Leonida Nikolai Giovannelli

Baron Leonida Nikolai Giovannelli was an Italian-born Manx writer and cultural activist, who published actively between the 1950s and 1980s.

Giovannelli was born in 1906 and was brought up on his family's estate in Abruzzo, Italy, before taking up a role in the Royal Italian Navy and then the Italian Embassy in London. He married an English woman, but upon the beginning of World War II, he was interned as an enemy alien in Palace Camp and then Metropole Camp in Douglas on the Isle of Man. Despite a daring escape to visit his wife in her hotel room when she visited the island, he was captured and returned to the camp, only to have his wife divorce him not long after. From this experience came a number of books, including Experiments on a Manx Hill Farm (1956) which was awarded a gold medal by the Italian Academy of Science, and Exile on an Island (1969) which was awarded the Gold Medal by the International Academy of Pontzen.

In great part due to the influence of Mona Douglas, Giovannelli developed a keen interest in Manx folklore and history, topics on which he published a number of books and lectured in a number of countries. His collections of poetry include Reminiscent Thoughts, Bizarre Thoughts and A Fleet of Thoughts. His poetry was also published in numerous other publications, including a poem recollecting his World War II internment which appeared in Manninagh edited by Mona Douglas in 1971:

Sometimes, when we go swimming, We have the illusion of freedom for an hour. The guards relax, they know we cannot swim far, And we, too, relax, lazily floating Or swimming out towards the horizon, Away from the wired enclosures on the shore, Facing the open sea, Feeling the free, salt wind, the caress of the sun on our bodies...

Giovannelli died in the 1980s.

Publications Some Experiments in Modern Technique for the Hill Farmer (1955) Experiments on a Manx Hill Farm (1956) The Manx Influence, series I (1969) The Manx Influence, series II (1970) Exile on an Island (1971) The Black Sheep (1971) Paper Hero (1971) The Manx Influence, series III (1973)