Nicholas Burgess Farrell


Nicholas Burgess Farrell is a British journalist working as a columnist for The Spectator. After starting his career in England at The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator, he moved to Italy, where he wrote among others for La Voce di Romagna, Libero, and Il Giornale. In Italy, Farrell is best known for his 2003 interview with Silvio Berlusconi, the then prime minister of Italy. According to Farrell, Berlusconi stated that the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini never killed anyone and that he was a benevolent dictator. Berlusconi later said that his words had been manipulated by Farrell, who stood by his reporting; the interview and other controversial statements by Berlusconi about the Italian judiciary came close to cause an institutional crisis.
During his career, Farrell's columns at Libero earned him both supporters and critics as they often aroused controversy. He also wrote several books. In 2003, Farrell wrote Mussolini: A New Life, an historical revisionist biography of Mussolini that attracted mixed-to-negative reviews; it was translated and re-published in multiple languages. In 2013, he wrote another book about Mussolini, this time in Italian, where he promoted the fringe theory that fascism and Nazism were left-wing rather than far-right. Farrell continued to work at The Spectator, where he interviewed future prime minister Giorgia Meloni in 2022 and began writing "Dolce vita" columns in 2024, reporting on local goings-on from Ravenna in his adopted home of Emilia-Romagna, having lived in the Italian region since 1998.

Early life and career

Farrell was born in London on 2 October 1958. He attended The King's School, Canterbury, and studied history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, earning his B.A. on 20 June 1980. He completed his apprenticeship and earned the National Certificate in Newspaper Journalism following his National Certificate Examination exam in October 1984. Farrell worked as journalist for the Telegraph Publishing Limited at The Sunday Telegraph from 1987 to 1996, later moving to The Spectator from April 1996 to July 1998.
In 2003, Farrell attracted international attention for his interview with Berlusconi. At that time, Berlusconi was in his second term as prime minister of Italy, which started in June 2001 and ended in May 2006, and was also the head of the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union, not releasing any interviews. The interview was published in The Spectator with the title "Forza Berlusconi!"

Interview with Silvio Berlusconi

In August 2003, Farrell had a three-hour interview with Berlusconi in his Sardinian palace in Porto Rotondo, alongside Boris Johnson, the future mayor of London and prime minister of the United Kingdom who at that time was editor of The Spectator and a MP from the Conservative Party. In the interview, Berlusconi made statements that were widely summarised or reported as "Mussolini wasn't that bad" in line with the well-known Italian myth that he also did good things, including the claim that Saddam Hussein was worse than Mussolini as Berlusconi was discussing Iraq and that Italian judges were "mentally disturbed", and sparked criticism and controversy in Italy when excerpts were published.
More specifically, in the second part of the interview that was published in September 2003 by The Spectator and La Voce di Rimini, where Farrell worked as a editor, after being asked by Farrell if Mussolini was a benevolent dictator, Berlusconi was quoted as saying: "Yes... Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday to confine them ." This view, which was defended by some of Berlusconi's supporters and Berlusconi himself within the context of a comparison to another dictator, is not supported by scholarly consensus, with one scholarly estimate being around one million deaths as a result of Mussolini's rule in Italy, Ethiopia, Lybia, and Yugoslavia. Berlusconi was criticised for having apparently forgotten the murder of Giacomo Matteotti and Blackshirts and Squadrismo violence, and the opposition accused him of apology for fascism, which is a crime in Italy. On 18 September, Il Foglio criticised Berlusconi as "weak" for not having openly apologised to the Jewish community.
The controversial statements came after Farrell and Johnson asked Berlusconi whether the then United States president George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair had told him that Iraq had weapons capable of hitting the West in 45 minutes. Berlusconi said that he did not talk directly to them about this and that there was a major problem of the West's relations with the Muslim and Middle Eastern world, citing the lack of democracy and that they had known no other system than dictatorship, at which point Farrell interjected by saying: "Like Italy?" Berlusconi told Farrell, "Let's leave it at that, it was a dictatorship much more...", at which point Farrell interjected, "Benevolent", while the prime minister's interpreter said, "Or benign". At this point, Berlusconi made the controversial statements about Mussolini, after which he said: "Aside from that, the discussion here becomes broader: we are facing a new world scenario. The West's opposition to the Warsaw Pact is over. Now the Russian Federation has decided, through Putin, to join the West; this is a great thing..."
In the same interview, for which Farrell is best known in Italy, Berlusconi publicly swore the innocence of Marcello Dell'Utri, who at that time was charged for colluding with the Sicilian Mafia, describing him as a "Catholic, a believer, and a man of culture, with an outstanding family and a well-off father". He said that Dell'Utri was a victim of the "crazy communist judiciary", and that his only fault was of trusting people he did not know were notorious mafiosi, questioning the legitimacy of the crime of aiding and abetting a mafia-type association. When the first excerpts from the two-part interview were published in Italy on the newspaper La Voce, Berlusconi stated that his words had been manipulated by Farrell, whom he described as a "criminal", that the interview had been a bunch of small talk with some friends, and that he was "a little tipsy" from drinking two bottles of champagne. Farrell denied the accusations and gave a summary of the conditions of the interview, stating that Berlusconi himself asked when and where the article was expected to be published, that the interview set-up took several weeks, and that the talk was recorded on tape. He denied any drinking of alcohol at the interview since only lemon tea was served at their table. Farrell ended his rebuttal by telling Berlusconi to "be good" as the publication of a third-part interview was ready. Although the interview almost caused an institutional crisis, public opinion eventually moved away from the controversy to Berlusconi's pension reform.

