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London’s Italian soldiers in the First World War: an illustrated talk by Selena Daly

  • Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, Holborn Library 32-38 Theobalds Road London, WC1X 8PA UK (map)

During the First World War, over 300,000 Italian emigrants returned to Italy from around the world to perform their conscripted military service, a mass mobilisation which was a uniquely Italian phenomenon. Some 8,500 men returned from Great Britain, with many coming from the Italian communities of Clerkenwell and Soho. In this talk, Selena Daly will reconstruct the lives of these emigrant soldiers before, during and after the First World War, considering their motivations, combat experiences, demobilisation and return to Britain. She adopts a micro-historical approach and will focus in particular on the figure of Cesare Bianchi, who had deep ties to what is now the London Borough of Camden throughout his life. He arrived in Britain from Lombardy in 1913 to work in hotel kitchens, served in the Italian Army in 1918, and then became a celebrity chef in interwar London.

 Dr Selena Daly is an Associate Professor in Italian Studies at University College London and is an expert in the history of Italian emigration. She is the author of Emigrant soldiers: mobilising Italians abroad in the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and is currently writing a book about the global history of Italian emigration from Marco Polo to today, to appear with Viking Penguin, Hodder & Stoughton, and Mondadori in 2028.

Admission: Free to CHS members. Non-members welcome (£2 at the door).