Fascinating people,

Fascinating Places.

G'd Aye and welcome to the Dan Mainwearing podcast.

This is where we talk to and about the famous and the infamous,

the celebrated and the obscure, the well-known and the

well-known and the obscure, the well-known and the undiscovered.

Interviews, articles and discussion from around the globe.

Some 50. Some 1500 years after Alaric led the Visigoths in the sacking of Rome.

The Eternal City was braced for another invasion.

There was talk of as many as a million supporters of fascist politician Benito Nusolini,

seizing power by force. What followed was simultaneously, anti-climactic, and yet profoundly significant.

In this episode, I recount the 1922 March on Rome.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Unified Nation of Italy had only been on the map for

four decades.

It had been cobbled together from independent states and areas that had previously been under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Even then, some areas populated by Italians still remained under foreign control. The head of state was King

Victor Emmanuel III. His father, the late King Alberto, had told him that being a monarch simply meant knowing how to mount a horse, read a newspaper and to sign your name.

Umberto's dismissive explanation of the role failed to grasp the realities of the political

situation in the early 20th century.

By this time, the coffee houses in Rome, like in Vienna Paris and London were full of

agitators and idealists sharing new ideas dangerous ideas such as socialism,

anarchism, humanism, and even atheism in a state that was

...