historian Asa Briggs: it was on this occasion that he first recounted that he “was born above [his] Dad’s fish-and-chip [sic] shop in South Wales.”159 Indeed, Giuseppe Spinetti was a farmer from the north of Italy, precisely from Ronchi di Credarola near Bardi. He had arrived “in a mining village outside Ebbw Vale called Cwm”160 after crossing France long before the First World War. In 1929, at the age of twenty-three, he was married, he had his first child and owned The Marine Supper bar161: desirous to merge into Welsh culture, “he didn’t stay Giuseppe for long. In no time it was Joe.”162 Writing with Peter Rankin at the peak of his career, Spinetti began his autobiography from his memories of his father. Proof of the man’s strength and determination can be found in the following extract from chapter 1, “Italy Comes to the Valleys”: The first person to stir in our house was my father. Very early each morning, he wheeled a porter’s trolley up to the railway station. There, on the platform, would be a wooden box and inside it, packed in ice, the fish. They had been in the sea only the day before. On to the trolley the box would go and back he’d wheel it to the shop. When I was older, I used to try and help but either I got in the way or the box fell off the trolley. It was hopeless. Behind the shop was an outhouse where Joe set to work. At his back was a vat full of potatoes and a machine for peeling them. In front of him was a marble slab with water constantly running across it. Because of Dad’s demand for freshness, there could be no heating and in the winter it was freezing. There, he scrubbed, scaled and cut up huge great cod and hake. Simply by looking, he could work out how many pieces he could get from a fish and how much money he would make. When it came to the actual cutting, each piece was exactly the same width as the next. Sometimes I watched, intrigued by the  Victor Spinetti, Victor Spinetti Up Front…, 3.  Ibid., 4. 161  Ibid., 5. 162  Ibid. 159 160

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little beards under the jaws of the cod. Once I tried to pick one up but to my horror, it burped and I dropped it. The fish was full of air. “Out!” snapped Joe. As far as he was concerned, a place of work was not a place for children. The business was everything to him and he took it very seriously. Even the batter was unique—it had a special ingredient. Don’t ask me what it was, I don’t know—it was a secret. As for the chips, they were so dry they rustled like autumn leaves. In his way, Dad was an artist. Those really were very good fish and chips. People came from all over to eat them. […] Joe, you can see, was adapting himself to his new life. What he didn’t like about Italy, he dropped. What he liked about Wales, he took on. It wasn’t an intellectual thing, more a question of making himself comfortable. For a start, his Italian accent faded. “Mamma Mia! Bella Italia!” Forget it, and I never called him “Poppa,” it was always “Dad.” In the house, he made no attempt to keep up a home-from-home look. Some Italians in the area sent away to Italy for their furniture—heavy baronial stuff, not the elegant tables and chairs of today—Joe didn’t. If anything, his favourite chair was at the British Legion, where he sat in a flat cap, sipping pints of “flat, warm, thin, Welsh, bitter beer” as Dylan Thomas called it. He played darts there too; so well, in fact, that he was a team member for the News of the World darts competition. At billiards he was an ace, at tennis he was a wow and he wasn’t bad at draughts either. As for the whole business of being a Roman Catholic, that went right out the window. […] What was I getting up to in those early years? I couldn’t pick up a fish. I couldn’t hit a ball with a racquet. I couldn’t spot an edible mushroom. I was, in Dad’s eyes at least, hopeless. As Lily (that’s Mam) didn’t have another child for some years, I was stuck on my own most of the time. One good thing came from it, though. Simply by osmosis, I learned to read. What I read didn’t matter—advertisements, sauce bottles—you name it, I’d have a go and I got good at it. A useful accomplishment, you’d think, and not one you’d expect to cause controversy. You’d be wrong. Watch. My father is sitting at tea, slowly reading the headline of the Daily Express and I’m next to him. “Look, our Dad. The Queen Mary’s crossed the Atlantic.” “Who told you that?” “There it is, in the paper.” A frisson ran through Dad and then Mam. […] Instead of being an accomplishment to be applauded, reading was a threat. […] Still, as there wasn’t much going on in my outside world, I kept on reading. The teachers at the Cwmyrdderch Infants School thought I was so

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good they put me to work as soon as I started there. While the register was taken, I read to the other children. If I didn’t read, I made up stories.163

Remembering “Joe’s” tireless commitment to his work and his great spirit of adaptation, Spinetti always argued that he “loved Wales passionately” and this was the place where he “wanted to be buried”: “his life had been built there.”164 It was at the time when his father’s sacrifices were harder, though, that Spinetti learned to “read” and “make up stories.” He was still a child, but his interest in books was already clear. The numerous journeys that he took in the following years—to Monmouth, Brecon, Cardiff, London and then to America—were decisive in the discovery of his true self. Never losing contact with the more practical, material side of life, his success as a school student and his attraction to drama gradually led him to a profound but challenging process of transformation. Language always represented a key component of this process. Going beyond Italian—which Joe Spinetti chose not to speak with his family165— Victor soon had to drop his Welsh accent and learn to speak standard English: this was his gateway to the study of French,166 but also, more importantly, to acting. It was thanks to the grant that he was awarded in the early 1950s that he could finally attend the College of Music and Drama in Cardiff167 and began to realise his dreams. The numerous references to writers, actors and musicians—also the photos which he added at the end of his biography168—testify to his wide cultural interests and extraordinary life. Yet, Victor Spinetti Up Front … is far from providing an idealised representation of the author’s family life and of his artistic experience. Unlike the other Italian Welsh writers, he was clear on his determination to escape

 Ibid., 6–9.  Rachael Misstear, “Why Italy Hold a Special Place in the Hearts of Hany Welsh Rugby Fans,” Cymru Online, March 12, 2012, https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/walesnews/italy-hold-special-place-hearts-2033862. Accessed 31 May 2023. 165  Spinetti, Victor Spinetti, Up Front…, 7. 166  Ibid., 30. 167  Ibid., 68. 168  They are rich in celebrities: famous actors such as Joan Littlewood, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins, as well as the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli and The Beatles: Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison. 163 164

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from the prospect of a career in the catering sector,169 while sharing his memories of the difficult period when he was trying to find his way as an actor.170 Although the chapters which he dedicated to his encounters with Joan Littlewood, Mel Brooks and Sean Connery—particularly to his collaboration with The Beatles171—may be considered symbolic of the magical world in which he lived, he never forgot about his origins or hid them. Interestingly, when he was asked to change his name to enter show business, he replied: “No, my grandfather walked across Europe carrying that name, I’m not going to change it for a job.”172 Dedicating his adult life to cinema and drama, Spinetti contributed to the promotion of Italian culture writing a short preface to Hughes’ Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. This represented his first venture into prose writing, even though by 1991 he had already composed most of his poems. He included them in his autobiography: marked by a deep melancholy, This is a day for gravestones dates to the late 1960s,173 and specifically refers to a moment when he was thinking of the cemetery of Cwm. He first shared it with the actors of The Taming of the Shrew and immediately after Richard Burton recited it for the Italian actress Anna Magnani.174 He was diagnosed with cancer and died at the age of 82. Although scholarly criticism mostly connects his name to the history of The Beatles and to the iconic figure of John Lennon, in Italy he is remembered as an illustrious bardigiano, who distinguished himself for his eclectic talents and his social commitment. The obituary which appeared in La Gazzetta di Parma on 15th July 2012175 clearly shows how his original community paid its tribute to his memory.  Spinetti, Victor Spinetti, Up Front…, 69.  Ibid., 82–89. 171  Ibid. See especially chapters 15 and 18, “The Beatles, by Association” and “John Lennon Gets Restless.” 172  Misstear, “Why Italy Hold a Special Place in the Hearts of Many Welsh Rugby Fans.” 173  Spinetti, Victor Spinetti, Up Front…, 257–258. 174  Ibid., 7. 175  Erika Martorana, “È morto Victor Spinetti, figlio illustre di Bardi,” La Gazzetta di Parma, July 15, 2012, https://www.migrer.org/storie/victor-spinetti/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 169 170

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4. Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man (2010) If Spinetti only travelled to Italy “a couple of times” because he had a clear idea about his transnational identity and did not “bother about showing off at how well [he] had done for [himself],”176 The Hokey Pokey Man originated from Arcari’s visit to Picinisco in 2002.177 It was after she was informed that her grandfather’s farm had been destroyed during the Second World War178 that she discovered “a ruined cappella,” “a shrine,” which “no-one in the family knew it existed.”179 “It was in a derelict condition, with no roof or gates,” but “a plaque” surprisingly “proclaimed that [her] grandfather had built it on the birth of his first son in 1909.”180 Wondering what secrets this “cappella” might have held,181 she decided not only to restore it, but also to know more about the Italian side of her family. Arcari shared the pictures of the newly restored “cappella” on different occasions between 2012 and 2020,182 but more importantly, she mentioned it in the prologue of The Hokey Pokey Man.183 A computer science lecturer in Carmarthenshire who has always dedicated herself to writing,184 she supplemented her historical research on the Italian community in Wales with interviews to the piciniscani who remembered her grandfather. The Hokey Pokey Man represents a creative response to those men’s and women’s affection and sense of Italian “lontanaza” [sic], which is mixture of “longing for days gone by” and loss.185  Misstear, “Why Italy Hold a Special Place in the Hearts of Many Welsh Rugby Fans.”  “Author’s Notes: Anita Arcari. Family History with an Italian Flavour Inspired Lecturer Anita Arcari to Write Her First Novel,” Cymru Online, April 16, 2011, https://www.thefreelibrar y.com/AUTHOR%27S+NOTES%3B+Family+histor y+with+an+Italian+ flavour+inspired...-a0254130623. Accessed 31 May 2023. 178  Here we refer to Arcari’s PowerPoint presentation – “My Welsh Italian Heritage and Its Impact on My Work as an Author”  – which is attached to Bruna Chezzi, “Welsh Italian Authors  – Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man,” Welsh Italians, http://www.welshitalians. com/welsh-italian-authors. Accessed 31 May 2023. 179  “Author’s Notes: Anita Arcari.” 180  Ibid. 181  Arcari, “My Welsh Italian Heritage and Its Impact on My Work as an Author.” This short quotation is taken from slide entitled “The Cappella – A Mystery.” 182  Two of the photos of the “cappella” are incorporated in the above-mentioned PowerPoint presentation, while some others can be found on the website People’s Collection Wales, particularly in the section “Arcari Family, Swansea,” https://www.peoplescollection. wales/items/1356931#?xywh=-24%2C-169%2C836%2C852. Accessed 31 May 2023. 183  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 11. Here the narrator reports the content of the plaque: “Built for my dear son, in penance and atonement for all he was forced to give up for his family. May God and Our Lady grant me forgiveness. Built in the year AD 1900.” 184  See Bruna Chezzi, “Welsh Italian Authors – Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man.” 185  “Author’s Note: Anita Arcari.” 176 177

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The first part of the novel is thus set in Picinisco and is centred on the young Tino D’Abruzzo. His story is only inspired by that of the Arcari family,186 but he too left the breathtaking beauties of the place where he was born because of poverty and the lack of future perspectives. Suffering the passage to a new life and a new world, he often felt homesick when he first settled in London.187 Recounting the story of his family also in 2020,188 Arcari confirmed that her grandparents, Sabatino and Angela Rosa Arcari migrated to England at the end of the nineteenth century “taking a barrel organ around in winter and an ice cream hand-cart in summer.”189 After living in Kent for several years, in the early 1900s they moved to Morriston, Swansea, where they opened their first café on Woodfield Street and then the Palace Café on High Street. Interestingly, chapter 24 of The Hokey Pokey Man focuses on Tino in Swansea at the time when Fascism was penetrating the Italian communities in Britain. The name of his shop and its location clearly remind us of the one which was run by the Arcaris until 1940: Tino continued tidying up, slowly, methodically. The Palace Café was his pride and joy, won through sheer hard work, grit and determination. The sight of his name written in gold above the door, just as he had envisaged it all those years ago, still caused him to swell with pride. No matter how much he needed to talk to Beppe, he couldn’t bring himself to leave the place looking like a pigsty. The wooden partitions gleamed with polish, and a faint smell of beeswax wafted upwards. The sun still shone in through the shop windows illuminating the stained glass above the wooden booths and scattering kaleidoscopic colours across the marble-topped tables. Tino’s dark hair was now sprinkled with white, but for someone in the fifties, he still made an imposing and handsome figure of a man. The sun picked out the lighter streaks, turning them to silver as he carried a tray, laden with dishes and cutlery, over to the sink in the corner of the room. “Come on, Tino, hurry up!” Beppe grumbled. “I’m getting fed up of waiting.”

186  Arcari, “My Welsh Italian Heritage and Its Impact on My Work as an Author.” See the slide entitled “Inspiration for The Hokey Pokey Man. My Debut Novel (2010).” 187  See, for instance, Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 72–73. 188  Anita Arcari, “The Arcaris,” People’s Collection Wales, February 2020, https://www. peoplescollection.wales/story/1364836. Accessed 31 May 2023. 189  Ibid.

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“I won’t be much longer.” Tino’s voice kindly, but firm and steady, broaching no argument. Beppe sighed heavily. “Well, don’t forget I have to get home, I have a motor car now, but even so…” […] Finally, Tino took one last look around and, satisfied that he had done everything he could do for now, pointed towards the door leading towards the room at the back. They sat facing each other across a scrubbed wooden table, Tino struggling to find a way of approaching the matter diplomatically without causing offence, and Beppe just wishing he would get on with it. Eventually, Tino spoke. “Beppe, Carlotta has been speaking to me. She is worried about you.” He paused for a moment and swallowed hard before going on. “She is worried that you are getting involved in things that will bring no good.” Beppe closed his eyes in exasperation and sighed heavily. “Oh, not again! Tino, she doesn’t stop going on about it and now she’s dragged you into it too.” He leaned forward, pushing his face close to his friend’s. “I will spell it out for you, Tino. I—am—not—doing—anything—wrong!” Suppressed anger mottled his complexion purple-red. “Then you won’t mind telling me what is going on?” “Look, I have a few friends in from time to time, our fellow countrymen. We play cards, we drink, we eat, we talk—what is wrong with that, eh?” Tino cleared his throat. “It’s what you talk about that concerns me.” Beppe opened his mouth to protest, but Tino put up his hand to stall him. “You know you can’t lie to me, Beppe, we’ve been friends for too long. And I know that man Marcello who is always hanging around was active in the London section of the Fascist Party.” “So what if he is?” Beppe retorted. “He’s a friend.” “That he may be, but we should choose our friends wisely. Good friends, not ones who are likely to get us into trouble.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Beppe had never spoken to him like this before, he had almost revered him. From the day Tino had almost lost his own life, rescuing him from the beating by the padrone, he had been grateful and loyal, as if he owed him some debt. “Beppe, can’t you see?” I’m doing this for your own good. For you, for my sister and your family. For God’s sake, get out while you can, don’t get involved. With all this talk of war again, it can only lead to trouble.” An impenetrable expression had come down like a mask over Beppe’s features and Tino knew instinctively he was fighting a lost battle. “What is wrong with Mussolini making us emigrants feel like we matter? To him, we are still Italians—Italians abroad. We are important to him, don’t you see?

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None of the previous governments did anything for us, not like he has.” He stopped and the veil lifted from his eyes, but what was revealed there worried Tino even more, the gleam of determination was unmistakeable.190

The long dialogue sequences in this extract represent important testimonies not only to the protagonist’s commitment to his activity, but also to his anti-fascist views. According to Wren-Owens,191 both Contini and Arcari went beyond the stereotyped images of the Italians as innocent victims of Churchill’s measures against the possible fifth columnists in the country. Considering his ideas and activities at the Casa del Fascio, Beppe, for example, is considered dangerous and imprisoned as an enemy alien. He too will be one a victim of the sinking of the Arandora Star.192 Although Arcari in The Hokey Pokey Man wanted to alternate facts with romance, her interest in the history of the Italian immigrant community in Wales—and her desire to represent it—continued over the years. In 2012 she revealed her new creative project called Penny Farthing.193 Again, it was in novel form and it was set in Wales in the interwar years. Based on a multicultural friendship, it included an Italian family, the Rinaldis, among its protagonists. Although this project was not completed, Arcari planned a sequel194 while researching specifically on the First and the Second World Wars. Traces of this activity can be found in the references to the internment camps in England, as well as in The Boys of Old Kilvey, A Tribute to the 70 Men of Kilvey Who Lost Their Lives in the First World War.195 Published in 2019, the hundred-page booklet is the product of Arcari’s commitment as President of SOMM (Save Our Memorial Monument), also of her desire to serve both the Italian and Welsh communities.

 Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 311–313.  Wren-Owens, “Remembering Fascism,” 83–85. 192  Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man, 349. 193  Arcari, “My Welsh Italian Heritage and Its Impact on My Work as an Author.” 194  Chezzi, “Welsh-Italian Authors – Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man.” 195  Anita Arcari, “The Boys of Old Kilvey Booklet Cover,” The People’s Collection Wales, 10 November, 2020, https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/1617836#?xywh=-29 5%2C-1%2C1308%2C960. Accessed 31 May 2023. 190 191

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5. Hector Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman (2010) The daughter of an Italian father and a Welsh mother, Arcari has always felt “blessed” to experience these two cultures “at first hand.”196 Their common “joie de vivre” and “love of music and art”197 greatly contributed to the construction of her identity: within this perspective, Hector Emanuelli, who belonged to an earlier generation, but who wrote A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman198 at the very end of his life, shared a definitely more complex and problematic experience. Interestingly, he was probably the only Italian author in the region who was explicit about the sense of uneasiness that accompanied him for several years. When he arrived in Treorchy, for instance, he felt “very much like an Italian among the Welsh,”199 whereas when he visited his family in northern Italy he saw himself “a little Welshman among Italians.” It was finally in the 1930s, after his parents finally migrated to England, that he became “a Welshman among the English.”200 He concluded the short foreword to A Sense of Belonging with a strong sense of achievement. “After many years and among [his] many English friends [he] was happy to see [himself] as [he] was: a Welsh-Italian Englishman,” which was “buono così.”201 The product of a four-year process of writing,202 especially of his desire to “retrieve some episodes of [his] life from the mist of the past,”203 his autobiography appeared in 2010. It was thanks to his friends and family that he could share the salient phases of his life as an immigrant. Emanuelli divided A Sense of Belonging into sixteen chapters, which start from his “Little Welsh Home,” include his painful memories of the Second World 196  See “Author’s Note: Anita Arcari”; and Elena Gruffudd, “Welsh-Italian Heritage,” People’s Collection. Wales, https://www.peoplescollection.wales/blogs/welsh-italian-heritage-0#?xywh=-122%2C-1%2C699%2C640. Accessed 31 May 2023. 197  “Author’s Note: Anita Arcari.” 198  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging. 199  Ibid. The Foreword has no page number. 200  Ibid. 201  Ibid. 202  Hanna Hiles, “Son Lead Tributes after Death of Stoke-on-Trent Ice-Cream Seller Hector, 101,” Stoke-on-Trent News, March 22, 2022, https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/ news/stoke-on-trent-news/son-lead-tributes-after-death-6847573. Accessed 31 May 2023. 203  Emanuelli. A Sense of Belonging. The Acknowledgements section has no page number.

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War, and finish with his “Happy Years.” He too, like Servini and Spinetti, was a winner in life. Even though he was doomed to remain in the catering industry, he had the capacity, also the courage, to realise his most important dream: “to do what he loved best.”204 In the 1970s, after numerous migration experiences, a period of internment as an enemy alien and a great success as an ice-cream maker, joining Quickfit and Quartz made him feel “more at home in the world than [he] ever had before.”205 Taken from chapter 3, “Good-bye Rhondda,” the following extract provides a simple but effective description of the years he spent in Wales. At that time he was a young boy, who considered the Italian village of Bardi a “paradise lost,” but who lived his life in “bleak” Wales as a continuous discovery: By this time we were living above my parents’ second shop at 138 Bute Street in Treherbert. From here, the curious topographical feature of Penpych [sic] loomed large to the north. This is one of Europe’s few tabletop mountains. I had no kindly uncle or cousin to take me up it and tell me tales of the wondrous happenings that no doubt occurred there back in the mist of Celtic time. It remained for me a mere backdrop to the daily round of school and “helping out” in the shop. But I do not recall thinking how nicely its flat top would accommodate a castle and a handful of romantic ghosts! […] My father had rented this shop from fellow Italians by the name of Gazzi, one of the “pioneering” Bardigiani families who had colonised the valleys along with the Bracchis, the Bernis and the Rabaiottis at the turn of the century. […] Competition was naturally keen as all these establishments were generally aimed at the same clientele, namely the local miners, and things were tough for them in the 1920s. Back in 1905 when my father had first come to South Wales at the age of fifteen to work for his padrone Giacomo Bracchi in Aberdare, the region was booming. He—and a whole generation of fellow Bardigiani—had come in on the back of a rising tide of demand for prime quality Welsh naval steam coal. […] Before the First World War coal from South Wales accounted for an incredible one third of world experts. But by the time my father returned after the Great War, the tide had already turned. Oil was replacing coal across the board. […] Miners’ wages were under pressure and the work force was slowly, but inevitably, contracting. In fact, when I consider it, my mother, father and I arrived in the Rhondda Valley in 1921, which was the very year that its population  Ibid., 169.  Ibid., 170.

204 205

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peaked at around 165,000. From that year onwards it declined steadily and ineluctably. With hindsight, we and our Rhonda [sic] Valley refreshment house were on a downhill slope to nowhere from the very outset. Most of our customers were miners. They had little to spend. Among our regulars I remember Dai Fourpence, so-called because he never spent more than four pence on any particular visit to the shop. There was Sid the Cobbler, who limped and wore a built-boot and his “butty” Berwyn, who loved to stand outside the shop on a Sunday morning with his mates betting on the numbers of the trams that came trundling down Bute Street. […] In the first week of August 1928 the National Eisteddfod came to Treorchy, the one and only time it was ever held in the Rhondda valley, which was a great honour and a great event for the town that drew crowds from all around. My mother, who seemed to be becoming the driving force behind the business, insisted that this was a sales opportunity that was not to be missed. School was out, so it was I that was to do the selling! At the age of not quite eight years, I was decked out with a tray attached to a strap around my neck and sent off to peddle confectionary to the crowds in and around the circle of the Gorsedd Stones. But there was no ice-cream for the Bards. It melted too fast in the summer sun! As far as I can remember, this was the first of the many appearances I was to make as a street vendor later in life. […] By the early thirties Luigino and I passed our school examinations, had left Penyreglyn Junior School and were attending Pentre Secondary School. This was considered to be one of the better schools in the Valleys and we were both very proud to have gained admission. […] I think it must have been here that people stopped calling me Ettorino. From now on I was known as Ettore and my brother Luigino was now Louis. Netta James, of course, still called me Etto. Dropping the diminutives was a sure sign that we were growing up. […] Unfortunately, the roots we were beginning to put down in Wales were soon to be torn up. Conditions had deteriorated so much in the Rhondda and trade was suffering so badly that not even my mother’s business acumen was able to turn the tide. […] One day in 1932 our parents announced a radical and awesome decision. They were going to emigrate! The five of us were to leave the valleys, and we were going to a foreign country: England!206

Enriched by interesting details about the history of the region and its most iconic spaces, this part of the narration shows how hard the Emanuellis’ daily routine was. Preparing artisan gelato required time and skills: apart  Ibid., 29–33, 35–36.