Columnist and editor

In 2007, Farrell joined the Italian Order of Journalists, at first working for the local newspaper La Voce di Romagna. He later worked for the national daily newspaper Libero. As a columnist of Libero, which often attracted controversy for its headlines, Farrell wrote a number of provocatory articles, including that he wished his son not to be gay but that being gay was better than being a communist, that there was a link between the hatred of Jews and that of smokers, that he wanted to personally torture rapists with a chainsaw, asserted his right as a parent to kick and slap his children, drove around drunk, argued that Gianfranco Fini was a Nazi and thus a leftist, criticised the perceived moralism regarding Berlusconi controversies in his private life and downplayed the seriousness of Berlusconi's sexual behaviour, and stated the well-known Italian myth often repeated by Berlusconi that "communists eat children" was true, all of which led to controversy or criticism. After the 7 July 2005 [London bombings], Farrell wrote an article on La Voce di Romagna about Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, two UNICEF volunteers kidnapped in 2004 by Shia militants in Iraq. Following the Italian government's negotiation of their release, they urged their government to withdraw its troops from Iraq and criticised the U.S. occupation of Iraq. As a result, Farrell called them traitors and described them as "viscid sewer bugs" who were "accomplices to terrorists". Farrell was sued for the defamatory comments by Pari and was later sentenced to four months' jail time and fined €25,000 in punitive damages.
Other provocatory or controversial claims made by Farrell in his columns, including at Il Giornale, were that Mussolini had popular support, that he was not like Adolf Hitler and the Italian fascists saved many Jews, that fascism was left-wing, and that the Italian Resistance was a military minority in the conflict and that its communist components, which fought for the liberation of Italy and were part of the Constituent Assembly that wrote the democratic Italian Constitution, were fighting for the Soviet Union and dictatorship. In his August 2010 column for Libero about the Holocaust and anti-smoking activism, which he linked by saying that both Mussolini and Hitler hated smoking, Farrell wrote: "The German National Socialists hated Jews because they were bankers and small businessmen, symbols of the hated capitalism. It's no coincidence that the anti-Semites masquerading as anti-Zionists are left-wing, and even today they hate Israel and flirt with Islamic fascists who subjugate men and women in the name of the state." He argued that heavy smokers and drinkers like him were prosecuted by "health fascists" just like the Jews were prosecuted in the Holocaust.
Also in August 2010, Farrell called Fini, at that time List of presidents of the [Chamber of Deputies (Italy)|president of the Chamber of Deputies], a "National Socialist". It was observed that Farrell did not merely mean to use the fascist label as an insult but tried to justify it on the merits. This came after another Libero column written a few days earlier by Giampaolo Pansa had called Fini a "fascist-communist". Although Fini had been a member of the Italian Social Movement, he renounced fascism as leader of the post-fascist National Alliance in the 1990s and went to Jerusalem to apologise for the Holocaust. According to Farrell, "Fini has only done two right-wing things recently: he went to Jerusalem to apologise for the Shoah; he smokes", which could be interpreted to mean that the Holocaust and anti-smoking activism were left-wing. It was also observed that the January 2003 legislation related to the smoking ban in all indoor public places was introduced by Girolamo Sirchia, a Berlusconi minister, during the second Berlusconi government and not by Fini or the left. Despite the criticism and controversy related to some of his columns, Farrell earned a following of supporters; rather than indignate, the reading of some of his columns was considered to be fun.
In November 2014, Farrell wrote a letter to Antonio Socci, who had stated that the 2013 conclave election of Pope Francis was invalid and criticised his homilies and pontificate for being too "communist". In response, Farrell stated as an anti-communist supporter of the pope, whose charisma reminded him of Pope John Paul II, that Socci should stop make such attacks on Francis. While in Italy, Farrell continued to work as a columnist for The Spectator. During the 2022 Italian general election campaign, Farrell had an interview on The Spectator with Meloni, the Brothers of Italy leader and eventual prime minister after the 2022 general election, as she attempted to provide a more moderate and mainstream conservative image amid neo-fascist concerns as her party is an heir of the Italian Social Movement from which the party took the tricolour flame, which Meloni defended while denying of being a fascist. The interview was published on The Spectator by Farrell under the title "Prima donna" where he asked whether Meloni truly was "the most dangerous woman in Europe".

