Benito Mussolini had affair with Italy's last queen, letter claims
Benito Mussolini was a notorious womaniser, notching up a string of lovers and mistresses while forging an empire in Africa and building a fascist dictatorship.
But a newly-discovered letter suggests that Il Duce's sexual conquests reached to the very top of the Italian establishment, to a princess who became the country's last queen.
The revelation that Mussolini conducted an affair with Queen Maria Jose of Savoy in the 1930s is all the more surprising because the Belgian-born monarch was a critic of fascism and an important conduit during the war between the Allies and the Axis power.
Evidence of the alleged affair between the two has emerged from a letter, published by an Italian magazine for the first time yesterday (wed), which was written by the dictator's youngest, Romano Mussolini, to an Italian journalist in 1971....