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from serving it to the customers of their café, the author’s parents, Giovanni and Caterina, took every opportunity to sell their products and have a better life. Determined to have success, they were following the long tradition of Italian temperance bar owners, which had begun in Wales in post-unification years and was mostly based on ice-cream vending. The first families who had made their fortunes were the “Bracchis, the Bernis, and the Rabaiottis,”207 who were originally from Grezzo, “a village just a few kilometres up the hill from Bardi,”208 and still represented strong reference points in this Italian Welsh connection. The fierce competition among the members of this now large and hard-working community may also explain why the Emanuellis had “endless rounds of labour”209 and most of the pictures in the first part of the narration depict them proudly standing outside the one that they owned in Treorchy in the Twenties. It was in those years that young “Ettorino” began to help in the business. Although he had to alternate study and work, he was proud of his achievements: he now spoke like a “true little Welsh[man],”210 so when the crisis of the mining sector worsened and he had to move to England, he suffered greatly for leaving not only his friends, but also his parents’ regular customers. Despite their nicknames and their poverty, “Dai Fourpence,” “Sid the Cobbler” and “Thomas Three-farthings” were equally part of his life.211 The visual inserts in this first part of the book include them212 and a beautiful view of the little centre of Treorchy. As Emanuelli writes in chapter 1, their life was completely dedicated to their shops, which means that “there were no walks in the countryside, no visits to places of interest, no Sunday afternoon strolls, no summer picnics”213: we may understand why at a certain point in his narration he wanted to introduce elements of travel writing into his work. He started when he first shared his memories of his honeymoon, which he and his wife Joan spent in Rome, Florence and Bardi in 1948. His account does not include their itineraries and their actual travel experi Hughes, Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla, 30–31.  Ibid., 30. 209  Emanuelli, A Sense of Belonging, 7. 210  Ibid., 32. 211  Ibid., 31. 212  Ibid., 39. 213  Ibid., 7. 207 208

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ences, but the main tourist attractions that they visited in the two cities of art. Once they arrived in the little town in the province of Parma, though, they were stunned by its castle and greatly enjoyed their “frequent walks in the nearby vineyards and among the chestnut trees.”214 It was on that occasion that he also realised that, although they were “complete strangers” to him, his relatives “were part of his Italian roots.”215 Emanuelli continued to be fascinated by art and travel. Indeed, his new job at the Export Department at Quickfit and Quarz made the final years of his career “happy” as it also gave him the opportunity to represent the company abroad and to “develop new interests.”216 “He really got into gardening,”217 for instance, but rambling represented a new source of inspiration. Brief Encounters: Some Recollections of Adventures and Brief Encounters whilst Walking in Austria, Portugal and Italy first appeared in 2013 and collects the memories of his travels from 2001 to 2008. Combining prose and poetry, also amusing anecdotes and colour pictures, Emanuelli gave voice to his desire to “widen his horizons”218 through the contact with other cultural traditions. Again, he dedicated most of his second work to Italy, particularly to the beauties of its central and northern regions. He died in April 2022 at the age of 101. An enthusiastic member of the Arnold Bennett Society—who had discovered the author’s works during his internment period on the Isle of Man—he had wide literary interests. The numerous quotes from Dante, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Lorenzo de’ Medici and Bennett, which embellish A Sense of Belonging, also give important insights into his highly eclectic mind. He was indeed able to “ensure that his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would know all about him and where they came from,”219 but also demonstrated that it is possible to go beyond the cultural limitations and stigma related to the immigrant condition. In this respect, he definitely represents one of the most positive examples of integration in Italian British migration writing.

 Ibid., 140.  Ibid. 216  Ibid., 176. 217  Hiles. 218  Emanuelli, Brief Encounters, 1. 219  Hiles, “Son Lead Tributes after Death of Stoke-on-Trent Ice-Cream Seller Hector, 101.” 214 215

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Bibliography Primary Sources Arcari, Anita. The Hokey Pokey Man. Aberystwyth: Y Lolfa, 2010. Emanuelli, Hector. A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman. Langenfeld: Six Town Books, 2010. Emanuelli, Hector. Brief Encounters. Some Recollections of Adventures and Brief Encounters whilst Walking in Austria, Portugal and Italy. Newcastle-under-Lyme: North Staffordshire Press, 2013. Gemin, Giancarlo. Sweet Pizza. London: Nosy Crow, 2016. Kindle. Gemin, Giancarlo. “The Valleys of Venice: Memories of an Italian Immigrant in Wales.” In An Open Door. New Travel Writing in a Precarious Century, edited by Steven Lovatt, 64–73. Cardigan: Parthian, 2022. Kindle. Pelosi, Paulette. “Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper.” In Even the Rain Is Different. Women Writing on the Highs and Lows of Living Abroad, edited by Tyson Roberts Gwyneth, 223–228. Aberystwyth: Honno Autobiography, 2005. Servini, Les. A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times. Cardiff: Hazeltree, 1994. Spinetti, Victor. Victor Spinetti Up Front… His Strictly Confidential Autobiography. With Peter Rankin. London: Robson Books, 2006. Secondary Sources Chezzi, Bruna. “Cultural Representations of Italians in Wales (1920s-2010s).” Ph.D. Diss. Cardiff University, 2013. Chezzi, Bruna. “Wales Breaks its Silence: from Memory to Memorial and Beyond. The Italians in Wales during the Second World War.” Italian Studies 69 (2014): 376–393. Hughes, Colin. Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. The Italian Community in South Wales 1881–1945. Bridgend: Seren, 1991. Pelosi, Paulette and David Evans, eds. Arandora Star Memorial Fund in Wales Booklet. Llanelli: Mike Clarke Printing, 2010. Sprio, Margherita. Migrant Memories, Cultural History, Cinema and the Italian Post-War Diaspora in Britain. Berne: Peter Lang, 2013.

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Wren-Owens, Elizabeth. “The Delayed Emergence of Italian Welsh Narrative, or Class and the Commodification of Ethnicity.” Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture 3 (2012): 119–134. Wren-Owens, Elizabeth. “Remembering Fascism: Polyphony and Its Absence in Contemporary Italian-Scottish and Italian-Welsh Narrative.” Journal of Romance Studies 15, no. 1 (2015): 73–90. Web Resources Arcari, Anita. “The Arcaris.” People’s Collection Wales, February 2020. https://www.peoplescollection.wales/story/1364836. Arcari, Anita. “Arcari Family, Swansea.” People’s Collection Wales, March 6, 2020. https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/1356931#? xywh=0%2C-169%2C790%2C853. Arcari, Anita. “The Boys of Old Kilvey Booklet Cover.” People’s Collection Wales, October 11, 2020. https://www.peoplescollection.wales/ items/1617836. “Author’s Notes: Anita Arcari. Family History with an Italian Flavour Inspired Lecturer Anita Arcari to Write Her First Novel.” Cymru Online, April 16, 2011. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/AUTHOR% 27S+NOTES%3B+Family+history+with+an+Italian+flavour+inspired.. .-a0254130623. Chezzi, Bruna. “Welsh Italian Authors—Anita Arcari, The Hokey Pokey Man.” Welsh Italians. Accessed 31 May 2023. http://www.welshitalians.com/welsh-italian-authors. Gruffudd, Elena. “Welsh-Italian Heritage.” People’s Collection Wales. Accessed 31 May 2023. https://www.peoplescollection.wales/blogs/ welsh-italian-heritage-0#?xywh=-92%2C0%2C640%2C640. Hiles, Hanna. “Son Lead Tributes after Death of Stoke-on-Trent IceCream Seller Hector, 101.” Stoke-on-Trent News, March 22, 2022. https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/ son-lead-tributes-after-death-6847573. Martorana, Erika. “È morto Victor Spinetti, figlio illustre di Bardi.” La Gazzetta di Parma, July 15, 2012. https://www.migrer.org/storie/ victor-spinetti/. Misstear, Rachael. “Why Italy Hold a Special Place in the Hearts of Many Welsh Rugby Fans.” Cymru Online, March 12, 2012. https://www. walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/italy-hold-special-placehearts-2033862.

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Scotland A land of opportunity where ethnic and cultural diversity is valued, today Scotland is a true laboratory of ideas and innovation. We should not be surprised that after decades of isolation and prejudice the most talented members of the Italian community were finally appreciated for their unique ways of expression. Their social commitment and works are now at the heart of a growing number of academic contributions, newspaper articles and TV programmes. In the future it will also be crucial to investigate more their complex transnational trait, their ample network of intellectual contacts, as well as their strong interconnections. In point of fact, the cultural history of the Italian community started immediately after the Second World War and is closely related to the figurative arts. Although the surrealist artist Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) was seen as the heir of the Italian Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) and the Father of pop art,220 it was not until recently that art exhibitions221 and new more comprehensive volumes on his production222 put an emphasis on his Laziale origins and his experience as an Italian enemy alien. Considering the wider corpus of Italian Scottish narratives, paintings like Wittgenstein at Cassino (1963)223 and the sculptural complex Manuscript of Montecassino (1991)224 provide evidence that even 220  Paolozzi’s I Was a Rich Man’s Plaything (1947) was highly inspirational for the future generations of British artists. 221  We mostly refer to “The Italian Connection,” the art exhibition which was held at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, from 7 September 2019 to 23 August 2020, https://www. edinburghmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/italian-connection. Accessed 31 May 2023. 222  See Christine De Luca and Carlo Pirozzi, eds., Paolozzi at Large: Artworks and Creative Responses (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2018); and Derek Duncan, “‘The Path that Leads Me Home’: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Arts of Transnationalizing,” in Transcultural Italies, Mobility, Memory and Translation, ed. Charles Burdett, Loredana Polezzi and Barbara Spadaro (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 127–154. 223  An abstract but colourful sculpture representing the detention of the Austrian philosopher at the PoW camp of Caira in 1918–1919, Wittgenstein at Cassino is one of Paolozzi’s most significant tributes to his native land during the Second World War. 224  Manuscript at Cassino is composed of “three colossal body parts,” a foot, a hand and an ankle surrounded by inscriptions in Latin. See Iain MacPhail, “Paolozzi & the Arandora Star Shine on Kenmure Street,” Bella Caledonia, June 1, 2021, https://bellacaledonia.org. uk/2021/06/01/paolozzi-the-arandora-star-shine-on-kenmure-street/. Accessed 31 May 2023. Here, however, we will also consider Carlo Iacucci, Maggie Rose and Wilma Starke, Walking Through Stones (Milano: Ledizioni, 2019), a play which was inspired by this important piece of art, and which, as the blurb reads, “was first staged at the Demarco Rocket venue, Edinburgh Fringe, in 2002.”

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today it is possible to find strong links between Italian Scottish writing, painting and sculpture. Yet, apart from the Second World War as a common topic, it is undeniable that there is now an increasing interest in the network of intellectual relationships particularly within the Edinburgh community.225 One of “Scotland’s all-time leading lights in the arts world,”226 Richard Demarco was not only one of Paolozzi’s most important contacts, but also served as a trait d’union for several literary and artistic talents.227 It was thanks to his tireless activity and to the cultural spaces that he created that Italian Scottish writers are certainly more interconnected and united. Interestingly, both Marcella Evaristi and Ann Marie Di Mambro chose his famous art gallery and the Traverse Theatre of Edinburgh—which he had co-founded in 1963—to stage respectively their Dorothy and the Bitch (1976) and Tally’s Blood (1990). Apart from the importance of this historic theatre, especially since the early 2000s writers and intellectuals of Italian extraction had more opportunities to express their mutual commitment and support. Starting, for instance, from Joe Pieri, who proudly listed the most popular and successful members of the community in The Scots-Italians228—or Mary Contini, who in Dear Francesca mentioned the Demarco family and their confectionary shop in Edinburgh229—in 2018 Di Mambro reviewed the Italian version of Pia’s Language of My Choosing, while in 2019–2021 Pia took part in the event called “Tally’s Blood— Thirty Years On.”230 225  On this specific topic, see the Eduardo Paolozzi Project, which was created and developed by Carlo Pirozzi from the University of Edinburgh. The interactive map, which is made up of six stops, “identifies artworks by Paolozzi and locations linked to his life in the city,” https://ewh.org.uk/trails/paolozzi-at-large/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 226  David McLeod, “Violent Anti-Italian Riots in Edinburgh Recalled 80 Years On,” Edinburgh Evening News, June 10, 2020, https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/ heritage-and-retro/retro/violent-anti-italian-riots-in-edinburgh-recalled-80-yearson-2879748. Accessed 31 May 2023. 227  On his cultural and artistic relations see Laura Leuzzi, Elaine Shemilt and Stephen Partridge, eds., Richard Demarco. The Italian Connection (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2022). The opening chapter by Terri Colpi, “Navigating Italian Migration to Scotland: Richard Demarco and the Ricardian Road” also provides new insights into his family’s history and his early contacts with the world of art. See pp. 5–24. 228  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 74–86. 229  Contini, Dear Olivia, 118, 138, 188, 190. 230  This important event took place on 15th-16th March 2019 and was promoted by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Edinburgh, https://iicedimburgo.esteri.it/iic_edimburgo/en/ gli_eventi/calendario/2019/03/tally-s-blood-30-years-on.html. Accessed 31 May 2023.

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A charismatic art promoter who is praised for his high cultural commitment, Demarco, however, is not the only figure who contributed to reinforcing the bonds within the Italian community. We should also consider, for example, the historian Terri Colpi, an authority in the field of Italian Migration Studies in Britain, but also the numerous scholars of the University of Edinburgh, of the Italo-Scottish Research Cluster and of the University of Glasgow. Disseminating their research outcomes and organising important academic activities,231 they have showed the great vitality of the immigrant community in the region. Indeed, if we consider the corpus of Italian Scottish writings, we will see that they represent a major component of this sub-branch of migration literature in English and that they cover most literary genres: hybrid at different levels—their linguistic texture includes standard and non-standard forms of English and Italian, together with German and French— they appeared between 1938 and 2022, and provide a realistic picture of the immigrant community throughout the twentieth century. Our intertextual path has already shown that its development was marked by sharp contradictions and that its members went through long periods of suffering: going beyond the cult of the past and of tradition of its authors, we may consider that other key topics are indeed related to the interplay of perceptions and self-perceptions in their migrant contexts, also to their process of integration and sense of belonging. Thus, a rich and complex literary terrain, whose authors are generally interconnected232 and who are gaining more and more attention. Academic criticism, for instance, has given full recognition to Evaristi and Di Mambro; as concerns Pia’s Language of My Choosing, it was awarded the prestigious Flaiano Prize in 2018. At a time when Pieri’s The Scots-Italians and Pia’s Language of My Choosing have been translated into Italian, it seems undeniable that this sub-branch of Italian literature in English is still ignored in the world of 231  Here we refer, for instance, to Federica G. Pedriali and Carlo Pirozzi, eds., No-WhereNext  – War-Diaspora-Origin. Dominic Scappaticcio. A Journey (1946–1947) (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2013). 232  The Scottish press has showed interest in these cultural relations since the early 1990s. See “The Italian Connection: A Success Story,” The Herald, December 21, 1991, https:// www.heraldscotland.com/news/12650306.the-italian-connection-a-success-story/; and “The Integration Game: How Italo-Scots Shaped Our Nation,” The National Scot, June 25, 2018, https://www.thenational.scot/news/16310896.integration-game-italo-scotsshaped-nation/. Accessed 31 May 2023.

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academia. The principal aim of this section is thus to bring to light its peculiar aspects, showing how it is projected into the future. 1. Cagliardo Coraggioso (Eugenio D’Agostino), Wandering Min strel (1938) Published by Oxford University Press in 1938, Wandering Minstrel represents the first literary testimony by an Italian emigrant in Britain. Although the story of the original manuscript is still unknown, the latest edition by Carlo Pirozzi, complete with maps and a rich appendix of texts, confirms that there is a great interest also in these early autobiographies. A poor Italian organ grinder who wandered the roads of England and Wales until he became a successful businessman in Scotland, its author, Eugenio D’Agostino (1882–1947) is the only one who offered a realistic—crude—representation of the padrone system in the Italian British communities. Apart from the article which appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature233 when Wandering Minstrel was first published, his experience was considered by John Zucchi in The Little Slaves of the Harp, and more recently by Pamela Horn in Pleasures and Pastimes in Victorian Britain.234 Building especially upon the contents of the first part of Wandering Minstrel—which is set in the Comino Valley in southern Lazio, as well as in England and Wales in the early 1890s—both critics define it as a precious documentary resource also for scholars who want to investigate the condition of exploitation of Italian children who migrated to Britain. Yet, there is more to say about this “curious essay of autobiography.”235 Cesidio Di Ciacca, for instance, Mary Contini’s older brother, first read it thanks to Leonard D’Agostino (d. 2015), the author’s grandson: again, he could not explain the reason why it had been written, but wanted to emphasise its social value. The profits of the new edition, in fact, were committed to the Picinisco Millennium Foundation heritage project, which started in 2017 and aims not only “to celebrate the great 1017–2017  See “The New Books.” The Saturday Review of Literature 19 (1938): 42.  John Zucchi, The Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Child Street Musicians in NineteenthCentury Paris, London and New  York (Montreal, London, Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 14; and Pamela Horn, Pleasures and Pastimes in Victorian Britain (Stroud: Amberley, 2011). 235  Coraggioso (D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel, 11. 233 234

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anniversary” of the little village,236 but also to reinforce the relations between the Comino Valley and Scotland. Interestingly, the official website includes direct references to authors of Italian descent like Mary Contini and Virginia Arcari, who have largely promoted the contribution of those men and women who left their hometowns in search of a better life. Eugenio D’Agostino was one of them. He was only ten years old when he migrated to England with his father.237 A victim of Cesare Tascarino, his villainous padrone, he started as a street musician and remained completely illiterate until he was a young man.238 However, the hard rules of street life helped him to cultivate his talents and his passions: he soon realised, in fact, that he deeply loved England and Wales, and what is more important, that he was an eager traveller.239 Despite its numerous literary limits, we may consider Wandering Minstrel as a hybrid work, which also recalls the picaresque genre and that of Bildungsroman. Recounted in a simple and naïve style, D’Agostino’s many adventures between Italy and Britain thus represent the main components of his narrative and testify to his growth in a foreign country. His final settlement in Edinburgh240 and the success that he achieved as a café owner provide a clear example of the strength and courage of Italian emigrants in this part of Europe. Although he rarely offered clear chronological details and he probably mixed facts and imagination, he finally wanted to voice his profound esteem for British people: for him, the English and Welsh are really “kind-hearted”; as concerns the Scots, he considered them fortunate as “they possess the city of Edinburgh without doubt the finest in the world.”241 D’Agostino never wrote about the complex implications of his transnational identity, but concluded his narrative proudly depicting himself as the man who “made the café trade what it is today” in Scotland.242 He was the one who “set the ball rolling,” uniting his love for music with the

236   The website of Picinisco 1000: Millennium Foundation is at http://www.picinisco1000.org/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 237  Coraggioso (D’Agostino), Wandering Minstrel, 55. 238  Ibid., 166–167, 176. 239  Ibid., 166. 240  Ibid., 258–275. 241  Ibid., 274–275. 242  Ibid., 264.

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strong entrepreneurial spirit that he developed as an adult.243 The modern reader, though, is struck by the horrors that he went through when he first arrived in England. The following extract—which is taken from chapter 6, “I become a slave”—focuses on the cruel padrone system in late Victorian Britain. Compared to other Italian British narratives, which are based on their authors’ family memories and historical studies, this extract represents a unicum as it expresses D’Agostino’s direct experience: About twelve months after, my father became ill; he had rheumatism all over his body and could hardly move his legs at all. He had been wounded in one of his legs and his shoulder and became an invalid. No wonder! For years he had been sleeping out—behind hedges and by the roadside—in all kinds of weather. He was advised by doctor that if he wanted to live a little longer he must return to Italy. If he stayed here he would not live very long. He therefore squared up with his partner and went home. The company was now left in charge of his partner, the man called Cesare Tascarino, whose nickname was “Catennaccio” (he had earned that name when he was in chains). He was a beast of a man (with no heart, no soul, no conscience, no education, and no religion. His name should have been “Poison”. The only thing he believed in was making money, which was his God. He was of gipsy origin. His grandfather had been one of the brigands along with Dominico Fuoco, and had been exterminated along with the rest of the brigands. Tascarino himself had committed a murder, by shooting a man whom he suspected of being his wife’s lover, but was acquitted for want of evidence and came to our part of the country from the Abruzzi. It was then that the real trouble started with all of us. A few months later, having made his rules and regulations, he gave me and the other two boys a small pocket-book which contained the following, in writing: Strict Regulations for the Boys Rule 1. If any of the boys went back at night to the lodgings with less than Is. 6d., he had to go to bed without supper. Rule 2. If less than Is., no supper and no bed, and he would have to sleep in the kitchen or under the bed. Rule 3. If less than Is., no supper, no bed, and three strokes on the bare skin with the end of his strap, which had a large buckle at the end of it. Rule 4. The boss would spy on the boys all day and if any one bought even a halfpennyworth of anything, he would be punished accordingly. 243  As Rinaldi recounts in From the Serchio to the Solway, there were also some cafés in Dumfries where it was possible to listen to music. “Fusco’s,” for instance, “even had a pianola – a precursor of the jukebox – to liven up affairs. […] It proved to be a great success.” See p. 24.

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Rule 5. Everything he got from kind people must be brought home, especially foodstuff; no one must eat anything. Everything had to be brought to the lodgings for supper and breakfast. Those who had nothing to bring got nothing to eat, and were not allowed to receive any food from others of the company. Members of the company only ate after the bread bag which we all carried was full to the top. We were treated like slaves, and none could run away because we were under a three years’ contract. Tascarino told us that if any one tried to run away he would be arrested and sent back, and was liable to pay a sum of money from his wages as a punishment. Every night before going to bed we were all searched to make sure that no one kept any money. The wages were paid once every six months and had to be put into the post office and Tascarino kept all the books. (The wages were I0s per month). I was the only one not under contract, but I was too young to understand or to do anything. He hated me most of all. […] It was winter-time. Every day it had snowed or rained, or both. There was a cold wind and frost all the rest of the time. It was very hard to earn any money. That night I worked late and wished to make up the 25. 6d.; in fact, I never went back to the lodgings until I had the right amount of money. It had been snowing for days and I could not earn anything, owing to the snow coming down all the time, but that day I managed to make Is.; all the others more or less had done the same. The boss began to curse and swear and said that this was the kind of weather in which to earn more money, because people would take pity on us—and, instead, we had made less. He said he would make an example of us. The other two boys and I were beaten with the strap. This was the first time in my life I got the strap. I was struck on the face, and kicked. The other two boys got more or less the same, and we had to go to bed without any food.244

Uniting these painful memories to the profound loneliness that he felt in those early years,245 D’Agostino continued to live a restless life in England and Wales, but was finally able to build new and solid human relationships. This was true for his loyal travel companion, Antonio Cellini from Torre Montenero, near Arpino,246 as well as for his wife Rosie. Before he could enjoy his freedom and live a new beginning, though, he needed to satisfy his “thirst for revenge” on the man who had “ill-

 Ibid., 68–71.  Ibid., 60. 246  Ibid., 172. 244 245

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treated him for years.”247 It was thus during one of his visits to Italy that he decided to seek out Tascarino and to meet him and his wife. He told them his story and they recognised him: he was their “dear son.”248 Initially shocked, but determined to give voice to all his resentment, he left them there “with outstretched arms calling on him to return” and “resolved to forget” not only those “two people,” but especially “all he had suffered in the past.”249 Unsurprisingly, the second part of the narrative is set in Scotland and blends hardships with extraordinary successes. Publishing his memoir in 1938, D’Agostino did not have the opportunity to write about his internment experience in the Isle of Man.250 Although he considered Fascism as an opportunity especially for the Italians who lived in the most deprived areas in the country, he never became involved in any form of political activity and he too in 1940 was labelled as an “enemy alien.” As his granddaughter Rosalinda recounts, once he was released, his “businesses were very successful” and continued by “many of the family.”251 He died in Rome in 1947 and Wandering Minstrel remained his only literary work. After him other authors in England, Wales and Scotland felt the same need to share their past memories without ever considering the possibility of starting a writing career. They belonged to a different generation and had not experienced the hardships that D’Agostino had so vividly described, yet, at a certain moment in their lives, they too became desirous of making themselves and their stories visible. Compared to the possible flaws in the contents and style of their memoirs, the social value of their commitment should be more greatly valued. 2. Marcella Evaristi, Commedia (1983) It took the Italian Scottish community over forty years to produce new literary testimonies. In the late 1970s, though, Glasgow born Marcella Evaristi quit her Ph.D. programme in Women in Theatre and began to transpose her life experiences and vision of art into drama. Tom Maguire is clear on the fact that it was not easy for a young talent to integrate in  Ibid., 218.  Ibid. 249  Ibid., 220. 250  Ibid., 9 251  Ibid. 247 248

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such a male dominated context,252 but Evaristi’s contribution to the complex discourse on “Scotland as a nation that can accommodate multiple or even contradictories identities”253 was first accepted and then praised by scholarly criticism. Today her reputation as a dramatist and scriptwriter is fully established also at an international level. She first achieved success with Dorothy and the Bitch (1976); two years later she premiered Scotia’s Darlings at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Centred on the concepts of gender, class and national belonging, these first two plays symbolically anticipate the main traits of her mature production.254 Indeed, she continued with Mouthpieces (1980) and Hard to Get (1980). It was, however, after the extraordinary success of Commedia (1982) that she was recognised as a major exponent of the New Wave of Scottish dramatists. Narrating the story of an Italian Scottish widow and her two sons in contemporary Glasgow, she conveyed a problematic vision of the founding principles of Catholicism and Italian civilisation, which reflects her being “part Italian Catholic, part Jewish, altogether Glaswegian.”255 In the following years, Joe Pieri, Ann Marie Di Mambro and Anne Pia contributed to this complex discourse, highlighting in particular the impact of Italian traditions on the social integration of the younger members of their community. In a context where these authors took different opportunities to explain how their literary production was connected with their condition as Italian Scots, it seems surprisingly difficult to find precise information about Evaristi’s transnational background. Led by the historian Terri Colpi in 2018, the project called Voci della Val di Vara in Scozia (Voices of the Vara

252  See Tom Maguire, “Women Playwrights from the 1970s and 1980s,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama, ed. Ian Brown (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 157. 253  Trish Reid, The Palgrave Macmillan Theatre & Scotland (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 70. 254  Ksenija Horvat, “Varieties of Gender Politics, Sexuality and Thematic Innovation in Late Twentieth-Century Drama,” in The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, ed. Ian Brown (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007). See vol. 3, p. 297. 255  Adrienne Scullion, “Contemporary Scottish Women Playwrights,” in The Cambridge Companion of Modern British Women Playwrights, ed. Elain Aston and Janelle Reinelt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 108.

