THE subject of this work may be the Rosselli family, but inevitably Mussolini’s name appears alongside them in the title, since their lives were defined and circumscribed by opposition to him. The brothers Carlo and Nello, and their equally courageous mother, Amelia, stood up for the basic rights of life, liberty, the rule of law and freedom from fear at a time when one of the most oppressive of all political systems, Fascism, had been imposed on Italy.

It is conventional at this point to say that Mussolini was not as bad as Hitler or Stalin, and while that may be true, it is a dire, meaningless comparison. To read this excellent historical biography is to grasp the full meaning of the Fascist coinage, totalitarianism, and to understand that it indicates not just the suppression of freedoms but the intrusion of the state into every sphere of life and the abolition of any distinction between the private and public domains. The regime was omnipotent. Mussolini’s spies, thugs and toadies were everywhere, responsible not only for individual acts of murder and brutality but for a system of government by violence.

Mussolini loathed and feared intellectuals, such as the Rossellis, to an extent that is now hard to appreciate. Their efforts, brave as they were, seem pathetic against the force of the state. In the early days, the Rossellis and their coterie of anti-Fascists produced a series of little magazines with miserable circulation figures, all upholding great causes, all samizdat initiatives, all futile in a climate where censorship was less a problem than the attentions of bully-boys.

The family were not natural political activists. Amelia’s maiden name was Pincherle, and she came from a Jewish, Venetian family who were wholly integrated and no longer believers. Earlier generations had supported the Risorgimento, and the Rossellis regarded themselves as Italians first and Jewish second. They took advantage of the removal of restrictions on Jews to grow in prosperity. It was one of the idiosyncrasies of Fascism that their wealth was not threatened, so they were able to make use of it later when in detention or exile. One branch changed its name to Moravia. The novelist Alberto Moravia was a nephew of Amelia, but his reputation will be severely tarnished by Moorehead’s contemptuous portrayal of his accommodation with the regime and unwillingness to support his cousins.

Amelia became Rosselli on marriage, but her husband turned out to be a feckless womaniser whom she left, taking her three sons to Florence. She outlived all three.

A remarkable, much-admired figure, she developed into an interesting playwright and a supporter of early feminism, perhaps demonstrating the contradictions of her generation. She combined independence with devotion to her family, but was later suspicious of these liberated trends when demonstrated by prospective daughters-in-law. The love she showed her children was fully reciprocated, and she provided strong, unquestioning support in the worst of days.

Of these there were many. For patriotic reasons, Amelia persuaded her eldest son Aldo to enlist during World War I. The main enemy was Austria, and the Italian army fought in appalling, freezing conditions in mountainous terrain in present day Slovenia. They were also subject to the stolid incompetence of their officers, factors depicted by Hemingway in Farewell to Arms. Many men died of exposure but Aldo was killed in action. Amelia never forgave herself.

That left Carlo and Nello, whose names may not be known in Britain, but who were brilliant, brave and selfless men who watched with horror as the Fascist party rose to power in the anarchic turmoil of post-war Italy. This is not narrow biography but a portrait of an alienated circle in the wider context of a society decaying into lawlessness, and giving way to the imposition of dictatorship. The two were refined intellectuals, interested in history and political philosophy, and would in other circumstances have occupied university chairs and written incisive but unread monographs, but they were made of sterner moral stuff and could not stand idly by.

They attempted to live full lives, and both married and had families. Heroic and high-minded they undoubtedly were, but such men exact a heavy toll on those nearest to them, and Carlo’s English wife Marion, and Nello’s wife, Maria, suffered for their husbands’ activism. Intellectually, the two men attempted to find the roots of the contemporary catastrophe in history and tried to rethink liberalism and socialism, but Carlo in particular was drawn to action.

Both endured assaults, imprisonment and confino, a form of internal exile which involved being sent to a remote spot, often a small island, where the prisoners lived in supervised but relative freedom. They could be joined by their families, and could use their own resources to find living quarters. Nello was released by one of Mussolini’s unpredictable acts of generosity when his wife was pregnant, while Carlo escaped in a singularly daring venture which enraged and humiliated the Duce.

All that remained for Carlo was exile in Paris, dogged by spies and impatient of the endless bickering between communists, socialists and liberals who made up the anti-fascist community abroad. The two men helped establish the umbrella Justice and Liberty group, which was later prominent in the Resistance.

Nello remained in Italy but was once able to visit his brother, an event which caused the final disaster, for the two were murdered by French neo-Fascists who, historians now agree, were working on Mussolini’s orders. They were inspirational but tragic figures, and this book does them full justice.