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“... by 1893: Mahan told an anxious British public what it most wanted to hear about its navy. Denis MackSmith is another. His Cavour and Garibaldi, published in 1954, told many Italians what they did not want to hear, but told them at a special point in their history when they had no choice but to listen. ...”

“... a detailed study of less than three years. The wider canvas is a delight to read, and through it Denis MackSmith will find an even wider readership for the formidable knowledge he has already shown in his more specialist writings. As a biography, his new book achieves an impressive balance in the difficult ...”

“... After his dismissive biography of Mussolini and his scathing treatment of Italy’s royal family, Denis MackSmith has turned back to a figure who fully engages his sympathies, and some may miss the darkly satirical tone of those earlier essays in denunciation. Mazzini is a work of passionate advocacy, which aims both ...”

“... Originally published in 1959 and revised ten years later, Denis MackSmith’s Modern Italy: A Political History has been the standard work in its field for nearly two generations. Mack Smith has chosen to update it at a propitious moment, now that the Cold War is over and the political parties that governed Italy for the last half-century have been swept from power ...”

“... one of Garibaldi’s generals called them. Duggan, who learned how to debunk myth from Denis MackSmith, did not waste his time with the maestro. He has a similar eye for the absurd and the same finely honed prose style. Yet behind the fun he has a serious purpose. The myth-making allowed the new rulers of ...”

“... historians. No one would ever suggest that Raymond Carr thought like a Madrid teddy-boy or that Denis MackSmith wrote like un ragazzo di borgata. A ‘sense of place’ is perhaps a commoner attribute, although Cobb’s descriptions of places, often in sentences of about 250 words, are unlike other people’s and ...”

“... he was not present. Even discounting the fact that all the accounts we have of his life, including Denis MackSmith’s authoritative 1994 volume, tend to hagiography, it’s clear that from the earliest age Mazzini was both physically attractive and immensely charismatic. Briefly united under Napoleon, Italy was ...”

“... often write in vain: not even English-language historians’ revisionist accounts (say those of Denis MackSmith and Stuart Woolf) have got through to biographers. Osborne is the latest to write such things as that the Milanese audience at Nabucco identified themselves, ‘Italians suffering under the Austrian ...”

“... go public over Walwal since it was this that drove the Duce to go over the top. On the other hand, Denis MackSmith. In his biography of Mussolini (which is not cited in Mockler’s bibliography), lists a number of occasions from 1925 onwards when the Duce showed every Intention or using force. At the end of 1932 he had ...”

“... to have been sent by God – is everywhere evident. In his otherwise excellent biography of 1958, Denis MackSmith frequently referred to Garibaldi as ‘simplistic’ and ‘ingenuous’, made fun of his habit of wearing a poncho, and saw his decision to set up home on the barren island of Caprera as merely ...”

“... supporters included the king, the lobby’s influence was out of all proportion to its size. As Denis MackSmith demonstrated long ago, it was the monarchy’s extensive prerogatives that made it possible for Italy to embark on colonial conquest with only partial parliamentary scrutiny. The colonial delusions of ...”

“... amateurs, and there is no book on the modern British monarchy comparable in scholarly stature to Denis MackSmith on the Kings of Italy. Dorothy Thompson’s study of Queen Victoria is thus the more to be welcomed, for she is a writer in a very different tradition from such conventional courtly biographers as ...”

“... the publication of his book on ancient Sicily in 1968, part of a three-volume history initiated by Denis MackSmith, that he attracted much attention and won the support of the publishing house of Laterza. Finley was one of the first English-speaking historians to be aware of the importance of the works of Ettore ...”

“... A.N. Wilson tells a funny anecdote about Mussolini that was new to me, though I had just finished Denis MackSmith’s Mussolini. It runs: ‘Mussolini had in fact modelled his style of dress on that of his favourite film stars, Laurel and Hardy, whose sartorial distinctiveness he regarded as the embodiment of ...”

“... he had set out to oppose. Significantly, the most radical demolitions of his edifice came from Denis MackSmith in England, rather than any Italian historian. But if there was no real counterpart to the Historikerstreit in Italy, where De Felice could feel he had achieved most of his goals, there was also a less ...”