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Valley in Scotland)256 represents an exceptional resource as it provides insights into the playwright’s family life and her reflections on her identity. Starting from her memories of the “rickety bridge”257 of Stadomelli— the Ligurian hamlet which had “no roads” when “she was a little girl”258— Evaristi contends that it was thanks to his father’s “capacity to go from dialect”259 to “Italian Italian” and “Glasgow accented English”260 that she understood that identity is “much of an open and fluid thing” and that it is closely related to language.261 In this respect—establishing an ideal link with the main characters of her popular Commedia262—she also explains that the anglicised pronunciation of her name —/mɑr'sɛlʌ/—and the desire of her cousin Silvia to be called “Frank” at school263 represented both a normalisation strategy and a gateway to social integration. Although even at the peak of her success she continued to live in the same area as she had grown up, it was not until she moved to London and her mother died that Evaristi realised how important it was for her to treasure her heritage264: her grandfather Arturo was a hero of the anti-fascist Resistance during the Second World War265; as for her mother, who came from Atina in the Comino Valley, she did not have a formal education, but was a convinced feminist.266 Even today she considers her transnational background a “gift” and almost feels ashamed for being so “insecure” as a speaker of Italian.267 A multilingual text combining English and Scottish, Commedia, in fact, is interspersed only with a few Italian words and phrases: the short extract from the “Santa Lucia song”268 should be considered a tribute to Italian popular culture.

256  Marcella Evaristi, “Voci della Val di Vara in Scozia,” interview by Terri Colpi, October 4, 2016, Vimeo video, 38.48: 49.30, https://vimeo.com/185454244. Accessed 31 May 2023. 257  38.50. 258  38.50. 259  39.20: 39.29. 260  39.43: 39.47. 261  39.59: 40.08 262  Evaristi, Commedia, 6. 263  Evaristi, “Voci della Val di Vara in Scozia,” 40.48: 40.58. 264  40.00: 41.19. 265  43.08: 43.18. 266  43.27: 43.29. 267  41.27: 41.48. 268  Evaristi, Commedia, 10.

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Her contribution to Colpi’s project, however, can also help to understand her perception of the most dramatic phases of twentieth-century history. Firmly convinced that “it would take a George Eliot”269 to provide a realistic description of the emigrant community in Scotland in the 1930s and during the war period, she set her play in Glasgow and Bologna in 1980. The clear references to the 2nd August massacre and the tragic death of young Cesare at the end of Act 2 are not only in contrast with the title of the play, but also symbolically demonstrate that at the time when she was writing she still considered Italians as victims of the great events of contemporary history. Starting from the festive occasion of an Italian Hogmanay—when the female character Elena reunites with her two sons and daughters-in-law— the theme of “fluid”270 transnational identities profoundly informs even this early part of Evaristi’s production. In fact, there is room for the painful memories of the time when social integration was considered impossible, but also for bitter recriminations. As we will read in the extract below, Stefano, Elena’s younger son, is harshly criticised for accepting the role of “Tony the Tally” in a soap opera271 and betraying his family roots. At the same time, returning to Italy every year is perceived as an obligation and a burden: neither Cesare nor Stefano can recognise their “parenti”272 [relatives] and ever had the opportunity to visit other countries. Evaristi’s personal interpretation of the concepts of Italian family has recently gained scholarly attention.273 In the wider context of Italian migration literature, though, Stefano’s claim that they “are not Italiani”274 may also help us to understand why they preferred to call themselves “Scotchesi”: for him, only the first generation of emigrants—whose “knowledge of Italy was first-hand”– “had a right to the name.”275 We may consider these words as an early answer to the key questions that Colpi addressed to the Scottish Parliament on 16th April 2013: “What

 Evaristi, “Voci della Val di Vara in Scozia,” 43.03: 43.05.  43.55. 271  Evaristi, Commedia, 12. 272  Ibid., 6. 273  See Gioia Angeletti, Nation, Community and Self. Female Voices in Scottish Theatre from the Late Sixties to the Present (Milano: Mimesis, 2018), 224–232. 274  Ibid., 12. 275  Ibid. 269 270

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does it mean to be “Scots Italian”? “Is a Scots Italian different from an Italian Scot, an Italo Scot? Which is the core identity?”276 Following the development of the plot, the spectator can see that Elena and her sons will gradually deconstruct their original values, thus showing that they are now part of a truly hybrid cultural context. On New Year’s Eve they have Italian delicatessen food and whisky and mention Robert Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne”277: LUCY: Thank you, Cesare. I am going to propose a toast! To my first year in Scotland, my first Hogmanay, my new family and … (hugging STEFANO) oh my darling, you have been so miserable, you’ve not been like yourself at all—to Stefano’s new job! (Embarrassed silence) CESARE (Pointedly looking out of window) Hey, Mamma, your floodlights have gone out. / LUCY: Gaffe, Elena. Gaffe, gaffe, gaffe. / ELENA: Nonsense. / STEFANO: Oh, Ces, the restraint is deafening. Sort of imploded opera. / CESARE: Sorry, don’t know what that means. Excuse my ignorance. / GIANNA: It’s funny, you know, Lucy, I’ve never had a chip on my shoulder about being Italian. / CESARE: My brother the actor playing Tony the Tally. / […] [To Stefano]: Tell me. Now your Scotchese predecessor has left and moved on to “The Sweeney” are you going to dye your hair? Are you going to inherit his big black moustache or are you going to grow one? Oh and his accent was unique! Just one cornetto! / Point of interest, did he train? / Or if you’re not going to inherit his phoney accent along with his phoney moustache, can you tell us exactly what you are going to do to make the performance ... what’s the word I’m looking for? Authentic? / GIANNA: And will you be phoning your family at midnight, Lucy? / LUCY: No, there’s hours ahead of us. Or before us. Anyhow, because they’re divorced I have to work out LA and New York in the same arithmetical moment. / GIANNA: That’s a shame. / LUCY: I write them big fat letters. / CESARE: (To Stefano) You tell me I’m wrong. Because you obviously think I am. You set yourself up as the artistic one. You tell me. No money, but lots of culture… Not to laugh at male ballet dancers on the television… / GIANNA: Well, I agree with that. / CESARE: Not to say this, not to say that. Got to go through to Edinburgh and watch him talk nonsense from a dustbin. / GIANNA: That was the Beckett season. / CESARE: It’s encouraging people to laugh at us. What’s happening to your 276  Terri Colpi, Made by Italo-Scots. The Italian Factor in Scotland Today (Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament, 2003), 1. https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/imports/fileManager/16th%20 April%20Scottish%20Parliament%20paper.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2023. 277  Evaristi, Commedia, 10.

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loyalty, your pride? / STEFANO: You sound like the scripts. I know the scripts are lousy. So what? I do lots of lousy scripts. This one is another lousy script. The series is rotten, everyone’s stereotyped. But I can’t afford to be fussy. / CESARE: You could if you came into the business. / STEFANO: The other actors in it think—CESARE: I don’t care about anyone else! I was talking about Italiani, I was talking about us! / STEFANO: Ah! We’re not Italiani! Our parents, the first generation, had a right to the name because their knowledge of Italy was first-hand, it was a real memory brought over by people that led such hard lives they needed something warm to remember on the way to the fish market on a freezing drisly Glasgow morning. / GIANNA: Stef, that’s an insult to your mother’s memory. Memories. / CESARE: If you’re so respectful, what are you doing to the memory of those hard lives? You’re playing Tony the Tally. Is playing Tony the Tally in a soap opera your way of moving out of the scene, son? / STEFANO: I know the insults hurled. I know about the bricks through the cafe windows during the war, I know about internment then — / ELENA: (Very loudly) Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet. I don’t want this. I love you dearly, but I don’t want this. All my long life— / CESARE: What are you talking about? Long life? You look like a girl. A princess. A movie star. / GIANNA: Shut up, Harry. / ELENA: All my life I’ve listened to big blustering arguments with tears and recriminations and fireworks and thunder and I’ve seen the same men who’ve been doing the shouting embrace the next week or the next day or the next minute as if nothing has happened. I’m not like that. If I see you fight, it hurts. It leaves a mark. And I don’t want it. Fight somewhere else, or else stop. I’ve been enjoying myself quietly. Why do you have to roar? / STEFANO: Simple. We’re Italiani.278

3. Charles Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte (1986) Claiming that being “Scottish and British and Italian and Glaswegian” is a “gift,”279 Evaristi, who continued to associate the “Italo-Scottish theme” to gender issues,280 is unexpectedly close to Charles Forte. He wrote his “lively business biography”281 at the age of seventy-nine, which  Ibid., 11–12.  Evaristi, “Voci della Val di Vara in Scozia,” 43.54: 44.11. 280  Ksenija Horvat, “Scottish Women Playwrights Against Zero Visibility: New Voices Breaking Through,” Études Écossais 10 (2005), https://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/157. Accessed 31 May 2023. 281  See the cover of Forte’s Autobiography: “One of the most lively business biographies ever… it brilliantly depicts the character, the limitations and triumphs of the man. Management Today.” 278 279

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gave him the opportunity to write honestly about himself and about his origins. Although he felt “as much Scottish as [he did] English or Italian,” Scotland was “where [he] first became aware of the world [and] first experienced the pleasures and pains of life.”282 It is indeed with his arrival there that his “river of memory”283 begins. Taken from chapter 2, “An Unconventional Education,” the following extract recounts those early years: Alloa is situated on the north bank of the River Forth, in Clackmannan, about thirty miles upstream from Edinburgh. In my boyhood days I suppose it had a population of about twelve thousand. It was thriving town, making yarn, glass, pottery, brass and ironwork, and exporting coal, although the docks dried out at low water. It was also the home of the famous Alloa ale. It had half a dozen handsome public buildings and the rolling countryside was only a bus ride out of town. The Savoy Café was on Mill Street, the main shopping street. It was large, seating fifty to sixty people, and next door to La Scala Cinema, which brought in a thriving custom in the evening. My father ran it and my mother helped in between her domestic tasks. There were also two or three assistants, working all hours of the day, serving ice-cream, cakes and sandwiches. At teatime the café was always full. It was kept spotless, the service was willing and friendly, and indeed for many years the Savoy remained the most popular place for shoppers, housewives and their families to go. My parents had a convenient flat on the opposite side of the street, above a newsagent’s and a fruiterer’s. It was large and comfortable with three bedrooms, which means that I had one of my own, a kitchen, sitting-room, and a dining-room which we seldom used. We even had one and a half bathroom, one with a proper tub and the other, in the washroom, with an enormous sink, in which I usually washed. The family had begun to move up into middle-class society. I say “move up” because although in Monforte we had a certain status as landed proprietors, the land was worth little and we might have seemed a primitive lot, with little money and a rudimentary mountain style of dress. In Scotland we entered the lowest rung of middle-class society, as shopkeepers, café proprietors and ice cream merchants. But soon my father had become friendly with Stanton, the largest grocer in town, Cairns, the ironmonger, Dow, the butcher, and many other members of the Alloa community.

 Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, 1.  Here we are referring to Joe Pieri’s The River of Memory.

282 283

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On one occasion we mixed in even more exalted circles. I remember with my father calling upon the Earl of Mar and Kellie at his country seat just outside the town. My father had been asked to advise the Earl on his vines. We had a cup of tea with him in what seemed to me an enormous room, and I can still remember standing in the hot-house with the two men engaged in earnest conversation with my father pruning one of the vines, to show how it was done. Winters at Alloa were cold, but our flat was cosy. Heating was by coal fire and there was the usual grate in the kitchen, where we used to eat. The dining-room was used only for special occasions, to entertain visitors, who were mainly relations from other parts of Scotland. My mother was houseproud and an excellent cook, so we were warm and comfortable and certainly well fed. By the standards of those hard times I was a very lucky little boy. There was always a bottle of wine on the table and from quite a young age I would be allowed a glass mixed with water in the continental fashion. The wine and other Italian delicacies were delivered to us by Valvona, the Italian grocer in Glasgow. We had a lady who came in to help with the housework and the general atmosphere of well-being and rural propriety, which my parents had brought with them from Monforte, was always maintained. By this time, after my year in Loanhead, I was beginning to speak English, but with a marked Scottish accent—which I still partly retain despite my sixty years in the South. At home we spoke Italian, my father and mother with an edge of the Abruzzese dialect. I was sent to a kindergarten, which was run by a Miss Fiddler. How my father ever got me into this élite establishment I shall never know, because there was the inevitable undercurrent of the snobbery of those times in our small town. However, my father may only have been an Italian immigrant with a café, but he had a quiet, persuasive way with him and a natural dignity which must have had its effect. Anyway, I was accepted and attended the school for nearly eighteen months.284

Yet, his “thrilling story”285 had begun with a detailed description of Monforte, the little hamlet near Casalattico in the south of Lazio: unlike the other Laziale immigrants who are included in this corpus, his forbears were land proprietors and highly respected. It was in 1911 that his father Rocco migrated to Scotland; the rest of the family joined him two years later. At the beginning, the Forte “empire” “consisted of two small shops,  Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, 13–15.  Lord Peter Thorneycroft, “Foreword by Lord Thorneycroft,” in Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, ix. 284 285

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one at Loanhead near Edinburgh and another at Biggar”286: once his father could purchase The Savoy Café in Alloa, they moved to a spacious and comfortable flat and became members of the “middle-classes.” It was thanks to his polite manners and “natural dignity” that he attended an exclusive kindergarten for eighteen months. This was of course only the beginning. Despite the fact that he had “an unconventional education,” he continued his studies at St. Joseph’s College in Dumfries287 and the historic Liceo Mamiani in Rome.288 He was seventeen when he decided to work for his father’s business and began his path towards success. After working for his uncle Dominic in Westonsuper-Mare in Someset,289 in 1935 he opened a milk bar in upper Regent Street in London.290 Supported by his family and by skilled collaborators of Italian extraction like Leonard Rosso, he gradually became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the post-war era.291 He purchased his first hotel, The Waldorf, in 1958292; “by the end of the 1960s, the Forte Company had nearly 16,000 employees” and could rely on “73,023,062 net assets.”293 His commitment was officially recognised on two important occasions: when he was knighted by the Queen Mother in 1970 and when he was created a life peer in 1981. He continued to be at the head of the Forte Group until the age of eighty-four. Divided into fifteen chapters and complete with a rich documentary and photographic section, his autobiography provides illuminating insights into his complex nature. After showing the reader, for instance, how his company had developed until the mid-1980s—which was the product of his courage and his business qualities—he finally regretted “not having availed himself of opportunities to buy other paintings, particularly certain Impressionists.”294 Indeed, his curiosity, his extraordinary human encounters and many international experiences had been key to his cultural and artistic growth.  Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, 11.  Ibid., 17. 288  Ibid., 20–22. 289  Ibid., 23–25. 290  Ibid., 35–41. 291  Peter Unwin, Newcomers’ Lives. The Story of Immigrants as Told in Obituaries from The Times (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 196. 292  Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, 88. 293  Ibid., 113. 294  Ibid., 217. 286 287

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As he recounts in the concluding chapter, “Afterthoughts,” he could still remember the Classics, but more importantly, he enjoyed reading, he was fond of music—particularly of La Traviata, Tosca and Beethoven’s symphonies—and was a sophisticated art collector. Proud of his Italian origins and grateful to Britain for giving him more than “a better life,” Forte defined himself as a man who always had a strong work ethic and who believed in simple but solid family values. Today he is included in many scholarly volumes, which not only highlight his southern Laziale origins, but also his outstanding role in the British history of the catering industry. Beginning from Donald Stewart’s Hoteliers and Hotels: Case Studies in the Growth and Development 1945–1989 (1996), we will remember especially Salvatore Ruggiero’s Storie dalla Val Comino (2016) and John Burnett’s England Eats Out: A Social History of Eating Out in England (2021). 4. Piero Tognini, A Mind at War (1990) Published in 1990, Piero Tognini’s A Mind at War represents another important testimony of the condition of the Italian community from the 1930s to the 1980s. As Terri Colpi rightly remembers,295 it was Lucio Sponza who first brought this “emblematic story” to light.296 Today we will consider it in the wider context of Italian British migrant literature as it chronologically anticipated Joe Pieri’s, Peter Ghiringhelli’s and Bernard Moscardini’s war writings. The son of Luigi and Amelia, Tognini was born in Palleroso, a small village near Barga, in 1924. Both his parents had lived long experiences of migration in Britain and Brazil, but sometime after they married, in 1925, they decided to settle in Scotland first in Ayr, then in Prestwick. It was there that Piero and his siblings grew up and were educated: “at the age of twelve, [though], [he] began to earn [his] living by working in his [father’s] business, mostly looking after the billiard hall.”297

 Terri Colpi, “Chaffs in the Winds of War?”: 401.  Here we refer to Lucio Sponza, “The Internment of Italians in Britain,” in Enemies Within. Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, ed. Franca Iacovetta, Roberto Perin, and Angelo Principe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 256–258; and Lucio Sponza, Divided Loyalties. Italians in Britain during the Second World War (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), 56, 153–154. 297  Tognini, A Mind at War, 6. 295 296

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Nostalgically recalling the names of his family’s Scottish friends and neighbours—which provides evidence of how socially integrated they were—Tognini wrote about his numerous visits to Italy and in particular about the “special holiday camp” in Cattolica in northern Italy. “A fantastic holiday and a wonderful experience,” that of the summer of 1937 also gave him the opportunity of meeting “Count Ciano, Mussolini’s sonin-law.”298 This was his last beautiful memory of the pre-war period. After three years, on 10th June 1940, his father Luigi and his brother Renato were arrested, while the rest of the family were given a three-day notice to “leave the coastal region, and move inland for a distance of at least twenty miles.”299 Sponza too emphasises the emotional impact that this had on Amelia, Tognini’s mother300: she “spoke very little English”301 and had three young children. Thanks to the help of “a kindly old soul called Mrs Leitch,” they finally found “alternative accommodation” in Auchinleck, “a small village just a mile or so from Cumnock.”302 Taken from the chapter entitled “Separation—The Agony,” the following extract provides a clear account of those bleak days, but more importantly, it recalls the moment when on his sixteenth birthday Piero was arrested and taken to “Barlinnie, Scotland’s biggest prison”303: We headed towards Cumnock, which seemed the proper distance inland, but, when we reached Auchinleck, a small village just a mile or so from Cumnock, it was already growing late. […] Within a day or two, I had managed to find a part-time job in a local café cum fish-and-chip shop, belonging to a Miss Josephine Antonucci, a very attractive lady whose parents came from our region of Italy. So the days went by, and we tried to keep our spirits up, but it was very difficult, especially as we could not get any news of my father and brother. Soon, however, dreadful news of a different kind was to break. Word came that the passenger ship Arandora Star had been torpedoed west of Ireland, on its way to Canada. Its passengers were chiefly Italians and Germans, who were being deported as aliens, though three hundred British soldiers and seamen were  Ibid., 7.  Ibid., 17–18. 300  Sponza, “The Internment of Italians in Britain,” 257. 301  Tognini, A Mind at War, 18. 302  Ibid. 303  For further information about this prison, where several Italian residents in Dumfries were taken, see Rinaldi, From the Serchio to the Solway, 32. 298 299

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also on board, over fifteen hundred souls in all. Only half that number survived the disaster on the morning of 2 July. Next day we read of so many drowned in the cold Atlantic, but there was still no news of our loved ones, as we had no radio. We could do nothing but hope and pray that they were safe, despite the terrible fear in our hearts. Next day, 3 July 1940, was my sixteenth birthday. Not this year a day to celebrate, but one which was to crown my mother’s misery, as I was old enough to be interned. All day we sat expecting a call from the police, since we had to register with them as aliens on our arrival in Auchinleck. It was a little relief when night fell without the expected knock on the door. Next morning, however, I was grimly aware that I had not been overlooked. While my mother was out shopping, two policemen arrived and virtually ransacked the house. On her return, my mother had to be told by Mrs. Leitch that I had been arrested and taken to the local police station. […] I slept that night in the police cell, but early the next morning, 5 July, I left by train for Glasgow escorted by the local bobby, P.C. Cruickshank. When we arrived, the officer who accompanied me hailed a taxi, and then I heard for the first time the dreadful word that still haunts me—Barlinnie, Scotland’s biggest prison! I even remember the exact taxi fare he paid, which was two shillings. We left the city center [sic] and headed east along Alexandra Parade through Dennistoun. I gazed out anxiously at folk going about their normal daily business—women with prams, and kids playing ball down the many side streets of tenement buildings—and I somehow wanted to shout out to them that I did not deserve to be taken to this abode of murderers and hardened criminals! After less than half an hour, we climbed towards Provanmill, and I was shocked to catch the first glimpse of the prison. Like an ancient fortress of worn brown stone, it stood on rising ground above the neat residential districts of Riddrie and Carntyne. The first impression I had was of the enormous wall, totally encircling the main prison buildings. From a distance the cell blocks within the walls stared out at the world through countless barred windows, tiny and square, rising in tiers almost to the height of the outer wall. As we came nearer, this wall seemed to grow higher, about thirty feet in height. The huge iron gate soon faced us, and here the driver seemed glad to be away, clutching his fare, as he returned to more congenial surroundings. The officer with me showed his papers to the guard at a small side door, and, with a sinking heart, I was ushered inside. “Well, who have we got here?” These were the first words that greeted me from the uniformed warden who confronted us. When he was told, he made a sour face and muttered callously, “Another of the buggers! Up against the wall, same as the rest!” I did not know what this command implied, but expected something terrible. They might even shoot at me! I was then led to a very narrow

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cubicle nearby, where I remained for what seemed hours on end. My sentence had begun!304

A Mind at War thus represents the only piece of autobiographical writing in our Italian British literary corpus, which recounts the experience of such a young prisoner. In this respect, Piero’s fear and profound hopelessness should be considered universal, provided the tight link between migration and trauma in war contexts. The latest scholarly research on these topics has rightly put a special emphasis on the difficult condition especially of women, children and young adults.305 Yet, the following chapters represent a turning point in Tognini’s narration: the scary atmosphere of “Scotland’s biggest prison” dissolves when he is transferred to the internment camp in the Isle of Man and reunites with his brother Robert; furthermore, as he recounts, once he was released in December 1940—and optimistically projected himself into a bright future—he could enjoy the fruits of his family’s hard work in 1944–1946. Although most Italian Scottish writings confirm that this was almost a period of economic boom for the immigrant community in the region, Tognini denounces the atmosphere of tension of those years as well as the episodes of violence that he and his brother were victims of.306 Rich in photos, private materials and poems, this second part of A Mind at War includes details of Tognini’s family life, which ideally help to see the elements in common with other Italian British narratives: the picture of the “newlyweds Piero and Anita Tognini,” dated 1950—also those of them in Borghetto di Vara during their honeymoon307—anticipate, for example, those of Emanuelli and his English bride in A Sense of Belonging. They too travelled to Italy to see its beauties and visit their relatives: eager tourists, who had finally become successful businessmen, both Tognini and Emanuelli considered central-northern Italy their principal destination, even though they also reported their adventurous trips to the deep south, as well as to several other European countries. Within this perspective, their writings provide further evidence of their openness to cultural otherness.  Tognini, A Mind at War, 18–20.  See among others Maria D. Lombard, Motherhood, Identity, Belonging, and Displacement in Global Context (Lanham: The Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). 306  Tognini, A Mind at War, 44. 307  Ibid., 54–55. 304 305

