Mussolini loved trees so much that he quizzed his bureaucracy about storm damage to the environment. He kept the works of Socrates and Plato on his desk. He regularly wrote to his daughter, if only to report family pleasure at victories by the national football team. Yet nearly a million people went early to their graves as the result of his dictatorship. Why and how did Mussolini come to power? Why is he often regarded as a figure of fun, while his contemporaries, Hitler and Stalin, are seen as totalitarian tyrants? Did he really revolutionise Italy? With extraordinary skill and vividness, Richard Bosworth's biography paints a picture of brutality and failure, yet combined with an understanding of Mussolini the man. The remarkable story of the ambitious intellectual from the provinces who built a fascist empire but ended in disgrace, shot ignominiously by his own people, never fails to grip. He seems to me to have come closer to a true understanding of Mussolini than any previous English-language biographer. His book is excellent -- persuasive and highly intelligent.