Friend, fascist, foreigner : the interwar British-Florentines 1919-1940

Abstract

Since the earliest years of the Grand Tour, a thriving British expatriate community has rested in Florence’s Arno Valley. Historians have often declared, however, that the ‘end’ of this community occurred following the conclusion of the First World War. This thesis utilises under-represented primary sources to demonstrate that, on the contrary, the interwar British community of Florence was not only very much still active up to the Second World War, but very much contributed to the development of interwar Florence. This thesis corrects the historiographical absence of this community’s voice, illustrating this community’s daily life, characters, and culture, in the hope of promoting further studies of ‘marginalised’ communities whose effects upon mainstream narratives have, too often, been overlooked.