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Tognini concludes his autobiography with the events that changed his life in the 1970s and 1980s: in the section entitled “Arriviamo a la [sic] Fine” he also pays his “special tribute to Scotland and its warm-hearted people.”308 Considering all the adversities that he had to face as an Italian immigrant, he could finally define himself a “very lucky man”309: A Mind at War also gave him the opportunity to leave a mark in the cultural history of multi-ethnic Scotland. 5. Ann Marie Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood (1992) Tognini completed his only literary work in 1989 and in the following years, in the closing decade of the twentieth century, there was a new and more significant flourishing of Italian British writings. The most popular genre continued to be the memoir, but Tally’s Blood—which recounts the story of an Italian family between southern Lazio and Glasgow in the 1930s-1950s—contributed to making this branch of migrant literature rich and varied. It was not the first time that Di Mambro explored the “Italian Scottish theme”: Hocus Pocus (1986), for instance, discusses the crisis of the Catholic Church and of the priesthood, whereas the monologue Joe (1987) and The Letter Box (1989) deal with the painful implications of transcultural identity and gender. It was in the following years, on the basis of the success of these early works,310 that Bill Bryden (1942–2022) and Ian Brown respectively suggested that she should write more specifically about the Italian community in Scotland and finally commissioned Tally’s Blood. Although she was initially reluctant to represent a “world” that she “knew” so “intimately,” she finally realised that she desired not only to put on stage that play, but also to continue to portray “Scottish Italians” as “a vibrant part of the [region’s] culture.”311 Di Mambro provided further details about her long creative process in the Introduction to the 2002 edition. The provisional title, for instance, was “Pane perduto [lost bread], which is an old Italian saying which refers to the love you might give a child.”312 As Ian Brown considered it  Ibid., 196.  Ibid., 197. 310  Margaret Rose and Emanuela Rossini, “In Conversation with Ann Marie Di Mambro,” in A Theatre That Matters: Twentieth-Century Scottish Drama and Theatre. A Collection of Critical Essays and Interviews, ed. Valentina Poggi and Margaret Rose (Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 2000), 232. 311  Ibid., 233. 312  Ibid. 308 309

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“obscure” and was doubtful that English-speaking spectators could pronounce it correctly, she concluded that “Tally’s Blood” could have racist undertones, but would convey a more comprehensive vision of prejudice. For the first time, in fact, a literary work also focused on those of the members of the immigrant community to demonstrate that phrases like “Marry an Italian,” “Italians love their families,” or “Italian men don’t go out to the pub night after night”313 are dangerous as they hinder the social integration of the younger generations. A universal but “accessible play”—whose “lightness” and happy ending may represent elements of weakness314— today Tally’s Blood is part of the National Curriculum and is at the heart of numerous university projects.315 Interestingly, in 2017, the 25th anniversary of the play was celebrated at Glasgow Caledonian University; in that same year Pia in Language of My Choosing put an emphasis on the capacity of the text to recall the horrors of the Second World War.316 Reporting a touching performance in the small town of Dunfermline, she claimed that she still could hear “the murmur of weeping women in the audience” when Rosinella first read about the tragedy of the Arandora Star, which, for her, was “almost more moving than what was happening onstage.”317 Providing a clear example of linguistic and cultural hybridity, the following extract associates this female character both to an alternative model of femininity and to the concept of New Scottishness. A strong woman, who seems reluctant to accept change, she will gradually become aware that her life is now in Scotland and will finally resolve the conflict between the original values of the immigrants and those of her host community318: ROSINELLA: You said you’ve got plans for Lucia. / LUIGI: She’s ma lassie. / ROSINELLA: What plans you got? / LUIGI: When the time comes for her to get married, you can still help if you want. Pay for this, pay  Ibid., 2.  Joseph Farrell, “Tallies and Italians,” 130. 315  “GCU Celebrates the 25 Years of Tally’s Blood,” YouTube video, March 1 2016, 0.31: 035, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAWcxglXWW8, Accessed 16 December 2022. 316  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 33. 317  Ibid. 318  Ian Brown, “Tally’s Blood and the Tyranny of Love” (Presentation, ASLS School Conference), December 11, 2013, YouTube video, 3.00: 5.00, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=gqh9Y7tMvys. Accessed 31 May 2023. 313 314

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for that—that’s fine by me. I know how much she means to you. Va bene? / ROSINELLA: (To Luigi) What are you saying? / HUGHIE: Mrs Ped ... (Tentatively) Auntie Rosinella? / ROSINELLA: (To Luigi/annoyed) You think I don't know your game. “your lassie, your lassie!” You brought her here to make her work, didn’t you? I can see. I can see. It’s all too much for your wife now, isn’t it, eh? Five big boys,—no one lassie and married onto a big lazy bastard like you. (Rosinella regrets swearing the minute it’s out) / […] LUIGI: Lucia’s engaged... It’s all arranged. / HUGHIE: What’s going on...? / ROSINELLA: (Stunned: to Hughie) She’s engaged! / HUGHIE: Engaged! Who to? / ROSINELLA: No to you. (To Luigi) Who to? / LUIGI: Mario Santoni. Figlio di Angelo. / HUGHIE: Engaged? / ROSINELLA: (To Luigi) So, you’ve arranged it all, have you? / LUIGI: Me and Angelo shook hands on it, just last week. / ROSINELLA: Hughie. Hughie, do you hear that? / HUGHIE: What? / LUIGI: So you can tell the sunshine boy here, thank you very much, but I’m sorry I have to say no. / HUGHIE: Hear what? How can she be engaged? / ROSINELLA: (Backing off in disbelief) There’s something going on... there’s something I’m not seeing ... / HUGHIE: How can she be engaged? / ROSINELLA: (To Hughie) Will you wheesht! (To Luigi) Santoni? Santoni? Mario Santoni. Figlio di Angelo. Angelo? Angelo Santoni? (Recognition/annoyed at self for not seeing sooner) / Angelo Santoni! Of course. He’s right... next... door... to... you. (Only as she says this the full realisation dawns) / LUIGI: (Nods) Si. / HUGHIE: See what? / ROSINELLA: He’s got the best land in the village. / LUIGI: Si. / ROSINELLA: The best grapes. / LUIGI: Si. / ROSINELLA: And he’s just got the one son… / LUIGI: Mario, si. Pause: (Luigi smug: Rosinella looks defeated: Hughie aware of the way it has gone) ROSINELLA: (To Hughie) It’s looking very very bad, son. […] / HUGHIE: There must be something we can do. There MUST be. / […] ROSINELLA: Tomorrow’s the feast. / HUGHIE: So? / ROSINELLA: It goes on and on and on, half the night—drinking, singing, dancing, then the fireworks... they’ll all be at the piazza... All... except... / HUGHIE: (Realising significance) Lucia. Rosinella nods. Night of feast: outside Luigi’s house Bring up paesano music, noise of crowd celebrating and enjoying selves in B.C. maybe lights: celebrations going on in village square behind house. Lucia at window: looks out to the sky and all round as though for the last time. LUCIA: I’m sorry, daddy. But it’s my life, and I’ve had enough of other people deciding for me. It’s time to make my own choices. Forgive me. She goes in.

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Enter Rosinella and Hughie carrying a ladder: talking in urgent whispers. ROSINELLA: Hurry up. Hurry up. Sshh. Ssshhh! / HUGHIE: I’m coming. Ssshhh. Sssshhhh. / ROSINELLA: Here we are. Sshhh. / HUGHIE: Where? / ROSINELLA: Up there. That one. Hughie puts ladder up to window. HUGHIE: Where is she? / ROSINELLA: I told her to be ready. / HUGHIE: (Shouts/whispers) Lucia. / ROSINELLA: Lucia! / HUGHIE: Lucia, I’ve come for you. / ROSINELLA: Lucia, he’s come for you. / HUGHIE: I love you, Lucia. / ROSINELLA: He says he loves you, Lucia. / HUGHIE: (To Rosinella) Do you mind? / ROSINELLA: What? / HUGHIE: This is, kind of—my moment—you know what I mean? / ROSINELLA: (Slightly indignant) Ma—it means a lot to me too, you know. Lucia has appeared at window. LUCIA: Hey, you two. / ROSINELLA: She’s there. Look. / HUGHIE: You ready, Lucia? / LUCIA: Yes. I’ll get my things. She goes in: Rosinella pushing Hughie up the ladder. ROSINELLA: Right. Up you go. Hughie takes a few steps up, then comes back down. ROSINELLA: What? / HUGHIE: I've never done anything like this before. / ROSINELLA: I should bliddy well hope no. Get up they steps. Hughie takes a couple of steps up, then comes back down. […] HUGHIE: Oh, where is she now? / LUCIA: She must’ve gone. Come on. They move away. HUGHIE: Where to? / LUCIA: Where do you think? Up a tree? / HUGHIE: What you got in the bag? / LUCIA: Stuff to keep us going. Bread, salami, cheese... / HUGHIE: ... And ginger? / LUCIA: Oh yes... Lots of ginger. Come on.319

Instrumentally utilising Italian traditions to free Lucia from a backward and oppressive environment, Di Mambro has demonstrated that she could be critical about the cultural limitations of her family’s original homeland. Interestingly, though, at a time when she wanted to give her vision of the Italian community in Glasgow, she also promoted Scottish culture, thus contributing to the iconic TV series Machair.320 Produced by Scottish Television Enterprises from 1992 to 1998, and based on the Isle of Lewis,  Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, 166–169, 171–174, 176.  See Neil Drysdale, “Behind the Scenes of the Groundbreaking Gaelic TV Series Machair with the Man Who Created It,” The Press and Journal Evening Express, May 25, 2020, https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/past-times/2207157/behind-the-scenes-of-thegroundbreaking-gaelic-tv-series-with-the-man-who-created-it/. Accessed 31 May 2023. Consider that some of its iconic episodes are still available on line at BBC iPlayer https:// www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b00fkl0x/machair. Accessed 31 May 2023. 319 320

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it was in Gaelic and proved highly successful; after that experience she returned to her favourite topic, submitting “a short film script called Collar the Lot to Tartan Shorts”—which told “the story of an Italian family on the night Italy [came] into World War Two”321—and began a new collaboration with Julie Fraser to turn Tally’s Blood into a film.322 None of these projects had success, but she won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for 1994–1995 and continued to promote the history of Italian Scots. 6. Mary Contini, Dear Francesca. An Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love (2002) Author, chef, owner of Valvona & Crolla (est. 1934) and a much loved figure in the Scottish food scene, Mary Contini, née Di Ciacca, has distinguished herself for combining her entrepreneurial activities with a continuous transnational commitment: in 2010 the Italian government conferred her the honour of Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella e della solidarietà italiana, whereas in 2020, on the Queen’s ninetieth birthday, she received an OBE for “services to the Scottish food industry and ScottishItalian relations.”323 The essence of her philosophy of life and of her writing can be found in her numerous interviews, newspaper articles and in the prefaces to the three successful volumes of her family saga: Dear Francesca. An Italian Journey Recounted with Love (2002), Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage (2006) and Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Courage (2017). Written in a simple but effective style, and paying tribute to the Di Ciacca and Crolla families, they express Contini’s pride of her roots as well as her sense of national belonging. In point of fact, she too, like the majority of writers of Italian descent, believes that her mixed upbringing—Italian, Irish and Scottish—has always represented a plus especially in her professional path. Although her family stories only include southern Laziale and Neapolitan recipes, at Easter, as she claims, she serves abbacchio [baby lamb] as the main course 321   Margaret Rose and Emanuela Rossini, “In Conversation with Ann Marie Di Mambro,” 233. 322  Ibid., 235–236. 323  Cate Devine, “Queen’s Birthday Honours: OBE for Herald Food Columnist Mary Contini,” The Herald, October 9, 2020, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18784224. queens-birthday-honours-obe-herald-food-columnist-mary-contini/. Accessed 31 May 2023.

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and lemon curd with meringues for dessert324: we may consider this as a proof of her syncretic cuisine and a sign of her multi-layered identity. Contrasting but iconic elements apart, there is certainly more to know about Contini. A third-generation Italian, whose family initially settled in Cockenzie, East Lothian, she retains beautiful memories of her childhood and of the flavours of her Italian home. It was in one of the webinars that she held in 2021 that she shared her memories of her and her seven siblings eating ice cream “non-stop,”325 and of the wonderful scent of vanilla filling up the whole house. Compared to other similar narratives, it seems clear that despite the hardships of those years, she grew up in a joyful family and that she was always proud of her parents’ hard work. Respected members of the Italian community, especially after the war, Johnny Di Ciacca and Gertrude Hilley decided to facilitate their children’s process of integration speaking only English and Scottish to them and investing in their education. It was thanks to her school and university experiences that Contini became what she is today: Valvona & Crolla is all her life—and she considers working in the catering industry a hard but highly rewarding experience—but writing as The Herald’s food columnist or as the author of popular cooking books has been crucial to promoting Italian culture. Unsurprisingly, all the three volumes of her saga have been very well received and are still bestsellers. In the future these three volumes will have to be seen from an intertextual perspective and in the wider context of Italian British literary writing: Dear Olivia, for instance, reminds us of Anita Arcari’s The Hockey Pockey Man. Set in Picinisco and Fontitune in southern Lazio, they both focus on the process of integration of two young male protagonists, Alfonso Crolla and Tino D’Abruzzo, which was heavily marked by the great events of late modern and contemporary times.326 The product of the same genetic process as Melanie Hughes’ War Changes Everything, Dear Alfonso, instead, was written after Mary and her husband Philip found the box which contained Carlo Contini’s “35 pages of memories.” It was when they had them translated from Neapolitan into English that they realised that they

324  Logan Tomlinson, “Mary Contini OBE,” Inspirational Women Webinar Series, Saint Margaret’s School for Girls, March 25, 2021, YouTube video, 24.34: 26.50. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=RA3gZV5sfFQ&t=127s. Accessed 31 May 2023. 325  2.45: 2.52. 326  See Elizabeth Wren-Owens, “Remembering Fascism.”

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“provided the ingredients for a new book about love, loss, new beginnings—and, of course, great food.”327 Yet, it is necessary to begin from Dear Francesca to gain a clear understanding of Contini’s editorial project. Written in 2002, after the success of Easy Peasy! Real Cooking for Children (1999), this first volume shows what is behind this particular mixture of history, family memories and folklore. Joe Pieri in Isle of the Displaced had been the first Italian Scottish writer who had voiced his sense of uneasiness when he felt caught between two worlds; the letter that Contini addresses to her daughter Francesca on the eve of her adult life expresses her initially confused sense of national belonging: as a young girl, she perceived that she “had no heritage” and that her “family had no roots.”328 Based on a long research activity, Dear Francesca embodies her belief that her origins are “honourable” and that her grand-parents—Cesidio and Marietta Di Ciacca—not only “worked hard to give their family a better future,” but also, “most precious of all,” they transmitted their “strong respect for God, family and [their] neighbour.”329 The black and white photo of “Cesidio behind the counter of his shop in Cockenzie” testifies to Contini’s desire to pay tribute to his memory; other supplementary materials are the genealogy of the Di Ciacca and the Crolla families, as well as a map of central and southern Italy. Focusing specifically on Lazio and the Neapolitan area, they help the reader to locate these long and complex stories of migration. In this respect, the first three sections of the introduction—“I Ciacca, Picinisco, Italy 1910–1920,” “Fontitune, Italy 1910–1920” and “Edinburgh Scotland 1910–1934”—are dense in information. They include an extract from D.H. Lawrence’s letter to Rosalind Baynes dated 16th December 1919,330 where Picinisco is described as “a bit staggeringly primitive”331 and the locals are “in costume.”332 As concerns Lawrence’s 327  Mourray Scougall, “Forgotten Notes Inspire Life and Cooking Writer Mary Contini To Chart Family’s Epic Journey,” The Sunday Post, October 10, 2017, https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/forgotten-notes-inspire-italian-life-and-cooking-writer-mary-contini-to-chartfamilys-epic-journey/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 328  Mary Contini, Dear Francesca. An Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love (London, Ebury: 2003), 9. 329  Ibid. 330  Ibid., 10. 331  “The Brothers Who Walked Here from Italy. Story 1, Mary Contini,” The Herald, January 16, 2005, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12408258.the-brothers-whowalked-here-from-italy-story-1-mary-contini/, Accessed 31 May 2023. 332  Ibid.

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drawing of the “ciocie,” the typical footwear which were worn by farmers, it iconically anticipates the beginning of Contini’s story. Taken from “I Ciacca, Picinisco, Italy 1910–1920,” the following extract is almost completely dedicated to Marietta Di Ciacca, Contini’s grandmother, who was one of the strong women in her family, and who was born in London in 1895. Utilising her migration experiences to create a bridge between southern Lazio and Scotland, Dear Francesca also recounts Marietta’s and Cesidio’s love story and offers precious insights into the ancient traditions of the area: Francesca, my grandmother, Marietta Di Ciacca was a cousin of Orazio Cervi, and my father, Johnny (Giovanni) Di Ciacca, was born on 23 December 1919 [...]. Marietta’s family lived in a huddle of farm hovels, I Ciacca, a stone’s throw from the house in Picinisco that D.H. Lawrence visited. Picinisco is 725 metres above sea level, high in the Abruzzi mountains, south of Rome. As in many remote villages the population had been isolated for centuries. The uncontaminated genetic line had left an unusual inheritance. The features of some of the people bore a strong resemblance to their Roman ancestors. Their employment prospects were stamped on their faces. By the end of the nineteenth century, Picinisco had gained a reputation as a source of handsome boys to work as artists’ models. Their features were perfect for the fashion of the time, the painting and sculpture of Roman Christians. Famous artists like Holman Hunt used boys from Picinisco as models. Other artists from Paris and London made the arduous journey up into the mountains to engage the youngsters for the same reason. By the turn of the century there were more than a hundred working in Britain. For the first time there was hope for the villagers of improving their lot. An opportunity to make some money, unheard of, where for centuries bartering had been the only form of exchange. Their families could now buy land, pay for medical bills or finance education. Marietta had actually been born in London, in 1895. […] She was nineteen [and] wanted to grow up too. She wanted a husband and family of her own. She wanted to return to London and start her own life. Custom dictated that she should wait until her father found her a husband. He needed her on the farm and was in no hurry. Marietta had other ideas, though. A fiercely independent girl, she had already set her cap. Cesidio Di Ciacca, her cousin, had fought in the Boer War and returned to his village as a hero. Tempted to find a better life, he had already tried his fortunes in Scotland working in an ice-cream shop in Edinburgh. He was a gentle, handsome lad of twenty-three, with a straight Roman nose and sleepy green eyes. He had

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a calm sweet nature whereas Marietta was fiery and headstrong. It would be a good match. […] On her wedding morning, as was tradition, the bride was dressed in clean white linen from top to toe by the local seamstress. She was then presented to her future mother-in-law, who checked that her son was “getting a good woman”. (The next morning Marietta would be expected to take her linen to her mother-in-law to prove that the marriage had been consummated and that she had been a virgin!) To signify her public approval of the bride, the mother-in-law pinned a gift of gold on to Marietta’s linen and then helped finish dressing her, piling her hair high and adorning it with beautiful combs and a white lace headscarf. Marietta walked from her house up the dirt track to the church in Picinisco followed by her father, her brothers and all her family. The children ran laughing and screaming around the wedding procession, jumping to catch the sugar confetti that were scattered from side to side. Cesidio escorted her into the church holding an embroidered handkerchief between them. After the ceremony both families, the priests and all the villagers joined in a wonderful feast. […] Cesidio took Marietta to her new home, probably his father’s house. He led her into their bedroom followed by the crowd. The large high family bed was all decked out with the linen and bedcovers that Marietta’s mother had collected for her when she was a little girl. On the beautiful hand-sewn cover was scattered confetti, sugared almonds. Custom dictates that the guests must now enter the bedroom and leave a gift of money for the new couple. To show face, “bella figura,” the gift must be substantial, each man giving more than the other, to prove his wealth and to display his power within the community. All in all Cesidio and Marietta did very well and collected a good deal of lire to help them and fulfil their dreams for the future. Within four years they would have left their remote mountain village for good.333

7. Joe Pieri, The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant (2005) Contini recounted the life of her grandparents in Cockenzie in Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage. There are photos of them in Picinisco in 1913 and 1915,334 but the one which depicts them with little Johnny and Lena in 1920335 clearly shows that they were realising  Contini, Dear Francesca, 11, 14–16.  Contini, Dear Olivia, 36, 38, 40. 335  Ibid., 158. 333 334

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their dreams: their new home “was just going to be perfect”336 and the Cockenzie Café represented a reference point for the local population. As we can read in chapter 13, “the children in the village” “tripped in and out and hung around the shop” and “gave [Marietta] lots of information about [their] customers.” Considering those early years, they felt “very very happy.”337 “One of the most prominent figures in Glasgow’s Scottish-Italian community,”338 Joe Pieri first wrote about his parents’ long migratory experiences in Isle of the Displaced, his war memoir of 1997. They had left their homeland and settled in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the early 1900s.339 It was after his father Francesco took part in the North African campaigns and returned to Italy that the family set off for Scotland and began their new life in Glasgow: after numerous hardships they too felt completely integrated in the interwar years. His Memoirs of Interment in the Second World War represented the beginning of a dense and coherent literary production. At a time when this branch of migration literature in English is still neglected, Pieri’s autobiographical writings and historical-cultural studies on Italian migration have attracted scholarly attention. Starting from Carla Dente’s textual reference to Isle of the Displaced in 2008340—also from Elizabeth WrenOwens’ reflections on his role in Italian Scottish “polyphonic” literature in 2015341—today there seems to be a growing interest in the way he dealt with gender issues and combined “anecdotes” and “autobiography”: Souhir Zekri Masson’s latest contributions on these topics respectively date to 2019 and 2022.342 This may be due to the fact that compared to that of other Italian British authors, Pieri’s prose offers numerous points of reflections, especially on the complex implications of the concept of multi-layered identity. His “chameleon-like personality,”343 for instance, gave him the opportu Ibid., 159.  Ibid., 160. 338  “Joe Pieri,” The Herald, July 26, 2022, https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/13066589.joe-pieri/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 339  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced. See Ch. 1, “Origins”, par. 4. 340  Dente, “Personal Memory / Cultural Memory.” 341  See Wren-Owens, “Remembering Fascism.” 342  See Masson, “‘Real Men Mark their Territory!’”; and Masson, “Autobiography through Anecdotes.” 343  Pieri, Isle of the Displaced. See Ch. 23, “Endings,” par. 12. 336 337

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nity to easily adapt to different linguistic and cultural environments, even though he was never able to swear allegiance either to Italy or to Britain. Isle of the Displaced in particular shows the tragic consequences of his condition during the Second World War, also his pride in having an Italian background and about living in Scotland. Identity and intercultural issues apart, as Masson has showed, Pieri’s works are also constituted by “anecdotes” or episodes which provide precious insights into his inner world. Tales of the Savoy. Stories from a Glasgow Cafe, which first appeared in 1999, includes twenty-three short narratives which are centred on significant male and female characters, two of whom are Italian Scots. Although, for instance, he had already written about “Big Emma” in Isle of the Displaced,344 in this collection he adds further details about her past life as well as of her strength and courage: fighting against the Scottish hooligans who wanted to destroy her fish and chip shop on 10th June 1940, this Tuscan widow can be considered a symbol of the whole Italian community in Britain in the bleakest period of contemporary history. A man who lived a hard life and developed a strong sensitivity, Pieri was fascinated by history as well as by the suburban spaces of Glasgow. Even though he never provided a detailed description of the Gorbals, the Cowcaddens or the Garngad areas, his numerous human encounters helped him to become the man he was, while fuelling his inspiration. The Bigmen. Personal Memories of Glasgow’s Police, which he published in 2001, tells stories of ordinary but brave men, who in the post-war years risked their lives to protect the suburbs in the city. In the chapter entitled “Dangers,” for instance, the fight between two constables and a gang of hooligans ends not only with serious injuries but also with acts of real bravery.345 Thus, Pieri described little but valiant men who had the power to make society more just and inclusive: this was true for his family and for the members of the Italian community, who actively contributed to the growth of multi-ethnic Scotland. The photographic inserts contained in The ScotsItalians. Recollections of an Immigrant clearly show that after the terrible experiences that they lived during the war years, they played an important part in the process of reconstruction, which made them feel completely accepted by the Scots.  Ibid., Ch. 3, “Arrest,” par. 12–15.  Pieri, The Bigmen, Ch. 9, “Dangers.”

