The Rights and Wrongs of Killing Mussolini December 11, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryAfter Beach’s recent blog on Mussolini’s death several emails about not so much the circumstances as the justification for killing the Fascist leader. The official version of the story claims that the Allies wanted Mussolini for themselves but that the partisans and particularly the Communist partisans had decided to do away with Mussolini as a […]
Modesty and Killing November 27, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, ModernWhen Benito Mussolini was ‘executed’ (jolted out of a car by some communist partisans and shot in the chest in a ditch) he did not die alone. By his side was his lover and perhaps the most significant woman in his life, Clara Petacci. CP was gunned down a moment before Mussolini himself. The corpses […]
A Look Up Caterina Sforza’s Skirt October 28, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : MedievalCaterina Sforza was one of those extraordinary individuals who managed to pack five or six lifetimes into her forty odd years. Wife, alchemist, mother, warrior, seductress, torturer, hunter, general, rape victim and, don’t forget, the model for one of the three graces in Botticelli’s Primavera: she also had a lot of hot Milanese blood swilling […]