Nicholas Burgess Farrell

Nicholas Burgess Farrell (born 2 October 1958) is a British journalist working as a columnist for The Spectator. After starting his career in England at The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator, he moved to Italy, where he wrote among others for La Voce di Romagna, Libero, and Il Giornale. In Italy, Farrell is best known for his 2003 interview with Silvio Berlusconi, the then prime minister of Italy. According to Farrell, Berlusconi stated that the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini never killed anyone and that he was a benevolent dictator. Berlusconi later said that his words had been manipulated by Farrell, who stood by his reporting; the interview and other controversial statements by Berlusconi about the Italian judiciary came close to cause an institutional crisis.

During his career, Farrell's columns at Libero earned him both supporters and critics as they often aroused controversy. He also wrote several books. In 2003, Farrell wrote Mussolini: A New Life, an historical revisionist biography of Mussolini that attracted mixed-to-negative reviews; it was translated and re-published in multiple languages. In 2013, he wrote another book about Mussolini, this time in Italian, where he promoted the fringe theory that fascism and Nazism were left-wing rather than far-right. Farrell continued to work at The Spectator, where he interviewed future prime minister Giorgia Meloni in 2022 and began writing "Dolce vita" columns in 2024, reporting on local goings-on from Ravenna in his adopted home of Emilia-Romagna, having lived in the Italian region since 1998.

Early life and career Farrell was born in London on 2 October 1958. He attended The King's School, Canterbury, and studied history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, earning his B.A. on 20 June 1980. At that time, Berlusconi was in his second term as prime minister of Italy, which started in June 2001 and ended in May 2006 (of his three terms, this one was the longest), and was also the head of the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union, not releasing any interviews. The interview was published in The Spectator with the title "Forza Berlusconi!" In the interview, Berlusconi made statements that were widely summarised or reported as "Mussolini wasn't that bad" in line with the well-known Italian myth that he also did good things , including the claim that Saddam Hussein was worse than Mussolini as Berlusconi was discussing Iraq and that Italian judges were "mentally disturbed", and sparked criticism and controversy in Italy when excerpts were published. after being asked by Farrell if Mussolini was a benevolent dictator, Berlusconi was quoted as saying: "Yes ... Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday to confine them [banishment to small islands such as Ponza and Maddalena which are now plush resorts]." This view, which was defended by some of Berlusconi's supporters and Berlusconi himself within the context of a comparison to another dictator, which was also discussed in his interview with Farrell and Johnson. The one million deaths estimate was made by Mussolini biographer R. J. B. Bosworth, who cited the "atrocious massacres in Libya, Ethiopia, the former Yugoslavia" and after 1943 "of Italian Jews can all be traced back to him". Similarly, Mack Smith, an eminent historian and scholar of Italian history who reviewed Farrell's 2003 revisionist biography of Mussolini, stated: "Although Mussolini is not responsible for as many crimes as Hitler or Stalin, he was certainly a brutal dictator." On 18 September, Il Foglio criticised Berlusconi as "weak" for not having openly apologised to the Jewish community. Berlusconi publicly swore the innocence of Marcello Dell'Utri, who at that time was charged for colluding with the Sicilian Mafia, describing him as a "Catholic, a believer, and a man of culture, with an outstanding family and a well-off father". Farrell denied the accusations and gave a summary of the conditions of the interview, stating that Berlusconi himself asked when and where the article was expected to be published, that the interview set-up took several weeks, and that the talk was recorded on tape. He denied any drinking of alcohol at the interview since only lemon tea was served at their table. Farrell ended his rebuttal by telling Berlusconi to "be good" as the publication of a third-part interview was ready. including that he wished his son not to be gay but that being gay was better than being a communist, (In November 2010, Farrell wrote that he would prefer one of his sons not to be gay, stating that while he did not share his wife's view that homosexuality is a sin, he thought that one becomes gay and is not born gay, and that it was far better to be gay than a communist, including supporting Italy of Values.) He argued that heavy smokers and drinkers like him were prosecuted by "health fascists" just like the Jews were prosecuted in the Holocaust. In response, Farrell stated as an anti-communist supporter of the pope, whose charisma reminded him of Pope John Paul II, that Socci should stop make such attacks on Francis.

Political views During his career, Farrell showed support for conservatism, or Anglo-Saxon liberalism, as well as anti-communism with a right-wing libertarian streak about the state. For instance, he criticised the "nanny state", saying that those who argue that the state should ban smoking, drinking, and junk food were called "health fascists" in the United Kingdom and United States. described Mussolini as an unfairly maligned leader whose "charisma" and Machiavellian adroitness were "phenomenal"; it was acclaimed by British novelist and academic Tim Parks as a "welcome" revisionist biography. It was criticised by Tobias Jones of The Guardian, who summarized it by saying that its "basic thesis is that Mussolini deserves his place in the pantheon of great men and that fascism wasn't so bad after all". Jones observed that Farrell's book was "a bit of a cut-and-paste job" of Renzo De Felice's biography of Mussolini; De Felice himself was often criticised as a revisionist historian whose biography of Mussolini was said to be near hagiographic.

In 2010, Farrell had a diatribe with Marco Travaglio and Malcom Pagani about the alleged Mussolini diaries, which appeared to support his more sympathetic thesis in his 2003 book about Mussolini but were proven to be forgeries. Farrell had stated that noted British historian Denis Mack Smith told him that the diaries were true; however, there was no evidence that this was true other than Farrell's claim. In a 2013 interview to promote his book Il compagno Mussolini. La metamorfosi di un giovane rivoluzionario (Comrade Mussolini: The Metamorphosis of a Young Revolutionary), co-written with Giancarlo Mazzuca, Farrell reiterated his fringe view about fascism being left-wing. In 2020, his biography of Mussolini, titled Mussolini. Il primo populista (Mussolini: The First Populist), was published by Rusconi.

Personal life In the summer of 1998, Farrell moved to Italy in Emilia-Romagna, and three of his children took part at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Forlì. His 18-year old daughter wrote him a response that was published in The Spectator.

Selected works Articles

Books

Interviews