344 345

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Yet, the positive message of resilience that pervades the works that we have mentioned only represents a component of Pieri’s entire production. Although he never discussed his writing process, the cases of self-citations also in works such as The Scots-Italians or River of Memory provide evidence of his desire to give shape both to iconic scenes and a coherent transnational project. Apart from Wheel of Fortune and The Bigmen, the rest of his works are all dedicated to Italy and to Italians: The Octopus. The Story of the Sicilian Mafia, for instance, which appeared in 2012, confirms that he continued to build solid transcultural bridges between Britain and Italy until the end of his life. However, his ability to create a truly plurilingual production testifies to his desire to convey an image of himself as a European writer living between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although he published five books between 1997 and 2012, it was, however, thanks to The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant that he achieved popularity. As he claimed in 2006,346 he first had the idea of writing a more comprehensive work on Italian migration to Scotland during a dinner with his Italian Glaswegian friends at Riccardo’s restaurant in Barga. Their common views about the beauties of the little hamlet, also their comments about its dire poverty between the late 1800s and the outbreak of the First World War, finally made him take the decision to share the stories of those barghigiani who were forced to seek better conditions of life in the west of Scotland. As he was an experienced writer, whose books had always been well received, he was confident that his readers would appreciate his effort to combine history with personal memories.347 Indeed, The Scots-Italians was purchased by numerous members of the Italian Scottish community, who also dispatched them to relatives and friends all over Europe. He had really been able to provide a detailed description of an important social and economic phenomenon, but more importantly, he had shown that through their humble occupations, the Italians contributed to widen the Scottish culinary experiences with their artisan gelato and their fish and chips. As Pieri claimed, it did not take long

346  Flavio Guidi, “La morte di Joe Pieri, memoria della storia dell’emigrazione barghigiana in Scozia,” Barganews.com, April 7, 2012, https://www.barganews.com/2012/07/04/lamorte-di-joe-pieri-memoria-della-storia-dellemigrazione-barghigiana-in-scozia/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 347  Ibid.

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for the local community to associate “surnames such as Nardini, Castelvecchi, Casci, Fazzi, Pieri [and] Togneri”348 with excellence. A highly informative text, The Scots-Italians is divided into a prologue and eleven chapters. Starting from “The First Italians,” Pieri recounts the history of Italian migration to Scotland from the years after the unification of Italy to “Modern Times.” Although he re-proposed some of the most epic scenes of Isle of the Displaced, he wanted to add extracts from newspaper articles,349 which testify to the level of tension and violence particularly in Scotland. The following extract not only shows that they finally became an important part of Scottish society, but also that the younger generations were well educated and that they had the opportunity to work in other sectors: Some Italian names had by this time become famous in Scotland for the excellence of their products and services. […] [The Nardinis and the Castelvecchis] were large importers of labour from their native Barga district, and the [latter] bought a small tenement block at the side of the restaurant for the housing of their immigrant labour. In both cafés the important positions in the kitchen and all cash points were usually manned by Italians, whilst the staff in direct contact with the public were in the main all locally recruited. The immigrant workers were all trained by the two companies, and therefore much sought after by other Italian employers, with the result that many of them were poached by Glasgow restaurant and café owners and lured away from Largs by the offer of larger wages. Over the years score upon score of workers from Barga served their apprenticeship in the Nardini and Castelvecchi cafés, and now every year a festa “La Sagra del Pesce e Patate” (The Fish and Chip Festival) is celebrated by them and their descendants in that little Tuscan town. Fish and chip ranges are set up in the town square and retired fish friers of Barga, all of them with their trade learned in Scotland and many from Largs, vie with one another to produce the perfect fish supper for the tourists who now flock in their thousands to the picturesque town. […] Not all Italians followed the fish and chip and ice-cream road to success. A handful established themselves as barbers and hairdressers, and it was not long before the Glasgow public were queueing up to have their tonsorial needs attended to by a Vezza, or a Camillo, a Di Fazio, a Padiani, a Liverani, or a Di Tano. Marcello Di Tano, long retired and now well into his seventies, contributed much to the social life of the Scottish Italians and  Ibid., 93–94.  Pieri, The Scots-Italian, 93–94.

348 349

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continues to do so through his Laziale Club. Marcello organises dances in St Thomas’ church hall in Riddrie in the winter months, and tickets for these occasions are at a premium. Although all age groups are catered for, traditional Italian music dominates the evening, and the older members of the audience steep themselves in the nostalgia of the music and songs. Marcello was one who saw to it that his family should receive the education that he was denied, and his son Armando now occupies an important position in an internationally known electronics firm. […] Without a doubt the most famous and honoured Italian immigrant to Scotland is Charles Forte of Trust House Forte fame. Lord Charles Forte was born in 1908 in the village of Monforte Casalattico, in the province of Lazio.350 At the age of seven he and his mother joined his father in Alloa, where the elder Forte had established himself in the café business. The father was one of the ones who realised the importance of a proper education, and saw to it that his son was able to attend schools both in Alloa and later in Dumfries. Rather than go on to university, the boy elected to do practical and profitable work in the family café. At the age of 21 he took over the running of the business, and then in 1934 went to London where he opened the first of his famous milk bars. In common with all other Italians he was arrested on the outbreak of war with Italy, but was fortunate to find himself interned in a camp of the Isle of Man, where he was able to petition for an early release. After the war Forte expanded his business rapidly, and received numerous government catering contracts and the entire airline catering for Heathrow Airport. […] [I]n 1962, his company was floated on the London Stock Exchange. […] In 1995 Forte PLC had become one of the largest hotel chains in the world, with 940 hotels, 400 restaurants and the Little Chef motor road cafeteria chain, which between them employed tens of thousands of workers. Lord Forte received a knighthood in 1970, and was later elected to the peerage in 1982. He is a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Italian Republic, and was personally presented with a special Papal Medal by Pope Pious XII. Lord Forte is proud of his Italian roots and of his Scottish background.351

The following chapters, namely “Aftermath” and “Modern Times,” effectively contribute to reinforce the image of Scotland as a land of opportunities. At the age of eighty-seven, he confirmed that he felt deeply moved when the Italian Scot musician Nicola Benedetti was chosen to play at the opening ceremony of the Scottish Parliament in 2004. For him this 350  Pieri’s definition is not completely correct. Lazio is not a province, but one of the twenty Italian regions. 351  Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 70, 74–75, 78, 86.

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provided evidence that the migrant community was now fully integrated and valued.352 Pieri continued to write on his complex identity until he died in 2012. His position was similar to that of Charles Forte, who “was proud of his Italian roots and of his Scottish background.” However, he also felt a strong sense of gratitude for what Scotland had given to him throughout his life: a family, an education and especially social recognition.353 His works celebrate both Italy and his home country. 8. Anne Pia, Language of My Choosing: The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot (2017) Sharing a far more problematic relationship with her heritage, Anne Pia started from her vivid memories of her Italian family, while also emphasising the importance of Scotland and of France in the construction of her multi-layered identity. Respectively published in 2017 and 2020, Language of My Choosing and The Sweetness of Demons represent two fundamental components of her creative universe: they are both plurilingual and transcultural, but also project the image of an author who praises diversity and sees herself as a “constant pilgrim.”354 Indeed, the concepts of pilgrimage and of becoming pervade her entire production. An Italian Scot who discovered Buddhism at the age of fifty and learned to appreciate change, Pia continued to write about migration as a painful experience both in prose and in verse. It was in 2021—when she was still enjoying the success of Keeping Away the Spiders—that she wrote The Immigrant’s Song: although the English language has the power to unite individuals from different countries, the idea of “distance,” of incommunicability, marks the closing lines of the poem,355 which shows that she will never forget the time when she was a victim of isolation and prejudice in the city where she was born. Yet, despite the numerous hardships that she had to face during her life, she finally achieved a great professional success and she is now what she has always wanted to be. Keeping Away the Spiders represents a further  Guidi, “La morte di Joe Pieri.”  See Pieri, The Scots-Italians, 10. 354  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 21. 355  Anne Pia, “The Immigrant’s Song,” in Anne Pia, Dragons Wear Lipstick (Edinburgh: Dreich, 2022), 12. The closing lines read: “I learned that I will never close the distance. / Though I did learn English / at school, / with you.” 352 353

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exploration of her fluid self; as regards The Sweetness of Demons, it represents not only an emotional response to Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal, but also her highest tribute to French culture. Starting from the first pieces of poetry that she composed in 2015, and her decision to write her Candid Life-Memoir, her growing popularity provides clear evidence that she is an appreciated author, who is taking new and more challenging directions. She spoke about her first literary ventures at the Paisley Book Festival in Edinburgh in March 2022.356 On that occasion, she shared the main elements which marked the passage from professional to creative writing, also the doubts and difficulties that she had to face. Interestingly, it stemmed from “a period of crisis” and from the illuminating exchanges that she had with a poet.357 From that moment on, verse writing has been at the heart of her creative universe, which she harmonically combines with prose: this was true in 2017 when she concluded every key section of Language of My Choosing with a poem,358 and in 2020 when she incorporated her first responses to Baudelaire’s Les fleur du mal in her Essays on Breaching Barriers.359 A voracious reader who loves poets who can express the “tenderness” of Scotland, Pia has recently defined her writing as the product of a research process, of “something” that first “grabs her” and then “becomes familiar” to her. Far from being a continuous flux, poetry in particular “comes in spurts” and absorbs her completely.360 Thus, a complex author who is aware of the distinctive elements of her creative universe, but who can also give voice to her sense of national belonging. The collection of poems dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1587), which she first published in Northwords Now in 2020361— 356  See Alistair Braidwood, “Shaping Scotland’s Stories from Inspiration to Publication,” Paisley Book Festival, March 14, 2022, YouTube video, 1.01: 1.52, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=mHYcmHhZvgQ. Accessed 31 May 2023. 357  6.45: 7.54. 358  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 35–36, 43, 57–58, 86–87, 100, 111, 143, 205–208. The titles of her poems are respectively Viticuso, 1913 and 2005, Italian Odyssey, The Man Who Was My Father, Maria Coletta: 1888 to 1964, Mandolin Annie, Les Tuileries, Paris, The A68 and Love Songs. 359  Pia, Keeping Away the Spiders, 41–42. 360  Anne Pia, “Poetry, Diversity and Survival: Anne Pia in Conversation with Peter Burnett,” March 13, 2021, YouTube video, 1.58: 4.21, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ogTVZTvfbvE&t=244s. Accessed 31 May 2023. 361  Anne Pia, “Mary Queen of Scots 1542–1587,” Northwords Now 39 (2020): 34. The titles of the five poems are Le Dernières Heures: The Last Hours, Seton, Carberry’s Ghost, James’ Bible, J’ai Promis Pour Vous: Last Words.

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also the sections in Keeping Away the Spiders where she describes the natural beauties of Holy Isle362 and of the Hebrides363—may be considered tributes to Scotland. However, it is undeniable that after Language of My Choosing she created new opportunities to value her Italian heritage and praise the dignity of her Italian family. The short story entitled New Country,364 for instance, begins in medias res—“And so, in 1912 they went north!”365—and immediately shows the immense treasure of experiences that her grandparents had to leave behind when they decided to settle in Leith. It was made up of religion and superstition, of strong family bonds and simple but tasty dishes: the young couple’s story in Scotland was clearly “a brave but not a romantic one.”366 As Pia recounts, they finally had success and even changed the face of Leith Walk. This was originally the area in Edinburgh where newcomers used to settle, but which is now the very heart of the city: markedly multicultural and blending different flavours, it contributes to the shaping of a welcoming and inclusive society even today. Interestingly, Pia shared her first reflections about the transformative power of international, syncretic forms of cuisine in Language of My Choosing. “A first-hand account of life in an immigrant family and a portrayal of the changing Scottish Italian community over a forty-year span,”367 it discusses basic but fundamental issues such as identity, becoming and especially belonging. In this respect, this debut work reminds us of most Italian British literary narratives, which aim to provide encouraging models of resilience in difficult times. Points in common apart, Language of My Choosing is truly unique. It is divided into six sections which significantly incorporate the concept of “light”—Backlights—Backdrop to My Life, Highlights—Spotlights— Footlights—and express the author’s desire to explore the main phases of her life. Initially following a chronological order, the twenty-three chapters in these sections uncover the most hidden aspects of Pia’s past, while questioning and deconstructing numerous commonplaces about Scotland and southern Italy. The product of her solid cultural background and of a 362  See Pia, Language of My Choosing, 161–169; and Pia, Keeping Away the Spiders, 139–140. 363  Pia, Keeping Away the Spiders, 84–87. 364  Pia, “New Country,” Northwords Now 38 (2019): 20. 365  Ibid. 366  Ibid. 367  Pia, Language of My Choosing, 11.

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thorough linguistic research, Language of My Choosing also shows how she learned to accept and love herself: This very tentative work of mine, written for Camilla, Roberta and SophieLouise, my daughters, also describes a journey, my own one, carved from a similar place of confusion. More especially, it is my journey of distancing from self-dislike, from the feeling of being unlovable, to a feeling that I matter; that I am beautiful and good, that people are grateful that I am around, that I add something to their lives. For in my early years, I had none of it; and through the years, from earliest times, from the impossibility to the certainty, that out of everyone in the room, he or she, she or he, would maybe choose and fall in love firstly and only with me. Stumbling forward, digging, foraging, colliding and raking through my mind and feelings, I designed that journey. I tried to find a positive narrative for every experience. I learned from them all and mostly from the bad ones. From the few shreds of confidence within me, believing in whatever encouragement I got, words, an expression or the look in the eye of a teacher, a friend, a kindly adult from that other community and not that of my birth, I found the strength to move away and beyond what was toxic and negative; moving upwards, building on those faint traces, making a life, and an increasingly solid self. The writing of this book in itself has been self-making, a hard process of reconciliation mainly with myself, and also with the world, the one I was born into and the one I have lived in. The writing has brought perceptions and insights into my choices and what I rejected, seeing my journey as affirmation, putting things in order and in their place. I have been weakened, and at times strengthened, heartened and amused. There have been few of my questions left unanswered, however painful the realisations. In talking about it to close friends and family, I have been tearful with laughter; at other times, at my desk or in some coffee shop, I have stopped writing, sat back, trembled at the enormity, at the unexpected admissions, unable to stand up. Whatever else that can be said about this discourse, it is at least honest. I have described this building of a self in each of the scenarios charted in the individual chapters … the enormous influence of my Italian grandmother, a wise wartime survivor, for she offered both a structure and a vision; the effect on me of the males of my childhood, crude, violent, disrespectful of women, and only by virtue of their feeble gender, their attempts at the subjugation of us women who were more able than them. I have talked about my conflicted relationship with Italy, my adoption of Scotland and my choices as to how to fit with that other society; my clear view of the imperfect norms of both and the limitations of each respective culture; my

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undeniable ethnicity, my rejection of it, my decisions as to what I retain of it and what of it I proudly present to the world, my unconscious acting out of it; the power of my French experience, how it changed my life through a first valuing and love of me and the learning about so much of life that came with it; my contested relationship with my mother and with those around her, our love, together with our resentments; her and my failures each of us to the other, mother and daughter both; my spiritual awakening through boarding school, music, song, by way of a discipline that through containment, like slow Mozart, leads to a beautiful blossoming of emotion, of soul and eruptions of sensuality; my convent education, the people within it that showed me another way of living, a refinement, a civility; who gave me poetry, music and art; and my path from there to Buddhism, to a clearer eye with which to see. And now, finally, I turn to the task of describing my womanhood, complex, profoundly personal, exposing, but it is what I must do for this account to be authentic and truthful, and of the ultimate defining experience of motherhood. In the first canto of The Paradiso, Dante is overcome with awe at the task facing him, of trying to quantify the most absolute, intense loving experience of his life journey. Before he begins the climactic, final act of his poem, he invokes the help of Apollo, son of Zeus. I am not sure how much Apollo actually helped out as bidden, for I believe that the masterpiece that Dante left us is a testament to his own genius and not that of a Roman god, despite his association with all that we find in The Paradiso, music, poetry, truth, prophecy and healing. But as for myself, I certainly know how inadequate I feel at this moment.368

Commenting on the greatness of Dante and experiencing the painful implications of the “poetics of the ineffable,” Pia thus combines important elements of the history of the Italian community in Edinburgh with the most distinctive elements of her transnational condition. Her other books, Keeping Away the Spiders, The Sweetness of Demons and Dragons Wear Lipstick definitely represent further and more important steps in her never ending process of reconciliation with the past and with herself. The short pieces that she wrote in 2021, and which are still unpublished—On Home (Scotland), On Home (Italy) and Becoming and Belonging (France)369— confirm her natural ability to adapt to different cultural contexts and her  Ibid., 171–173.  As has been said, Anne Pia composed these three short pieces of prose for the webinar entitled Plurilingualism, Becoming and Belonging, which she held at the University of Catania on 13th April 2021. 368 369

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openness to other European civilisations. Committed to breaking down all forms of barriers, she is certainly one of the most promising literary voices in Scotland today. 9. Robert Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart (2019) Published in 2019 and 2020, Robert Rossi’s Blood and Heart trilogy provides further evidence of the intellectual liveliness of the region. In line with the Italian British writers who wrote about the Italian community during the Second World War, he too, at a certain point in his life, decided to contribute with his family memories. For Laura Pasetti, who staged A Bench on the Road in 2015,370 this is crucial to promoting a deeper understanding of contemporary history and creating “a common background.”371 And it is in this perspective that Rossi’s biographical fiction should be read: Italian Blood British Heart is dedicated to the forgotten hero Dennis Donnini (1925–1945),372 whose family originally came from the Garfagnana area in Tuscany. Building upon his studies on Italian migration particularly to England and Scotland, Rossi started writing about him in 2018 after he discovered their kinship ties. As he proudly claims,373 he always remained close to his family roots, returning to Italy on holiday every year. It was on these occasions that he appreciated the rich cultural traditions of the Tuscan village of Barga, also the way its community supported intellectuals and writers like Joe Pieri, Bernard Moscardini and Antonio Nardini (1922–2020), whose civic engagement and works have contributed to maintaining the links between the Garfagnana area and Britain. 370  As the website of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura explains, “A Bench on the Road is the result of research commissioned in 2013 by the University of Edinburgh under the ItalianScottish Research Cluster project (ISRC). The script, written by Laura Pasetti, is based on archival items held by the ISRC […] and […] tells the stories of six Italian women from 1850 to 1950.” See https://iicedimburgo.esteri.it/iic_edimburgo/it/gli_eventi/calendario/abench-on-the-road.html. Accessed 31 May 2023. 371  Laura Pasetti, “A Bench on the Road,” February 5, 2015, Vimeo video, 0.38: 0.40, https://vimeo.com/118804273. Accessed 31 May 2023. 372  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 3: “For Dennis Donnini, VC. 19 years old and less than 5 feet tall, this boy was a mountain of a man. He was the youngest soldier in the Second World War to be awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for bravery in the face of the enemy. This novel is dedicated to his memory.” 373  The information about Rossi and his work is contained in an email exchange with the author of this book dating 11 July 2022.

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Indeed, Rossi was born in Glasgow to Bargan parents who owned a fish and chip shop. Insisting that he should not follow them in the catering business, they gave him the opportunity of a privately funded education, thanks to which he had a different and more rewarding career. From this point of view, they probably shared the same dream as the Continis in Edinburgh, who equally supported their children’s higher education in the hope that they could have a better future. Although Contini and Rossi finally made different professional choices, at a certain point in their lives they became involved in writing, which they consider a tool to convey a positive vision of their transnational identities. Grateful for everything Scotland has given him, today Rossi in particular feels “proudly Scottish, also proudly British.”374 He started from Italian Blood British Heart to re-enact the early phases of emigration to Scotland, and more importantly to show the hardships that the barghigiani had to face even after they arrived in the West of Scotland. Despite the fact that the first part of the story—Italian Blood—is set in the imaginary hamlet of Valbona, the descriptive passages and the references to the rites of the local population are all inspired by Barga.375 Made up of historical facts and imagination, Italian Blood British Heart was conceived to defend the beauties and cultural dignity of the little hamlet, while giving shape to strong Italian characters.376 Fredo Baldini, for instance, the protagonist’s father, was very young when he left for Scotland, but he already had a realistic vision of the cultural limitations of the world in which he had grown up: referring to the “prima notte” custom, for instance, he utterly condemned it,377 claiming that he was confident that Scotland would be more civilised.378 Evidence of his strength and courage can be found in the way in which he lived his long and difficult process of integration: within this perspective, Fredo’s financial success in the late  Ibid.  See Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 377. The Author’s Note reads: “The village of Montecino and the town of Valbona cannot be found on any map. They exist in my imagination, although they are closely based on hamlets and hill towns in Garfagnana in Tuscany which I have visited so often and which have impacted greatly in my life. The town of Errington is also in my imagination and it is typical of many coal mining towns in Scotland and the North East of England.” 376  “A New Novel. Robert Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart”, Barganews, April 20, 2019, https://www.barganews.com/2019/04/20/robert-rossi-a-new-novel-italian-blood-british-heart/. Accessed 31 May 2023. 377  See Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 19. 378  Ibid., 30. 374 375

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1930s379 and his interment experience on the Isle of Man380 are perfectly in line with the majority of Italian Scottish literary narratives. Centred on Dennis Donnini, the second part of the novel, British Heart, re-enacts the most tragic phases of the Second World War. The young soldier lost his life in Stein, a little village on the border of Holland, after fighting strenuously against the enemy: Rossi’s narrative—which incorporates the family memories of the Donninis and some war incidents in Scotland381—also mentions PoW camps in Poland like Stalag XX-A, as well as the Norwegian towns of Narvik and Bogen.382 Compared to Pieri in Isle of the Displaced or Ghiringhelli in A British Boy in Fascist Italy, the narrator offers few details about the military routine in the camps and in the trenches, even though the burden of death is heavy also in this novel. Taken from Chapter 24—“World War 2—Thomas’ Story”—the following extract powerfully reprises the last moments of Donnini’s life. Here he is called Thomas and he is Fredo’s youngest son, but what is more important, he is the only war victim of the Baldini family: In a flash Thomas was on the move and the other three followed. Other soldiers behind followed too. Machine gun fire continued relentlessly. Within moments Thomas fell to the ground. “Thomas’ been hit,” said Willie. “Let’s pull him back.” Momentarily Thomas’ world went black. His brain was in overdrive. He was in a dark tunnel with a fleeting light. His last memory was standing up from the trench and rallying the charge forward. Suddenly the light was switched on. “For Christ’s sake, leave me, Willie.” he shouted to his pal. Thomas lashed at Willie as he made it to his feet. Instinctively his charge continued. He threw a grenade through the window of his target house. He fell to the ground awaiting the explosion. He glanced round, his pals were on the ground too, rifles cocked ready to fire at anything that moved. Further back towards the trench, support was following. There was an explosion at the target. He stood, tossed another grenade through a second window of the target. Another explosion. Momentarily there was silence. Now he felt the pain, but he knew the house was no longer sniping. His pain had eased. He wiped the blood from his face.

 Ibid., 238–239.  Ibid., 301–310. 381  Rossi, email to author. 382  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 253–259. 379 380

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Behind the houses he saw them fleeing. They were running scared through the back gardens. The noise was intensifying, bullets continued to whizz by. In the distance the booms of the battle raged on. Body carnage and relentless chaos everywhere. He ran to a birch tree, Willie and Davie, too, but Jack was nowhere to be seen. “He must have been hit,” said Davie. He glanced at Thomas. “You’re soaked in blood, pal, ye cannae see.” “I’m fine, man. That barn over there,” shouted Thomas. “Go!” As they ran across the open space heavy fire continued to rain on them. He was bleeding profusely but he made it, Willie too. Again he swiped the blood away from his eyes and glanced back. Davie was lying in the mud. He was still moving, he was still alive. Thomas dropped his rifle. He zigzagged out into the space. He scooped up his pal. He carried him to the safety of the barn. “You’re only five fit tall, but wae the strength of an ox, ye can dae anything,’” shouted Willie. His adrenaline pumping, he made himself ready. Bren gun in his right hand and his grenades within easy reach, Thomas looked out from the side window. The enemy trenches were just a few yards away. They were there, a squad of snipers. He noticed McFadzean limping towards the barn with his own squad. “Ready, Willie. One chance only!” Thomas never waited for any response. Armed with his rifle and grenades he ran out, Willie behind him covering. He tossed the grenades one after the other, Willie fired relentlessly. From behind, McFadzean seized the moment. Thomas’ intentions were clear. There was only one response. “The machine guns at either end, now, get them, now!” he screamed to the rest of the men. His grenades launched, Thomas sprayed the trench with bullets. But his world went black again. He had been hit. He fell to the ground. He muttered to his pal, “Willie, come on.” But Willie wasn’t there. A spark of light and he staggered up again, his Bren gun still firing at the trench. He felt into his left pocket, one more grenade. He retrieved it. As he put his hand skywards to release it, his world went black again. This time he collapsed in stages. Firstly his ankles gave way. He sank to his knees in defiance. Thomas was an easy target and a final flurry of bullets followed. His young obliterated body, completely immersed in blood and now minus a right arm, finally collapsed to the ground. The light in Thomas’ tunnel never switched on again.

