External links
- Nicholas Farrell at Libero
- Nicholas Farrell at The Spectator
- Nicholas Farrell at UnHerd
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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 for La Voce di Romagna and Libero . In 2003, he wrote Mussolini: A New Life, an historical revisionist biography of the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Most notably, that same year he also had an interview with Silvio Berlusconi, who at that time was in his second term as prime minister of Italy. In 2013, he published another book about Mussolini. In 2024, Farrell began writing "Dolce vita" columns in The Spectator, reporting on local goings-on from Ravenna in his adopted home of Emilia-Romagna, having lived in the Italian region since 1998.
Farrell was born in London on 2 October 1958. [1] He attended The King's School, Canterbury, and studied history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, earning his B.A. on 20 June 1980. [1] He completed his apprenticeship and earned the National Certificate in Newspaper Journalism following his National Certificate Examination exam in October 1984. [1]
Farrell worked as journalist for The Sunday Telegraph from 1987 to 1996, later moving to The Spectator from April 1996 to July 1998. [1] In 2003, Farrell had an interview with Berlusconi in his Sardinian palace along side Boris Johnson, the then editor of The Spectator, where the then Italian prime minister made statements summarized or reported as "Mussolini wasn't that bad", including the claim that Saddam Hussein was worse than Mussolini and that Italian judges were "mentally disturbed", that sparked criticism in Italy. [2] [3] More specifically, after being asked if Mussolini was "benign", Berlusconi was quoted as saying: "Yes ... Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday in confinement." [4] [5] This view, which was defended by some of Berlusconi's supporters within the context of a comparison to another dictator, is not supported by scholarly consensus. [4]
His 2003 book Mussolini: A New Life, which was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and translated into six languages, [6] 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. [7] It was criticized 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". [8] In his review of the book, Mark Simpson wrote in The Independent that Mussolini, after Ida Dalser (Mussolini's first wife), Rachele Mussolini (Mussolini's second wife), Clara Petacci (Mussolini's mistress), and Adolf Hitler (one of his first admirers), had found another "wife" in Farrell, who he said had "possessively proposed a new Mussolini" as a "prisoner of love", whose defects were transformed into virtues. [3]
In 2007, Farrell joined the Italian Order of Journalists, [1] at first working for the local newspaper La Voce di Romagna. [9] He later worked for the national daily newspaper Libero, [6] where he promoted the fringe theory that fascism and Nazism were left-wing rather than far-right, writing in 2010: "The German National Socialists hated Jews because they were bankers and small businessmen, symbols of the hated capitalism. It's no coincidence that the anti-Semites masquerading as anti-Zionists are left-wing, and even today they hate Israel and flirt with Islamic fascists who subjugate men and women in the name of the state." [10] Also 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. [3]
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, [11] Farrell reiterated his view about fascism being left-wing. [12] [13] In November 2014, he wrote a letter to Antonio Socci, who claimed that the election of Pope Francis was invalid and criticized his homilies and pontificate for being too "communist". 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. [14] During the 2022 Italian general election campaign, Farrell had an interview on The Spectator with the Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni as she attempted to provide a more moderate and mainstream conservative image amid neo-fascist concerns as her party is an heir of the Italian Social Movement from which the party took the tricolour flame, which Meloni defended while denying of being a fascist. [15]
In 1998, Farrell moved to Forlì. [6] Farrell married an Italian woman with whom he has six children, aged 10 to 22 as of October 2025. In October 2025, Farrell wrote an article for The Spectator discussing his family's disagreement about the Gaza war and the related Gaza genocide. He wrote that his family supported the view that Israel was guilty of genocide and that the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her government were complicit in the genocide, while he is a supporter of Israel holding the view that "a country called Palestine does not exist", 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. [16]
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