***

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In his report of the battle, Sergeant McFadzean wrote, “Fusilier Thomas Baldini was an extraordinary soldier. Despite his small stature he was tough, brave and demanding. He assumed the leadership role to his other young colleagues, he defied the odds and sacrificed his young life. In and around the villages of Lind and Stein the enemy had twice as many soldiers defending their positions. As a result of his determined actions, he drew the enemy away from their positions that enabled the remainder of the platoon to capture the villages mentioned. This was vital to the eventual success of Operation Blackcock. The fighting was at point blank range, man to man. He even had the courage to return one of his colleagues to safety before proceeding with his task. This young man exemplified the spirit of The Royal Scots Fusiliers.”383

A plurilingual and hybrid novel, which combines different forms of writing, Rossi’s debut novel finishes with a story of bravery and injustice: the young hero, in fact, was awarded the prestigious Victoria Cross several years after he died because of his Italian origin.384 On the 78th anniversary of his death, Rossi urged the centres of Barga and of Sommocolonia— where the Donnini family still reside—to pay tribute to his memory. Italian Blood British Heart was followed by Jewish Blood Italian Heart in 2020. Loosely based on the migratory paths of Luigi, Rossi’s paternal grandfather, it is initially set in Barga and depicts the condition of poverty in the Garfagnana area.385 Here too facts and fiction are tightly intertwined. The Rossis are Tuscan, but, although the name of the author’s grandmother was Giuditta Abrami, there is still no evidence that she was Jewish386: ideally following in Luigi’s footsteps, the protagonists of this new novel emigrate to far distant countries “in search of a British passport.”387 They will find better prospects of life in their adoptive cities, Buenos Aires, New York and Glasgow. Despite the hardships that the two world wars caused, the concluding chapter reinforces the image of Gigi as an  Ibid., 351–353.  “A 78 anni dalla morte dell’eroe di guerra Dennis Donnini,” Il Giornale di Barga e della Valle del Serchio, January 19, 2021, https://www.giornaledibarga. it/2021/01/a-78-anni-dalla-morte-delleroe-di-guerra-dennis-donnini-347042/. Accessed 31 May 2022. 385  Rossi, Jewish Heart Italian Heart. Apart from a map of the Garfagnana area, the hamlet of Barga is mentioned throughout the novel, beginning from p. 5. 386  Rossi, email to author. 387  Ibid. 383 384

  Appendix: Authors, Texts and Contexts 

287

invisible but extraordinary man. His motto—“Work hard, forge ahead, ensure you make the best of your life”388—represents another positive model of courage and strength in our contemporary and multi-ethnic world. One of the latest Scottish writers of Italian origin, Robert Rossi has recently embarked on a new project. The third novel of the Blood Heart series, Italian Blood American Heart, focuses on the Barga emigrant diaspora to the United States, which shows his commitment to revive the painful past of the little hamlet, as well as his praise of its inhabitants’ dignity. Although he cannot foresee his future as a writer after he finishes his trilogy, he will continue to promote Italian culture.

Bibliography Primary Sources Contini, Mary. Dear Francesca. An Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love. London: Ebury Press, 2003. Contini, Mary. Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006. Coraggioso, Cagliardo (D’Agostino, Eugenio). Wandering Minstrel. New Edition by Carlo Pirozzi. Woking: Nielsen Book Services, 2018. Di Mambro, Ann Marie. Tally’s Blood. Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2012. Evaristi, Marcella. Commedia. Edinburgh: The Salamander Press, 1983. Forte, Charles. Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte. London: Pan, 1986. Iacucci, Carlo, Maggie Rose and Wilma Starke. Walking Through Stones. Milano: Ledizioni, 2019. Pia, Anne. Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life Memoir of an Italian Scot. Edinburgh: Luath, 2017. Pia, Anne. “New Country.” Northwords Now 38 (2019): 20. Pia, Anne. Keeping Away the Spiders. Essays on Breaching Barriers. Edinburgh: Luath, 2020. Pia, Anne. “Mary Queen of Scots 1542–1587.” Northwords Now 39 (2020): 34. Pia, Anne. Dragons Wear Lipstick. Edinburgh: Dreich, 2022.  Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart, 297.

388

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Pieri, Joe. The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2005. Joe Pieri, The Bigmen. Personal Memories of Glasgow’s Police. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2011. Kindle. Pieri, Joe. Isle of the Displaced. An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War. Glasgow: Neil Publishing, 2014. Kindle. Rossi, Robert. Italian Blood British Heart. Independently Published, 2019. Kindle. Rossi, Robert. Jewish Heart Italian Heart. Independently Published, 2020. Kindle. Tognini, Piero. A Mind at War. An Autobiography. New  York: Vantage Press, 1990. Secondary Sources Angeletti, Gioia. Nation, Community and Self. Female Voices in Scottish Theatre from the Late Sixties to the Present. Milano: Mimesis, 2018. Colpi, Terri. “Chaffs in the Winds of War? The Arandora Star, Not Forgetting and Commemorating at the 80th Anniversary.” Italian Studies 75, no. 4 (2020): 389–410. Colpi, Terri. “Navigating Italian Migration to Scotland: Richard Demarco and the Ricardian Road.” In Richard Demarco. The Italian Connection, edited by Laura Leuzzi, Elaine Shemilt and Stephen Partridge, 5–24. New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2022. De Luca Christine and Carlo Pirozzi, eds. Paolozzi at Large: Artworks and Creative Responses. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2018. Dente, Carla. “Personal Memory / Cultural Memory: Identity and Difference in Scottish Migrant Theatre.” In Performing National Identity: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions, edited by Manfred Pfister and Ralf Hertel, 197–212. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2008. Duncan, Derek. “‘The Path that Leads Me Home’: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Arts of Transnationalizing.” In Transcultural Italies, Mobility, Memory and Translation, edited by Charles Burdett, Loredana Polezzi and Barbara Spadaro, 127–154. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020. Farrell, Joseph. “Tallies and Italians: The Italian Impact on Scottish Drama.” In A Theatre That Matters: Twentieth-Century Scottish Drama and Theatre. A Collection of Critical Essays and Interviews, edited by Valentina Poggi and Margaret Rose, 121–134. Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 2000.

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Horn, Pamela. Pleasures and Pastimes in Victorian Britain. Stroud: Amberley, 2011. Horvat, Ksenija. “Varieties of Gender Politics, Sexuality and Thematic Innovation in Late Twentieth-Century Drama.” In The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, edited by Ian Brown, 295–303. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Leuzzi, Laura, Elaine Shemilt and Stephen Partridge, eds. Richard Demarco. The Italian Connection. New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2022. Lombard, Maria D. Motherhood, Identity, Belonging, and Displacement in Global Context. Lanham: The Rowman & Littlefield, 2022. Maguire, Tom. “Women Playwrights from the 1970s and 1980s.” In The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama, edited by Ian Brown, 154–164. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Masson, Souhir Zekri. “‘Real Men Mark their Territory!’ Spatial Constructions of Masculinity in Joe Pieri’s Autobiographical Narratives,” European Journal of Life Writing 8 (2019): 47–68. Masson, Zekri, Souhir. “Autobiography through Anecdotes in Joe Pieri’s Isle of the Displaced.” European Journal of Life Writing 9 (2022): 120–134. Pedriali, Federica G. and Carlo Pirozzi, eds. No-Where-Next—War-Diaspora-Origin. Dominic Scappaticcio. A Journey (1946–1947). Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2013. Reid, Trish. The Palgrave Macmillan Theatre & Scotland. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. Rinaldi, Giancarlo. From the Serchio to the Solway. Dumphries: Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, Information & Archives, 1998. Rose, Margaret and Emanuela Rossini. “In Conversation with Ann Marie Di Mambro.” In A Theatre That Matters: Twentieth-Century Scottish Drama and Theatre. A Collection of Critical Essays and Interviews, edited by Valentina Poggi and Margaret Rose, 232–236. Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 2000. Scullion, Adrienne. “Contemporary Scottish Women Playwrights.” In The Cambridge Companion of Modern British Women Playwrights, edited by Elain Aston and Janelle Reinelt, 94–118. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Sponza, Lucio. Divided Loyalties. Italians in Britain during the Second World War. Bern: Peter Lang, 2000. Sponza, Lucio. “The Internment of Italians in Britain.” In Enemies Within. Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad, edited by Franca

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Iacovetta, Roberto Perin and Angelo Principe, 256–279. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. “The New Books.” The Saturday Review of Literature 19 (1938): 42. Thorneycroft, Lord Peter. “Foreword by Lord Thorneycroft.” In Charles Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, ix-x. London: Pan, 1986. Unwin, Peter. Newcomers’ Lives. The Story of Immigrants as Told in Obituaries from The Times. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Wren-Owens, Elizabeth. “Remembering Fascism: Polyphony and its Absence in Contemporary Italian-Scottish and Italian-Welsh Narrative.” Journal of Romance Studies 15, no. 1 (2015): 73–90. Zucchi, John. The Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London and New  York. Montreal, London, Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press: 1992. Web Resources “A 78 anni dalla morte dell’eroe di guerra Dennis Donnini.” Il Giornale di Barga e della Valle del Serchio, January 19, 2021. https://www.giornaledibarga.it/2021/01/a-78-anni-dalla-morte-delleroe-di-guerradennis-donnini-347042/. “A New Novel. Robert Rossi, Italian Blood British Heart.” Barganews, April 20, 2019. https://www.barganews.com/2019/04/20/robertrossi-a-new-novel-italian-blood-british-heart/. Braidwood, Alistair. “Shaping Scotland’s Stories from Inspiration to Publication.” Paisley Book Festival. March, 14, 2022. YouTube video, 1:52:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHYcmHhZvgQn. Brown, Ian. “Tally’s Blood and the Tyranny of Love.” Presentation, ASLS School Conference, December 11, 2013. YouTube video, 35:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqh9Y7tMvys. Colpi, Terri. Made by Italo-Scots. The Italian Factor in Scotland Today. Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament, 2003. https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/ imports/fileManager/16th%20April%20Scottish%20Parliament%20 paper.pdf. Devine, Cate. “Queen’s Birthday Honours: OBE for Herald Food Columnist Mary Contini.” The Herald, October 9, 2020. https://www. heraldscotland.com/news/18784224.queens-birthday-honours-obeherald-food-columnist-mary-contini/. Drysdale, Neil. “Behind the Scenes of the Groundbreaking Gaelic TV Series Machair with the Man Who Created It.” The Press and Journal

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Evening Express, May 25, 2020. https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/ fp/past-times/2207157/behind-the-scenes-of-the-groundbreakinggaelic-tv-series-with-the-man-who-created-it/. Evaristi, Marcella. “Voci della Val di Vara in Scozia.” Interview by Terri Colpi. October 4, 2016. Vimeo video, 38.48–49.30. https://vimeo. com/185454244. “GCU Celebrates the 25 Years of Tally’s Blood.” March 1, 2016. YouTube video, 3:25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAWcxglXWW8. Guidi, Flavio. “La morte di Joe Pieri, memoria della storia dell’emigrazione barghigiana in Scozia.” Barganews.com, April 7, 2012. https://www. barganews.com/2012/07/04/la-morte-di-joe-pieri-memoria-dellastoria-dellemigrazione-barghigiana-in-scozia/. Horvat, Ksenija. “Scottish Women Playwrights Against Zero Visibility: New Voices Breaking Through.” Études Écossais 10 (2005). https:// journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/157. “Joe Pieri.” The Herald, July 26, 2022. https://www.heraldscotland. com/opinion/13066589.joe-pieri/. MacPhail, Iain. “Paolozzi & the Arandora Star Shine on Kenmure Street.” Bella Caledonia, June 1, 2021. https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2021/06/01/ paolozzi-the-arandora-star-shine-on-kenmure-street/. McLeod, David. “Violent Anti-Italian Riots in Edinburgh Recalled 80 Years On.” Edinburgh Evening News, June 10, 2020. https://www. edinburghnews.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/retro/ violent-anti-italian-riots-in-edinburgh-recalled-80-years-on-2879748. Mourray, Scougall. “Forgotten Notes Inspire Life and Cooking Writer Mary Contini to Chart Family’s Epic Journey.” The Sunday Post, October 10, 2017. https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/forgotten-notesinspire-italian-life-and-cooking-writer-mary-contini-to-chart-familys-epic-journey. Pasetti, Laura. “A Bench on the Road.” February 5, 2015. Vimeo Video, 2:46. https://vimeo.com/118804273. Pia, Anne. “Poetry, Diversity and Survival: Anne Pia in Conversation with Peter Burnett,” March 13, 2021. YouTube video, 12:20. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ogTVZTvfbvE&t=244s. “The Brothers Who Walked Here from Italy. Story 1, Mary Contini.” The Herald, January 16, 2005. https://www. heraldscotland.com/news/12408258.the-brothers-who-walked-herefrom-italy-story-1-mary-contini/.

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“The Integration Game: How Italo-Scots Shaped Our Nation,” The National Scot, June 25, 2018. https://www.thenational.scot/ news/16310896.integration-game-italo-scots-shaped-nation/. “The Italian Connection: A Success Story,” The Herald, December 21, 1991. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12650306. the-italian-connection-a-success-story/. Tomlinson, Logan. “Mary Contini OBE.” Inspirational Women Webinar Series, Saint Margaret’s School for Girls, March 25, 2021, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA3gZV5sfFQ&t=127s.

Index1

A Aberavon (Neath Port Talbot – Wales), 29, 45, 71, 83, 96, 220 Charlotte Street, 83 High Street, 83 Margam Terrace, 83 Vivian Square, 83 Water Street, 83 Abercarn (Monmouthshire – Wales), 40 Aberdare (Rhondda Cynon Taf – Wales), 72, 237 Aberdeen, 99 Aberfoyle (Perthshire – Scotland), 76 Abruzzo / Abruzzi, 56, 117n22, 132, 248, 270 National Park of Abruzzo, 55, 118n11, 120, 120n28 Addis Abeba, 38n79 Adriatic, sea, 58n15 Afan Valley (Port Talbot – Wales), 71 Africa East Africa, 41 Northern Africa, 106

Alatri (Frosinone – Lazio), 118n11 Albericci, Angelo, 44 Alfonsi, Ferdinand, 4 Dictionary of Italian-American Poets, 4 Alien Immigration Act, 31 Aliens Order, 36n67 Alighieri, Dante, 146 The Paradiso, 281 Alloa (Clackmannanshire – Scotland), 256–258, 276 La Scala Cinema, 256 Mill Street, 256 Savoy Café, 256, 258 Alps, 31, 67 Alta Terra di Lavoro (historical region), 55 Alvito (Frosinone – Lazio), 120 America / The United States / North America, 6, 7, 29, 75, 115, 115n2, 145, 157, 210, 213, 228, 230, 287 Americas (continents), 28, 67, 118

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. D’Amore, Literary Voices of the Italian Diaspora in Britain, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35438-0

293

294 

INDEX

Amritsar Massacre, 213 Andreoni, Giovanni, 5 Anglo-Italian Worker’s Association, 198 Antonio, Saint, 69 Anzani, Decio, 198 Apennines, 55, 61, 61n36, 120n28 Apollo, 281 Apuan Alps, 61 Arandora Star, 2, 10–12, 43–45, 79, 83, 101, 177, 194, 198, 218, 219, 224, 227, 235, 260, 264 Arandora Star Memorial Fund, 45n114, 218, 218n120, 226 Arcari, Anita, 6, 10, 26, 27, 29, 53, 56, 57, 59, 67, 71, 72, 93, 116, 118–120, 125, 160, 161, 219, 232–235, 268 Arcari, Angela Rosa, 233 Arcari, Sabatino, 233 The Arcaris, 233 Penny Farthing, 235; The Rinaldis (Italian family), 235 The Boys of Old Kilvey, 235 The Hokey Pokey Man, 10, 26, 27, 56, 57, 59, 71, 72, 93, 116, 119, 120, 125, 160–162, 219, 232–235; D’Abruzzo, Raffaele, 30, 31; D’Abruzzo, Tino, 27, 29, 36, 56, 67, 72, 94, 127, 161, 233, 268; Beppe (Tino’s friend), 160, 233–235; Carlotta (Beppe’s wife), 234; Giuseppe, Zi (Tino’s uncle), 94, 161, 162; Grillo (Tino’s friend), 30; Kathleen (Tino’s Irish friend), 162; Janey (Zi Giuseppe’s wife), 162; Mario (Tino’s fiancée), 27; Palace Café, 233; Salv (Zi Giuseppe’s worker), 162; Serafina (Tino’s wife), 31 Arcari, Vincenzo, 56 La storia di Picinisco, 56

Arcari, Virginia, 56, 247 Picinisco, 56 Arden, Elizabeth (cosmetics company), 123 Arditi del popolo (Italian anarchist movement), 195 Argyll, 79 Ariosto, Ludovico, 240 Armani, Giorgio, 48 Arnold Bennett Society, 240 Arpino (Frosinone – Lazio), 119, 119n22, 119n23, 249 Ascot (Berkshire – England), 43 Associazione Italiana Combattenti, 36 Atina (Frosinone – Lazio), 53n4, 55, 56, 59, 208, 225, 252 Atlantic (ocean), 10, 32, 151, 184, 200, 229, 261 Auchinleck (Ayrshire – Scotland), 76, 260, 261 Auld Lang Syne (Robert Burns’s song), 254 Australia, 6, 7, 39, 73, 79, 168 Austria-Hungary (Austro-Hungarian Empire), 34 Aveyron (Rodez – MidiPyrénées), 85 Ayr, 259 Ayrshire, 78 B Babel, Tower, 164 Bacchionero (Lucca – Tuscany), 21, 60, 61 Bagni di Lucca (Lucca – Tuscany), 61 Baker, Mary (cake mix), 139 Banca Romana, 27 Banwen Valley (Neath Port Talbot – Wales), 71

 INDEX 

Bardi (Parma – Emilia Romagna), 9, 29, 53, 63–66, 71, 90, 96, 117, 177, 184, 195, 203, 220, 228, 237, 239 Bardi Castle, 53, 63, 64, 240 Court of Justice, 64 Piazza del Mercato, 64 Piccolo bar, 66 Town Hall, 64, 70 Barga (Lucca – Tuscany), 9, 32, 39, 53, 58–63, 90, 90n9, 99, 149, 167, 177, 200, 200n66, 203, 204, 207, 259, 274, 275, 282, 283, 286, 286n385, 287 Riccardo’s (restaurant), 274 Barilla, 101 Barlinnie (prison), 79, 260, 261 Barolini, Helen, 4 The Dream Book, 4 Basile Green, Rosa, 4 The Italian-American Novel, 4 Baudelaire, Charles, 14, 278 Les fleurs du mal, 14, 278 Baynes, Rosalind, 269 Beatles, The A Hard Day’s Night (film), 110, 228 Help! (film), 110, 228 Beckett, Samuel, 254 Bedford, 91 Bedlington, 184, 200, 203 Benedetti, Nicola, 276 Bennett, Arnold, 240 Berry, Mary, 139 Bertoia, Rando, 44 Bertrand, James, 120 Besagni, Bruno, 194 Besagni, Olive, 29, 69, 122, 125, 185, 186, 194, 195, 198 A Better Life. A History of London’s Italian Immigrant Families in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the 19th & 20th Centuries, 27, 120, 123, 183, 192, 198; Balestrieri,

295

Sig.na (teacher at the Italian School of London), 122; Chiapponcelli, M., Sig.na (teacher at the Italian School of London), 122 Biggar (Lanarkshire – Scotland), 258 Bird’s custard, 139 Birmingham, 30n24, 56, 209 Bordesley Street, 56 Black, Jeremy, 103 Boer War, 270 Bogen (Straubing-Bogen – Germany), 284 Bologna, 48, 253 massacre, 47, 47n131 Bombi, Raffaella, 150, 150n41 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 64 Marie Louise (wife), 64 Borghetto di Vara (La Spezia – Liguria), 262 Borgo a Mazzano (Lucca – Tuscany), 61, 62 Ponte della Maddalena, 62 Borgo Val di Taro (Parma – Emilia Romagna), 195 Bourbon, dynasty, 55, 64 Bracchi, Giacomo, 29, 29n19, 101, 237, 239 The Bracchis (family), 96, 237 Bradford, 37, 38 Bradshaw, Sophie, 204 Brecon (Brecknockshire – Wales), 230 Briggs, Asa, 228 Britain / Great Britain / The UK, 1, 2, 2n3, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34, 38–41, 40n92, 41n97, 45n114, 46, 53–85, 90, 91, 93, 96, 100, 107, 111, 115, 116, 124–134, 145n1, 146, 150–152, 159, 160, 168, 175, 177–179, 184, 190, 192, 194, 200, 203, 205, 208–210, 213–215, 219, 233, 245–247, 259, 270, 273, 274, 282

296 

INDEX

British Empire, 31 British Parliament, 31 Brixton Prison, 83 Brooks, Mel, 231 Brown, Ian, 263 Bryden, Bill, 263 Buddhism, 13, 131, 277, 281 Buenos Aires, 286 Burnett, John, 259 England Eats Out: A Social History of Eating Out in England, 259 Burslem (Stoke-on-Trent), 129 Burton, Richard, 111, 230n168, 231 Bury (Greater Manchester), 79, 205 Redvales, 79 C Cabot Strait, 79 Cacharel, 124 Cadbury UK Ltd, 97 Caine, Hall, 37 Caira (Frosinone – Lazio), 243n223 Calabria, 119 Calais, 33, 67 Caledonian University, 264 Campania, 56, 119, 134, 155, 158 Campari Club, 105 Campoli Appennino (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4 Camp S / Camp 43 (Île St. Hélène – Canada), 80, 82, 146, 168, 169 Canada, 6, 11, 39, 43, 73, 79, 82, 146, 154, 168, 179, 260 Cannero (Varese – Lombardy), 35, 67, 177, 186–190 Cannobio (Varese – Lombardy), 67 Canterbury, 188 Canton, Licia, 4 Here & Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian Canadian Writing, 4 Capaldi, Peter, 110

Caporetto (battle), 35 Cardiff, 41, 42, 45, 64, 68–73, 110, 121, 132n93, 218, 222, 227, 230 Carmarthenshire (Wales), 232 Carnival, 120, 120n25 Casa italiana San Vincenzo Pallotti, 185 Casalattico (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4, 257 Casalvieri (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4 Cassino (Frosinone – Lazio), 118n11 Castel Gandolfo (Rome), 48 Castletown (Isle of Man), 81 Castro dei Volsci (Frosinone – Lazio), 58 Catholicism, 41, 129n81, 131, 151, 251 Cattolica (Rimini – Emilia Romagna), 260 Ceno, river, 63–66 Ceno Valley (Parma – Emilia Romagna), 63–66 Cento Lumi di Barga (Association), 200 Cervaro (Il Cervo) (Frosinone – Lazio), 57 Cervi, Orazio, 270 Cesereto (Bardi – Parma), 3, 65 Champlain, Samuel de, 80 “Chat chip” (English fryer), 99 Chetail, Vincent, 33 Chezzi, Bruna, 59n21, 110, 218n119, 219, 219n122, 227n156, 232n178 Churchill, Sir Winston, 41, 169, 235 Ciano, Count Galeazzo, 40, 206, 260 Cicero, 119n23 Ciociaria (district – Lazio), 55, 118, 120n25, 134 Civita Castellana (Viterbo – Lazio), 38 Civitavecchia (Rome), 67 Clapton, Eric, 111

 INDEX 

Clyde, river, 76, 79, 206 Cockenzie (East Lothian – Scotland), 73–78, 98, 268, 269, 272 Cohen, Robert, 186n15 Collemorelle (Frosinone – Lazio), 59, 224, 225 Colleruta (Frosinone – Lazio), 57 Collier, Catrin, 220 One Blue Moon, 220 Collins, Joan, 230n168 Collins, Michael, 195, 197 Colonna, dynasty, 58 Colpi, Terri, 2, 7n22, 8n23, 9, 10, 35, 43n106, 89, 105, 121n32, 132, 152, 181, 220, 244n227, 245, 251, 253, 259 The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain, 8n23, 9 Voci della Val di Vara in Scozia (oral history project), 251 Comino Valley (Frosinone – Lazio), 9, 55, 56, 58, 120n28, 136, 225, 246, 247, 252 Compiano (Parma – Emilia Romagna), 65 Connery, Sean, 231 Conservative Party, 40 Conti, Tom, 110 Contini, Mary, 6, 10, 11, 20, 26, 32, 35, 36, 40, 46, 53, 54, 57, 67, 100, 101, 107, 116–118, 122, 123, 126, 127, 134, 137, 138, 150, 156, 157, 180n12, 235, 244, 246, 247, 267–271, 283 Contini, Carlo, 84, 150, 268 Conturso, Annunziata, 138 Crolla, Alfonso, 33, 67, 75, 97, 119, 126, 130, 151, 268 Crolla, Benedetto / Zio / Uncle Benny, 33, 97 Crolla, Giovanni, 33, 74

297

Crolla, Emidio, 33, 34, 67, 74, 135, 152, 159 Crolla, Filomena, 127, 135 Crolla, Maria, 35, 36, 74, 121, 122, 122n36, 130, 148, 148n24, 159 Crolla, Olivia, 84 Di Ciacca, Anna, 46, 123 Di Ciacca, Cesidio, 34, 75, 98, 246, 269–272 Di Ciacca, Marietta, 46, 75, 98, 267–270 Francesca (Contini’s daughter), 269, 270 Johnny (Contini’s father), 268, 270, 271 Hilley, Gertrude, 268 Olivia (Contini’s daughter), 130 The Di Ciaccas, 90 Dear Alfonso. An Italian Feast of Love and Laughter, 20, 32n44, 46, 54, 123, 138, 150, 157 Dear Francesca, an Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love, 20, 32n44, 150, 244, 267–271 Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage, 26, 32, 32n44, 33, 36, 40, 57, 67, 73, 97, 116, 118–121, 122n40, 123, 126, 135, 151, 152, 157, 159, 267, 268, 271; Cockenzie Café, 272; Dougal, Tommy, 98; Pietro (Alfonso Crolla’s friend), 135, 151; Tadon Michele (farmer), 33 Easy Peasy! Real Cooking for Children, 269 The Italian Sausage Bible, 150 Valvona and Crolla: A Year at an Italian Table, 150 Coreglia Antelminelli (Lucca – Tuscany), 60

298 

INDEX

Corelli, Marie, 37 Corpus Christi (festival of the Roman Catholic Church), 127 Corsonna river, 61 Cottrau, Teodoro, 159n101 Santa Lucia (song), 159, 159n101, 252 County Cork, 197 Covid-19, 48 Coward, Noël, 163 Crewe (Cheshire – England), 73 Crispi, Francesco, 27, 28, 30 Cristoforo d’oro (prize), 39 Cruciani, Raffaela, 10, 27n7, 55, 56, 151, 166, 167, 184, 208–211 An Owl in the Kitchen. The Discovery of My Italian Heritage, 10, 27n7, 55, 166, 185, 208, 211; Gizzi, Nunziato, 55, 56, 208; Grilli, Maria, 55, 208 Culliford, Penny, 181 Grimaldi’s Last Act, 186n15 Saffron Hill, 181, 181n17, 186n15 Cumnock (East Ayrshire – Scotland), 260 Cwm (Blaenau Gwent – Wales), 73, 102, 110, 228, 231 Cwmyrdderch Infants School, 229 Cynon Valley, 71 Cyrenaica, 189 D D’Acierno, Pellegrino, 4 The Italian American Heritage. A Companion to Literature and Arts, 4 D’Agostino, Eugenio (Coraggioso, Cagliardo), 38, 53, 57, 58, 73, 90, 92, 93, 159, 176, 180n13, 246–250 D’Agostino, Leonard, 246

Rosalinda (D’Agostino’s granddaughter), 250 Wandering Minstrel, 53, 57, 92, 159, 246, 247, 250; Cellini, Antonio, 249; Fuoco, Dominico, 248; Rosie (Cellini’s wife), 249; Tascarino, Cesare, 92, 247–250 Daily Mail, 205 Dalì, Salvador, 111 Dante, Alighieri, 146, 160, 160n111, 240, 281 The Paradiso, 281 De Calce, Fiorella, 211 Vinnie and Me. A Novel, 211; Andretti Vinnie, 211; D’Angelo, Piera, 211 Delay, Cara, 127, 128n68 Defence of the Realm Act, 42 De Fina, Anna, 155 Demarco, Richard, 13, 45, 109, 244, 245 De’ Medici, Lorenzo, 240 Dench, Dame Judith, 140 Denza, Luigi, 158 Funiculì, funiculà (song), 158 de Rosa, Domenica / “Elly Griffiths,” 8, 8n23, 11, 44, 95, 150, 156, 180 de Rosa, Felice, 8n23 One Summer in Tuscany, 180n14 Return to the Italian Quarter, 180n14 The Eternal City, 180n14 The Italian Quarter, 8, 44, 95, 150, 156, 180; di Napoli, Cesare, 44, 156 Villa Serena. Falling in Love Italian Style, 180n14 Deschambault-Grondines / Deshamboult (Quebec), 80 Diamond Jubilee, 31 Di Ciacca, Cesidio (Mary Contini’s brother), 246

 INDEX 

Di Mambro, Ann Marie, 11, 41, 58, 122n40, 127, 129, 132, 156, 159n101, 165, 180, 244, 245, 251, 263, 264, 267 Collar the Lot to Tartan Shorts, 267 Hocus Pocus, 263 Joe, 263 Machair, 266 Tally’s Blood, 11, 41, 58, 122n40, 126, 129, 132, 159n101, 165, 244, 263–267; Devlin, Hughie / Hugh, 165; Ianelli, Lucia, 58, 127; Ianelli, Luigi, 58, 165; The Ianellis, 58; Pedreschi, Massimo, 42, 126, 165; Pedreschi, Rosinella, 42, 126, 127, 132, 165, 264; Santoni, Angelo, 265; Santoni, Mario, 265 The Letter Box, 263 Donnini, Dennis, 168, 169, 282, 282n372, 284, 286, 286n384 Douglas, Anne, 8, 181 Ginger Street, 8, 181 Douglas (Isle of Man), 11, 43, 82 Derby Castle, 82 Dover, 33, 54, 67, 126, 152, 159 Church of St. Mary in Castro, 68 Duiliani, Mario, 4 Dumfries (Dumfriesshire – Scotland), 46n119, 95n32, 98n49, 248n243, 258, 260n303, 276 St. Joseph’s College, 258 Dundee, 35n62, 95 Dunfermline (Fife – Scotland), 264 Dye, Nathalie, 8, 43, 181 Arandora Star, 8, 43, 181; Prien, Gunther (captain), 43, 44 E Earl of Mar and Kellie, 257 Ebbw Vale (Monmouthshire – Wales), 73, 228

299

Eck, Lock, 79 Edinburgh, 31, 32, 33n62, 34, 39, 43, 44, 51, 64, 71, 73, 82, 83, 91, 93, 95, 98–101, 119, 121, 122, 125, 135, 151, 157, 163–165, 241n221, 242, 243, 245, 252, 254, 256, 267, 268, 276, 277, 279, 281 Barbican Hotel, 74 Café Hall, 36 Easter Road, 75 Elm Row, 75 Great Junction Road, 75 Green’s Furniture Store, 74 Leith, 75 Leith Walk, 74, 279 Newhaven Road, 75 North British Hotel, 84 Palais de Danse, 74 Playhouse Theatre, 74 Portobello, 75 Princes Street, 73, 84 Queen Victoria Statue, 75 Rossie Place, 75 St. Margaret’s Convent (Catholic school), 126 St Mary’s Cathedral, 74 St. Mary’s Star of the Sea (church), 75 Trinity House, 75 Waverly Bridge, 73 Waverly Station, 73, 84 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 251 Elizabeth II, queen, 180 Emanuelli, Hector (Etto/Ettore/ Ettorino), 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 53, 63, 64, 66, 72, 82, 92, 100, 103, 110, 122, 123, 129, 180n12, 184, 202, 203, 219, 224, 236, 240, 262, 238, 239 Emanuelli, Giovanni, 122 Hulse, Joan, 66 Luigino/Louis (Emanuelli’s brother), 164, 238

300 

INDEX

Emanuelli, Hector (Etto/Ettore/ Ettorino) (cont.) Pain’, Zio (Emanuelli’s uncle), 65 Tedaldi, Carolina, 122 A Sense of Belonging. From the Rhondda to the Potteries: Memories of a Welsh-Italian Englishman, 6, 40, 72, 82, 123, 129, 164, 184, 202, 236, 240, 262; Camparini, Alma, 123; Camparini, Irene, 123; “Dai Fourpence” (Emanuelli’s friend), 238, 239; Gazzi (shop owner), 237; James, Etta, 238; Moroello (ghost), 65; O’Connor, Father (Catholic priest), 129; Ryan, Father (Catholic priest), 129; “Sid the Cobbler” (Emanuelli’s friend), 238, 239; Soleste (ghost), 65; The Paddock (ice-cream shop), 103; “Thomas Three-­ Farthings” (Emanelli’s friend), 239 Brief Encounters: Some Recollections of Adventures and Brief Encounters whilst Walking in Austria, Portugal and Italy, 240 Emilia (Emilia Romagna), 63–66, 178, 206 South-Western Emilia, 9 England, 3, 9, 12, 28, 29, 32, 39, 41, 53, 54, 56, 58, 66, 73, 89, 91, 99, 106, 129, 164, 166, 178, 183, 184, 187, 199, 204, 207, 209, 210, 233, 235, 236, 238, 239, 246–250, 282, 283n375 North East of England, 283n375 North of England, 32, 99 North-Western England, 29 South of England, 166

English Channel, 12, 27, 54, 67, 68, 188, 207 Ethiopia / Abyssinia, 27, 30, 37, 41, 222 Ettrick (River-class frigade), 79, 168 Europe, 36, 72, 107, 231, 237, 247, 274 Evans, David, 226, 227 Evaristi, Marcella, 11, 26, 47, 48, 159n101, 180, 244, 245, 250–253, 255 Arturo (grandfather), 252 Silvia / Frank (cousin), 252 Commedia, 11, 26, 47, 159n101, 250–252; Cesare / Ces (Elena’s elder son), 47, 71, 253, 254; Davide (Italian teacher), 47; Elena (protagonist), 47; Gianna (Cesare’s wife), 48; Stefano / Stef (Elena’s younger son), 48, 253, 254; “Tony the Tally” (soap-opera character), 253–255 Dorothy and the Bitch, 244, 251 Hard to Get, 251 Mouthpieces, 251 Scotia’s Darling, 251 Evening Standard, The, 93 F Farese, Gian Marco, 153 Italian Discourse: A Cultural Semantic Analysis, 153 Fargioni-Tozzetti, Giovanni, 120 In Ciociaria: ricordi di usanze popolari, 120 Farnese, dynasty, 64 Fascism, 12, 38n82, 39, 100, 184, 206, 212, 233, 250 Balilla, 154

 INDEX 

Campo Mussolini, 40 Casa d’Italia/Casa del Fascio/Casa Littoria, 38–40, 235 Fascist Party, 39 Fawkes, Sandy, 192 Fellini, Federico, 47 Ferrari, Lilie, 26, 48, 68, 70, 125, 160, 186, 194, 196, 197, 200–202, 218 Angelface, 194; Peretti, Marionetta, 195 EastEnders, 201; Di Marco, Guiseppe (sic), 199; Di Marco, Rosa, 199; The Di Marcos, 199; The Mitchells, 199 Fortunata, 26, 48, 68, 125, 160, 161, 194, 195, 198, 199; Antonio (Viazzani’s son), 198; Eduardo (young anti-fascist activist), 196; Florio, Giuseppe, 197; Florio, Serafina, 161, 195–197; O’Connell, Joe, 195; Terroni, Mr (member of the Italian Community), 198; The Terronis (family), 198; Vialli, Fortunata, 48, 69, 161, 195–199, 214; Viazzani, Signora (member of the Italian community), 198 The Girl from Norfolk with the Flying Table, 199 The Interrupted Bride, 199 Ferrari, Stan, 194 FIAT (Italian Automobiles Factory of Turin), 34 Fiesole (Florence), 66 Fines, Eugène François, 120 First World War, 27–35, 97, 99, 122, 146, 153, 189, 228, 235, 237, 274 Firth of Forth, 75 Fiuggi (Frosinone – Lazio), 118n11

301

Fiumicino (airport), 225 Flaiano Prize, 245 Florence, 59, 66, 106, 239 Folkestone, 205 Fontechiari (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4 Fontitune (Frosinone – Lazio), 57, 135, 137, 268 Fornovo di Taro (Parma – Emilia Romagna), 65 Forte, Lord Charles, 91, 106, 129, 180n13, 190, 255–259, 276 Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte, 255; Cairns (ironmomger in Alloa), 256; Dominic (Forte’s uncle), 258; Dow (butcher in Alloa), 256; Fiddler, Miss (Head of Forte’s kindergarten), 257; Lee, John, 107; Meadow Milk Bar, 106; Rosso, Leonard, 258; Stanton (grocer in Alloa), 256; Stocco (patron of the Café Anglais), 190 Forte, Rocco (Charles Rocco’s father), 106, 257 Forte, Sir Rocco (Charles Rocco’s son), 107 Forte Group, 91–92, 107, 258 Forth, river, 256 Fortier, Anne-Marie, 45, 194 Fracassi, Cristoforo, 206 France, 27, 28, 67, 68, 85, 124, 131, 145, 170, 179, 187, 206, 207, 213, 220, 221, 228, 277 Fraser, Julie, 267 Fredrick Hotel Ltd, 106 Frosinone, 27n3, 55, 56, 118n11, 119n22, 120, 120n25, 218 Festa della Radica, 120 Piazza del Plebiscito, 120 Frost, David, 228 Fry, Joseph & Sons, 97

302 

INDEX

G Gabaccia, Donna, 115, 134 Italy’s Many Diasporas, 115 Gallinaro (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4 Gandhi, 211 Gardaphé, Fred L., 4, 7 Garfagnana, district (Lucca – Tuscany), 58–62, 95, 118, 155n72, 200, 282, 283n375, 286, 286n385 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 27, 153, 185n7 Gatti, Carlo, 94 Gauloises Bleues, 124 Gemin, Giancarlo, 8, 11, 180, 227 Cowgirl, 180 Sweet Pizza, 8, 11, 180; Perelli, Vito, 227 The Valleys of Venice: Memories of an Italian Immigrant in Wales, 8, 227 Genoa, 66, 154, 214 George V, King, 153 Germany, 34, 212 Ghiringhelli, Peter, 10, 43, 45, 184, 201, 204, 205, 207, 208, 284 A British Boy in Fascist Italy, 10, 185, 206, 208, 209, 284; De Micheli, Pancrazio, 204; Fortunelli, Clara, 204 Granelli, Elena, 38 Natural History of the World, 206; Rivolta, Roberto, 204 The New Pictorial Atlas of the World, 206 Giacometti, Alberto, 243 Gigli, Beniamino, 122n40 Giovinezza (song), 122n40 Giuseppe, Saint, 55, 56, 126, 152 Glasgow, 30n24, 35, 35n62, 39, 42, 45, 45n114, 73, 75n118, 76, 77, 84, 93, 95, 96, 98, 100, 101, 123, 126, 165, 167, 169, 206,

250–253, 255, 257, 261, 263, 264, 266, 272, 273, 275, 283, 286 Alexandra Parade, 261 Atholl Arms (public house), 77 Carntyne, 261 Central Station, 77 Cowcaddens, 76–78, 167, 273 Dennistoun, 261 Dixon Blazes, 76 Garngad, 273 Garscube Road, 77 George Square, 35 Glen Afton (public house), 77 Gorbals, 76, 84, 126, 273 Guy’s (public house), 77 Hope Street, 77, 78 Lauders (public house), 77 Park Circus, 39 Provanmill, 261 Renfield Street, 76 Renfrew Street, 77, 78 Riddrie, 261, 276 Sauchiehall Street, 76 St. Francis (Catholic school), 126 St. Thomas’ (church), 276 St. Vincent Street, 77 Surrey Street, 76 The Canasta (trattoria), 103 Wemyss Street, 77 West Nile Street, 77 Glenbranter House / Camp 6, 79 Glenbranter (Lock Eck – Argyll and Bute), 79 Golden Jubilee, 94, 162 Gourock (Inverclyde – Scotland), 79 Granada plc, 107 Grandi, Dino, 38, 40, 40n92, 215 Granelli, Roger, 13, 110 Great Depression, 36 Grezzo (Parma–Emilia Romagna), 29, 220, 239 Gualtieri, Francesco, 4

 INDEX 

H Habsburg Empire, 154, 154n65 Hail Mary (Catholic prayer), 126, 152n50 Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada), 81 Harrison, George, 230n168 Harrogate, 106 Heathrow (airport), 106, 205, 276 Herald’s, The, 268 Himalaya, 163 Hitler, Adolf, 44, 167 Holland, 284 Hollywood, 111 Holy Isle, 279 Horn, Pamela, 246 Pleasures and Pastimes in Victorian Britain, 246 Houses of Parliament (Palace of Westminster), 30 Hughes, Colin, 63, 96, 220, 227, 231 Lime, Lemon & Sarsaparilla. The Italian Community in South Wales 1881-1945, 29n19, 96, 220, 227, 231 Hughes, Melanie, 48, 70, 122, 150, 186, 200, 211, 214, 218, 268 Bacchiochi, Giuseppe, 214 Beatrice (Hughes’s Italian great-­ aunt), 214 Sybilla (Hughes’s Italian great-­ aunt), 214 Dehli–City of Spies, 215 Midnight Legacy, 215 Mrs Fisher’s Tulip, 214 War Changes Everything, 48, 70, 122, 150, 186, 213, 216, 217, 268; Barroni, Yolanda, 48, 122, 211, 213, 214; Serracante, Juanita/Nita, 70, 211, 214, 215 Hugo, Victor, 37 Hunt, Holman, 270 Huyton (Merseyside, England), 43

303

Hymn of Garibaldi, 153n60 Hymn of Mameli, 153n60 I Ice Age, 95 Île St. Hélène, 146 India, 213, 215 India League, 213 Irish Sea, 81 Irwell, river, 79 Isle of Colonsay, 45 Isle of Lewis, 266 Isle of Man, 11, 39n83, 43, 63, 73, 79, 81, 82, 82n159, 101, 168, 179, 190, 205, 219, 220, 223, 240, 250, 262, 276, 284 Istituto italiano di Cultura (Italian Cultural Institute), 186n15, 282n370 Italian Armed Forces, 34 Italian Association of Ice-cream Vendors, 95 Italian Benevolent Society, 185 Italian Flag Day, 122 Italian resistance (anti-fascist movement), 195n45 Italo-Scottish Research Cluster (University of Edinburgh), 245, 282n370 Italy (Italia) / Central Italy / Northern Italy, 2, 5, 8, 9, 12, 15, 25–32, 27n7, 28n9, 34, 35, 38–40, 38n79, 46–48, 47n131, 53–85, 90, 91, 106, 116, 125, 126, 128–130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 139, 148, 150, 151, 175–177, 180, 186, 189, 191, 195, 200, 200n64, 201, 204, 205, 207–210, 212, 219, 220, 222–229, 231, 232, 236, 240, 247, 248, 250, 253, 255, 260, 262, 267, 269, 272–277, 279, 280, 282 Italy, Kingdom, 59

304 

INDEX

J Jacques Cartier (bridge), 80 Jesus Christ, 151n42, 284 John o’ Groats (Caithness – Scotland), 153 Juvenal, 135 K Kent, 188, 233 Kilmarnock (Ayrshire–Scotland), 76 King Bomba (Italian deli in London), 195, 196 Knorr Unilever, 139 Kochan, Miriam, 81 Britain’s Internees in the Second World War, 81 L La campana di San Giusto (patriotic song), 153 Lady of Mann (ship), 43 La gazzetta di Parma, 231 Lancashire, 205 Lancet, The, 93 Landi dynasty, 64 La Prairie (Quebec), 81 Largs (Ayrshire–Scotland), 275 La Spezia, 61n36 Lattoni, Liborio, 4 Lawrence, D.H., 269, 270 Lazio, 9, 13, 14, 27, 27n4, 33, 56, 57, 119, 120, 136, 177, 218, 225, 269, 276, 276n350 south-eastern Lazio, 55 southern / south of Lazio, 9, 13, 14, 27, 33, 53–58, 119, 155, 208, 224, 246, 257, 263, 268, 270 League of Nations, 38, 38n79 Lean, Sir David, 140

Lee, Jeremy, 191 Leeds, 37, 95, 184, 205–207 Lennon, John, 230n168, 231 Leoni, Peppino, 11, 35, 38, 67, 68, 82, 101, 106, 117, 158, 176, 180n12, 186–190 I Shall Die on the Carpet, 11, 106, 158, 186–190 Quo Vadis (restaurant), 82 Le Serre (Frosinone – Lazio), 57 Lichfield Mercury, 209 Liguria, 65, 67 Lima, river, 61 Limentani, Uberto, 44 Lind (The Netherlands), 286 Liri Valley (Frosinone–Lazio), 55, 58n15, 119n22 Lisbon, 206 Little Chef (motor road cafeteria chain), 276 Little Italy (Birmingham), 207 Little Italy (London), 30, 33, 68–70, 160, 185, 194, 198, 209 Little Switzerland (Isle of Man), 82 Littlewood, Joan, 110, 230n168, 231 Liverpool, 45, 79, 95, 101, 169 Llanelli (Carmarthenshire–Wales), 29 Llanharan (Rhondda Cynon Taf – Wales), 84, 101 The Swallow Café, 101 Llwynypia (Rhondda Cynon Taf– Wales), 164 Loanhead (Midlothian–Scotland), 257, 258 Lollobrigida, Gina, 47 Lombardy, 67, 178, 188, 207 London, 8, 9, 14, 29n21, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39n83, 45, 48, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 82, 83, 84, 92, 93, 93n21, 94, 95, 97, 99, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 110, 121, 122, 125, 126, 134,

 INDEX 

160, 161, 169, 174, 176, 181, 185, 185n7, 186, 186n15, 187, 189, 190, 192, 194, 195, 198, 199, 200, 206, 210, 212, 214, 218, 222, 230, 233, 234, 252, 258, 270, 276 Café Anglais, 190 Cavalli’s (men’s club), 105 Charing Cross, 188 Clerkenwell-Holborn, 68 Clerkenwell Road, 30, 69, 192 Croydon, 205 Dean Street, 189 Earls Court, 70 Euston Station, 206 Eyre Street Hill, 192 Farringdon Road, 69, 193 Finsbury Town Hall, 70 Fitzrovia, 99 Frith Street, 105, 191 Fulham-Hammersmith, 104 Godolphin & Latimer School, 214 Grenville Street, 93n21 Hippodrome Place, 127 Holborn, 93 Islington, 193 Judd Street, 212 King’s Cross, 68, 73 La Terrazza (restaurant), 104 Leather Lane, 92 Leicester Square, 190 Mornington Crescent, 70, 213 north-west London, 30 Old Compton Street, 70, 104, 191, 195, 196 Piccadilly, 35 Pottery Lane, 127 Queen Square, 30, 190 Regent Street, 258 Rosberry Avenue, 193 Saffron Hill / Back Hill / The Hill / The ’ill, 69

305

St. Francis Church, 126 St. Peter’s school, 30 Soho, 104, 140, 161, 185, 189–191, 194–196, 213 Sorrento’s (club), 105 Tottenham Court Road, 188 Tower Bridge, 30 The River Café, 104 The Waldorf (hotel), 106, 212, 258 Westbourne Grove, 104 London Stock Exchange, 276 Loren, Sophia, 47 Lorraine, Sir Percy, 206 Los Angeles (LA), 254 Lothian, East, 268 Lovatt, Steven, 227 An Open Door: New Travel Writing in a Precarious Century, 227 Lucca, San Donato (district), 53, 59–62, 203, 218 Luino (Varese–Lombardy), 67, 67n67 Lunigiana (Italian historical region), 95 Lybia / Tripolitania, 189 M MacIntosh / Macintosh, Hon. Hugh D., 106 Madonna del Rosario (Catholic feast, Manchester), 121 Madonna di Canneto (Catholic feast, Picinisco), 120 Madonna, The, 69, 121, 126, 131 Maes, G.B.L. (painter), 120 Maggiore, lake, 35, 67, 187, 206 Magnani, Anna, 231 Maguire, Tom, 250 Maialata, La (the feast of the pig), 120, 120n29 Maindy Barracks (Cardiff), 42 Mamma Ciociara (monument), 58

306 

INDEX

Manchester, 30n24, 34, 35, 40, 45, 95, 121, 205 Great Ancoats Street, 35 Manifesto of Fascist Racism, 207 Margam (Glamorgan – Wales), 71, 221 Marx, Karl, 189 Mary, Queen of Scots, 278 Masanti di Sotto (Parma – Emilia Romagna), 64 Massa Carrara, 59 Masson, Souhir Zekri, 272, 273 Mastroianni / Mastroiani, Marcello, 47 Mayhew, Henry, 28n10 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 93, 93n21 Mazzini-Garibaldi Club, 198 McCartney, Paul, 230n168 McCormick, C. A., 5 Mediterranean, Sea, 11, 54, 117, 138, 162 Meltis factory, 133 Melua, Katie, 111 Menon, Krishna, 211 Meta, mount, 56, 57 Micheli, Renato, 122n40 Faccetta nera (Fascist song), 122n40 Middlesborough, 45 Millau (L’Aveyron–France), 85 Minnesota, 32, 272 Modena, 59 Molise, 56, 119, 120n28, 134 Mollarino, river, 57 Monforte (Frosinone–Lazio), 175, 256, 257, 276 Monmouth (Monmouthshire – Wales), 163, 230 Monmouthshire County Council, 110 Monte Cassino (Frosinone– Lazio), 53, 57, 58, 58n15 Montpellier, 85, 124, 170 Montreal, 80, 81

Moraglio, Massimo, 67 Morecombe Bay (Cumbria– Lancashire), 29 Morris, Jan, 227 Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, 227 Morriston (Swansea–Wales) High Street, 83, 233 Woodfield Street, 233 Moscardini, Bernard, 53, 59, 62, 149, 154, 154n65, 180n13, 184, 200–204, 207, 259, 282 Aldo (Moscardini’s brother), 192, 201 La Vacanza, 62, 154, 185, 200–205, 207; Lombardi, Monsignor (provost), 62; Nella (family friend), 203 Mother Theresa, 223 Mozart, 281 Musadino (Varese–Lombardy), 206, 207 Mussolini, Benito, 37–41, 37n76, 38n79, 38n82, 39n83, 45, 58, 62, 78, 100, 154, 167, 189, 205–207, 222, 234, 260 (Il / The Duce), 37, 38, 154, 207 N Naples, 54, 55, 118n11, 119n22, 134, 138, 155, 159n101 Nardini, Antonio, 275, 282 Navirk (battle), 169 Neath (Port Talbot – Wales), 71 Nehru, 211, 213 Nemi (Rome), 195, 199 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 208 Newhaven, 75, 92 Newport Carlton College, 220 Newport Docks, 108

 INDEX 

New York, 34, 254, 286 Nice, 127 Norfolk, 186 Northern Ireland, 8 Northwords Now, 278 Nottingham, 91 Nova Scotia (Scotland), 81 Noveglia, river, 66 Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR), 47n131 O Oggi. Settimanale di spettacolo e di letteratura, 47, 47n129 Onchan Camp (Isle of Man), 82 Ordine della Corona d’Italia, 35 Orioles, Vincenzo, 150 Orton, Marie, 6 Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives, 6 Ortona, Egidio, 206 Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Catholic feast in London), 198 P Paisley Book Festival, 278 Palace Camp (Isle of Man), 82 Palladino, Pino, 13 Palleroso (Lucca – Tuscany), 59, 78, 259 Paolini, Stefano, 44 Missing, Presumed Drowned. A True Story of the Internment of Italians Resident in Britain during the Second World War, 44 Paolozzi, Eduardo, 243, 243n220, 243n223, 244 I Was a Rich Man’s Plaything, 243n220 Manuscript of Montecassino, 243

307

Wittgenstein at Cassino, 243, 243n223 Paolucci di Calboli, Raniero, 93 I girovaghi italiani in Inghilterra ed i suonatori ambulanti, 93 Parati, Graziella, 6 Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives, 6 The Cultures of Italian Migration, 6 Paris, 26, 65, 83, 219, 268 National Library / Bibliothèque Nationale, 85 Tuileries gardens, 85 Parma, 28, 29, 29n17, 53, 63, 117, 184, 240 Parma, Duchy, 63 Parry, Stephen, 71 Pasetti, Laura, 282, 282n370 A Bench on the Road, 282, 282n370 Paul II, John (pope), 48 Peel (Isle of Man), 82 Pelosi, Paulette, 53, 58, 123, 134, 137, 219, 223–227 Carmela (grandmother), 137 Mario Luigi (father), 224 Schoolbooks in Spaghetti Paper, 59, 134, 137, 223–227 Penna, mount, 65 Pen Pych / Penpych (Rhondda Cynon Taf – Wales), 72, 237 Pesaro, 61n36 Pescara, 40 Peterborough, 91 Peveril Camp (Isle of Man), 82 Pia, Anne, 6, 14, 46–48, 53, 58, 83, 85, 89, 92, 102, 103, 108, 115, 123, 124, 126, 130, 131, 133–136, 139, 145, 147, 149, 151, 152, 156, 157, 160, 160n111, 166, 170, 177n10, 184, 211, 244, 245, 251, 264, 277–281, 281n369 Camilla, Roberta, 280

308 

INDEX

Pia, Anne (cont.) Sophie-Louise (Pia’s daughters), 280 Rico (Pia’s uncle), 108 Rossi, Mariuccia, 108, 151 The Rossis, 136, 137 Dragons Wear Lipstick, 281 Keeping Away the Spiders. Essays on Breaching Barriers, 85, 124, 170, 277–279, 281 Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot, 6, 57, 85, 109, 124, 131, 133, 134, 136, 157, 166, 170, 244, 245, 264, 277–280; The Copper Kettle, 102, 103, 166 New Country, 279 On Home (Scotland), On Home (Italy), Becoming and Belonging (France), 177n10, 281 The Sweetness of Demons, 14, 277, 278, 281 Piacenza, 64, 221 Picinisco (Frosinone), 9, 27, 27n4, 31, 33, 53–59, 55n4, 67, 92, 99, 127, 134, 135, 137, 153, 157, 177, 208, 209, 224, 232, 233, 268–271 Picinisco Millennium Foundation, 246 San Giuseppe (church), 55 Pickfords (moving company), 193 Piedmont (Italian region), 67 Pieri, Joe, 6, 13–15, 28, 32, 39, 41–43, 45, 53, 59–62, 75n118, 76, 77, 79–82, 84, 91, 96, 98, 100–102, 109, 129, 132, 146, 155, 160, 166–169, 176, 180n12, 180n13, 184, 200, 211, 219, 244, 245, 251, 259, 269, 271–275, 276n350, 277, 282, 284 Maria (Pieri’s mother), 32

Pieri, Francesco, 32 Pieri, Ralph, 100 The Pieris, 76, 90 Isle of the Displaced. An Italian Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War, 14, 37, 41, 43, 46, 58, 74, 148, 167, 168, 200, 209, 267, 272, 273, 282; Agostini, John, 81; Barletta, George, 81; “Big Emma” (Tuscan widow), 167, 168, 273; Bonorino (captain), 154, 155; “Festa” (Italian prisoner), 81; Martinez, George, 81; Vinden (captain), 154, 155; von Werra, Franz, 81 River of Memory. Memoirs of an Italian Scot, 60, 274 Tales of the Savoy. Stories from a Glasgow Café, 76–77, 167, 273; Petri, Francesco, 77; Sadie (customer), 77; The Savoy, 76, 77, 256 The Bigmen, 77, 273, 274 The Octopus. The Story of the Sicilian Mafia, 274 The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant, 6, 13, 26, 28, 43, 244, 245, 271–275, 277; Camillo (typical Italian name in Glasgow), 275; Casci, Castelvecchi, Di Fazio, Fazzi, Liverani, Nardini, Padiani, Pieri, Togneri, Vezza (typical Italian surnames in Glasgow), 275; Di Tano, Marcello, 275; The Castelvecchis (Italian café owners), 275; The D’Artinos (Italian family), 123; The Nardinis (Italian café owners), 275; The Pelosis (Italian family), 123 Wheel of Fortune, 274

 INDEX 

Pious XII (pope), 276 Pirandello, Luigi, 186n15 Pirozzi, Carlo, 244n225, 246 Pisa, 62, 66 Pivato, Joseph, 4 Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian Canadian Writing, 4 Pizzo d’oca, 64 Plum Village (Buddhist Monastery), 131 Po, river, 65 Poland, 284 Polizzi, Olga, 107n100 Pont Rouge (Quebec), 80 Port Erin (Isle of Man), 81 Port Seton (Talbot), 75 Port St. Mary (Isle of Man), 81 Port Talbot, 72, 73, 126, 220–222 County Grammar, 221 High Street, 71, 83 The Globe Hotel, 71 The Grand (cinema), 72 The New Hall, 72 The Red Barn, 72 St. Joseph (Catholic school), 126 Sandfields, 45, 83 Station Road, 71, 2221 Taibach, 71 Water Street, 71, 83 Workmen’s Club, 72 Ysguthun Road, 71 Posta Fibreno (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4 Potteries, the (North Staffordshire – England), 184 Pozzuoli (Naples), 54, 138 Rione Terra, 54, 138 President of the Italian Republic, 180 Prestonpans (Edinburgh), 75 Prestwick (Ayrshire – Scotland) Ayr Road, 78 Heathfield Road, 78

309

Lilybank Road, 78 Marina Café, 78 Prifti, Elton, 4 Italoamericano: italiano e inglese in contatto negli USA, 4 Q Quaglino, Ernest, 190 Quaglino, John, 190 Quebec City, 80 Chateau Frontenac, 79–80 Queen Elizabeth (transatlantic), 81 Queen Mary, The (ship), 229 Queen Mother, 180n12, 258 Quickfit and Quartz Ltd, 237 R Rando, Gaetano, 5 Literature and the Migration Experience, 5 Rangarajan, Ra. Ki., 104 Rankin, Peter, 228 Rave, river, 57 Recchioni, Emidio (“King Bomba”), 48, 189, 195, 212, 215 Recchioni, Vero (Richards, Vernon), 212 Remus, 154 Renaio (Lucca), 61 Renaissance, The, 45–48, 125 Repubblica sociale italiana, 200n66 Rhys Davies Short Story Award, 180n180 Rinaldi, Giancarlo, 90–91, 248n243 From the Serchio to the Solway, 91, 248n243 Fusco’s (bar), 248n243 Robinson, Jancis, 194 Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover, 194

310 

INDEX

Rocca di San Pietro (castle), 58 Rogers, Allan, 214 Romagna (Emilia Romagna), 61, 63–66, 178, 206 North-Western Romagna, 54 Roman Catholic Church, 129 Rome Basilica of San Crisogono, 69 Mamiani (Liceo / High School), 258 Monte Sacro, 40, 43 Trastevere, 69 Romeo, Caterina, 5, 5n14 Interrupted Narratives and Intersectional Representations in Italian Postcolonial Literature, 5 Romulus, 154 Ronchi di Credarola (Parma – Emilia Romagna), 228 Rossi, Robert, 10, 15, 30n24, 53, 59, 61, 62, 128, 130, 155, 160, 167–169, 282–284, 286–287 Abrami, Giuditta, 286 Italian Blood British Heart, 15, 61, 128, 155, 160, 167–169, 282–284, 286–287; Baldini, Alfred, 169, 170; Baldini, Dino, 169; Baldini, Fredo, 128, 160, 167, 283, 284; Baldini, Thomas, 284–286; Catherine (Fredo’s wife), 160; Davie (soldier), 285; Errington (fictional place), 283n375; Josep (French farmer), 170; McFadzean (sergeant), 285, 286; Montecino (fictional place), 61, 283n375; Valbona (fictional place), 61, 283, 283n375; Willie (soldier), 284, 285 Jewish Blood Italian Heart, 61, 286 Rossi, Luigi, 286

Royal Academy of Music and Drama (Glasgow), 78 Royal Concert Hall (Glasgow), 77 Royal, Mount, 80, 81 Ruggiero, Salvatore, 259 Storie dalla Val Comino, 259 Russel, Bertrand, 211 Russell, Kurt, 214 S Sacraments, 127 confirmation, 127 first communion, 127, 152 marriage, 70, 128, 132, 133, 271 Sagra del Pesce e Patate (The Fish and Chip Festival), 275 St. Gotthard / Gothard (pass), 221 St. James’s Gazette, The, 93 St. Lawrence, gulf, 79 St. Lawrence, river, 80 St. Moritz, 106 St. Paul (Minnesota – USA), 32, 272 St. Peter (apostle), 30, 69 Salò (Brescia – Lombardy), 204 Salt March, 213 Salve del Ciel, Regina (Italian Catholic chant), 120n30 Salvoni, Elena, 11, 14, 32, 68, 69, 84, 103–105, 117, 139, 140, 145, 161, 180n12, 180n13, 186, 190–194, 200 Eating Famously: Elena Salvoni on Fabulous Food for her Famous Friends and Diners, 11, 14, 192 Elena. A Life in Soho, 14, 32, 186, 190, 192, 194; Aldo (Salvoni’s husband), 192, 201; Bianchi’s (restaurant), 84, 104, 105, 191; Bossi, Mr. (owner of Café Bleu), 191; Café Bleu, 104, 105, 191; Elena’s L’Etoile

 INDEX 

(restaurant), 191; L’Escargot (restaurant), 104, 140, 191; L’Etoile (restaurant), 105, 191; Nina (owner of Sorrento’s), 105; Paccino, Mr. (owner of Café Bleu), 191 San Biagio Saracinisco (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4 San Donato Val di Comino (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4, 120, 203 San Francisco, 34 San Giuseppe (Frosinone – Lazio), 55, 56, 126 San Marino, 66 San Remo (Italian music festival), 47 Sarigo (Varese – Lombardy), 207 Saturday Review of Literature, 246 Scotland, 3, 9, 12, 15, 28, 32–36, 39, 41, 46, 53, 54, 56, 70, 75, 78, 81, 83, 89–91, 97–100, 98n49, 106, 121, 123, 130, 132, 157, 160, 165, 166, 178, 183, 210, 243–244, 246–247, 250–254, 256–257, 259–264, 269–284 BBC Scotland, 91 Scoto-Italian Society, 36 Scott, Walter, 39, 104 The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 39 Scottish Parliament, 253, 276 Scottish Television Enterprises, 266 Second World War Gothic Line, 61, 62 Gustav Line, 58, 58n15 Operation Blackcock, 286 Operation Wallenstein, 63 Operation Wintergewitter, 200n66 Serbia, 34 Serchio, river, 61 Serchio Valley (Garfagnana – Lucca), 62 Servini, Les, 28, 29, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 53, 63, 64, 66, 71, 72, 79, 82–84, 92, 96, 101, 107,

311

108, 115, 117, 129, 132, 145, 147, 180n12, 219–223, 220n129, 237 Fulgoni, Caterina, 96 Lina (Servini’s aunt), 221 Maria (Servini’s aunt), 221 Maria (young Italian girl), 219 Matilde (Servini’s aunt), 221 Peppino (Servini’s uncle), 221 Teresa (Servini’s aunt), 221 Tony (Servini’s uncle), 221 The Servinis, 96 A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times, 29, 36, 37, 71, 79, 109, 145, 220, 223; Abretti, Lui, 222; Arthur (Servini’s friend), 222; Barry, Mrs (teacher), 221; Belli, Lui, 71; Bersani, Peter, 222; Bryntirion school, 108, 220; Corbezzi, John, 222; Crowley, Mrs (Head of St. Joseph’s), 221; Cyril (Servini’s friend), 222; Dunstan, Miss (teacher), 221; Eric (Servini’s friend), 222; Foley, Miss (teacher), 221; Franchi, John, 71; Frank (Viazzani’s son), 71, 252; George (Servini’s friend), 110; Greenway, Will, 221; Heolgam school, 220; Irma (Abretti’s sister), 222; Jim (Servini’s friend), 222; Llwynderw school, 220; Moruzzi, John, 71; Ryan, Mrs (teacher), 221; Salmi, Paul, 71; Segadelli (Italian shop owner), 71; Stan (Servini’s friend), 222; The Bernis (Italian family), 37, 71, 237, 239; The Rabaiottis (Italian family), 237, 239; Tony (Viazzani’s son), 71; Viazzani, John, 71, 194; Welsh, Jim, 72, 107, 116, 147, 158–168, 179, 181, 202, 221, 222

312 

INDEX

Settefrati (Frosinone – Lazio), 55n4 Seven Sisters (sea cliffs), 221 Shakespeare, William, 110, 240 The Taming of the Shrew, 231 Shankland, Hugh, 27n6, 90 Out of Italy: The Story of Italians in North East England, 90 Shaw, David, 8 Arandora Crossing: A Graphic Novel, 8 Sicilies, Kingdom, 55 Sicily, 27 Sievers, Wiebke, 6 Immigrant and Ethnic-Minority Writers since 1945, 6 Sinn Fein, 195, 197 Small Hours, The (TV series), 48 Società Dante Alighieri, 146 Società di Mutuo Soccorso (Mutual Aid Society), 36 Società italiana cuochi-camerieri, 185 Società per il progresso degli operai italiani in Londra, 185, 185n7 Somerset, 203 Sommocolonia (Lucca), 59, 62, 200, 200n64, 200n66, 201, 203, 204, 207, 286 Southampton, 214 Spanish Civil War, 212 Spar International, 111 Spinetti, Victor, 73, 90, 92, 102, 110, 111, 115, 132, 145, 163, 180n13, 219, 224, 227–232, 237 Gianina (sister), 111 Giuseppe / Joe (father), 102, 228, 230 Henry (brother), 111 Lily (mother), 73, 229 Megan (cousin), 111 Michael (Megan’s son) Spinetti, Mario, 111 Paul (Spinetti’s cousin), 111

The Spinettis, 90 This is a day for gravestones, 231 Victor Spinetti Up Front!... His Strictly Confidential Autobiography, 47, 110–111, 163, 227, 228, 230; Bersani, Peter, 222; Corbezzi, John, 222; Dicker, J.FC., Mr (Spinetti’s History master), 163; Shuffrey, Mr. (Spinetti’s French master), 163; Super Ted (Michael’s children’s book), 111; Texas Pete (Super Ted character), 111; The Marine Supper (bar), 228 Sponza, Lucio, 2, 28n10, 94, 259, 259n296, 260 Stadomelli (La Spezia – Liguria), 252 Stalag XX-A (PoW camp), 284 State of the Church, 55 Stazzema (Lucca – Tuscany), 61 Stein (The Netherlands), 284, 286 Stewart, Donald, 259 Hoteliers and Hotels: Case Studies in the Growth and Development 1945-1989, 259 Stoke-on-Trent, 40, 66 The George Hotel, 129 Goldenhill, 129 Hanley Police Station, 43 Strachur (Argyll and Bute – Scotland), 79 Stratford-on-Avon, 72 Strega (Italian liqueur), 101 Styles, Geinor, 181 The Arandora Star, 181 Sunday Express, 41 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 267 Sutherland, Scott, 104 Swansea, 31, 70–73, 83, 93, 137, 233 Swansea Bay, 71

 INDEX 

T Tambini, Giovanni, 181 Tamburri, Julian Anthony, 4, 7 From the Margin. Writings in Italian Americana, 4 To Hyphenate or Not To Hyphenate. The Italian / American Writer, 7 Taro, river, 65 Taunton, 203 Taylor, Elizabeth, 111, 230n168 Terroni, Cav. (Mazzini-Garibaldi Club, treasurer), 198 Thames, river, 104 Theatr na n’Og, 226 The Sinking of the Arandora Star, 227n156 Thich, Nhat Hahn, 131 Thomas, Dylan, 229 Tir Na n-Og Award, 180 Ti voglio amare, Maria (Italian Catholic chant), 120n30 Tognini, Piero, 53, 59, 62, 78, 79, 129n77, 259, 260, 262, 263 Amelia (mother), 259 Anita (wife), 262 Luigi (father), 259, 260 A Mind at War, 62, 259–263; Antonucci, Josephine, 260; Cruickshank, P.C. (policeman), 261; Leitch, Mrs (landlady), 260, 261 Renato (brother), 260 Tombini, Giovanni, 43, 181 Torre Montenero (Frosinone, Lazio), 249 Tosca, 259 Trafalgar (battle, square), 163 Traverse Theatre, 41, 110, 244 Traviata, La, 259 Treherbert (Rhondda Cynon Taf – Wales), 72

313

Treorchy (Rhondda Cynon Taf – Wales) Bute Street, 72 Pentre Secondary School, 238 Penyreglyn Junior School, 238 Tricolore Theatre Company, 186, 214 Trigiani, Adriana, 200, 200n63 Trois-Rivières / Trois Rivières (Quebec), 80 Tudno Jones, Mali, 181 Arandora Star, 181 Tunstall, 38, 63, 97 Gordon Pottery, 100 The John’s Temperance Bar, 99 Keel Street, 99 Wonder Bar, 100 Turchetta, Barbara, 147, 155 Turin, 34, 67 Tuscany, 58, 60, 77, 177, 198, 200, 207, 218, 282, 283n375 north-eastern Tuscany, 59 northern Tuscany, 9, 13, 32, 54, 118, 146, 155, 155n72, 201 Tynewydd (Rhonnda Cynon Taf – Wales), 164 Tyrrhenian Sea, 58n15 U Unification of Italy (Risorgimento), 9, 27, 60, 176, 275 post-unification period / times, 28, 146, 156 University of Cardiff, 59n21, 219 University of Edinburgh, 244n225, 245, 282n370 University of Glasgow, 245 V Val di Taro (Parma – Emilia Romagna), 206

314 

INDEX

Vallegrande (Frosinone – Lazio), 137 Valvona & Crolla, 74, 134, 257, 267, 268 Valvona & Sons, 100, 101 Vancouver, 184 Varese, 206 Vatican, State, 66 Ventura, Luigi, 4 Misfits and Remnants, 4 Venturini, Aniceto, 120n30 Evviva Maria (Chatholic chant), 120n30 Vesuvius, Mount, 57 Viazzani, Romano, 194 Vicari, Andrew, 13, 110 Victoria Cross, 168, 282n372, 286 Victorian Age, 68 Victoria (Queen), 31, 75 Villa Latina (Frosinone), 55–57, 55n4 Viticuso / Gl’ Vitratur (Frosinone – Lazio), 14, 137, 157 Vittorio Emanuele II (king), 153 Vlasta, Sandra, 6 Immigrant and Ethnic-Minority Writers since 1945, 6 Volkmar, Antonie, 120 W Wales, 12, 15, 28, 29, 29n19, 31, 32, 37, 39, 41, 42, 53, 54, 56, 71–73, 89–91, 93, 96, 99, 110, 129, 132, 145, 163, 164, 178, 180n15, 181, 183, 218–240, 246, 247, 249, 250

South Wales, 70–73, 95, 96, 228, 237 Wales, Solace, 203, 208 Black Gls and Tuscan Villagers on the Gothic Line 1944, 203 Braided in Fire, 203 Walkowitz, Judith, 189 Walton Gaol (Liverpool prison), 43 Warth Mills (Bury – Greater Manchester), 79, 205 Warwickshire, 209 Welsh Valleys / Rhondda Valley, 6, 9, 163 Wessendorf, Susanne, 137 Weston-super-Mare, 258 Worcester, 37 Bridge Street, 37 Wren-Owens, Elizabeth, 9, 219, 235, 272 Y York, 43 Ystradyfodwg (Glamorgan – Wales), 164 Z Zeffirelli, Franco, 230n168 Zeus, 281 Zucchi, John, 246 The Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London and New York, 246