Political views

During his career, Farrell showed support for conservatism, or Anglo-Saxon liberalism, as well as anti-communism with a right-wing libertarian streak about the state. For instance, he criticised the "nanny state", saying that those who argue that the state should ban smoking, drinking, and junk food were called "health fascists" in the United Kingdom and United States. Farrell held Eurosceptic views, writing columns critical of the European Union and the proposed United States of Europe. He also generally supported Berlusconi, although he at times criticised him, for example when Berlusconi accused him of manipulating their 2003 interview; despite this, Farrell defended Berlusconi, stating he reminded him of Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.
Farrell called Berlusconi a "genius", thought of him as "the only one who can govern this country", and once dubbed his critics and opposing journalists "those shitty Italians". In his praise of Berlusconi, seen as an entrepreneur who supported the free market, Farrell often referred to him as il Magnifico. When Fini criticised Berlusconi, for example calling him illiberal, and left the People of Freedom to establish the Future and Freedom party in 2010, Farrell celebrated the separation as he argued that Fini was preventing the People of Freedom from transforming into a "modern, Anglo-Saxon, truly liberal" right-wing party, and that "the Italian right has the opportunity to free itself from the fascist right, that is, from the leftist right". According to Farrell, Fini was a statist and supporter of the welfare state who was "illiberal because he is post-fascist, that is, left-wing".

Works

Farrell's 2003 book Mussolini: A New Life, which was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, described Mussolini as an unfairly maligned leader whose "charisma" and Machiavellian adroitness were "phenomenal"; it was acclaimed by British novelist and academic Tim Parks as a "welcome" revisionist biography. It was criticised by Tobias Jones of The Guardian, who summarized it by saying that its "basic thesis is that Mussolini deserves his place in the pantheon of great men and that fascism wasn't so bad after all". Jones observed that Farrell's book was "a bit of a cut-and-paste job" of Renzo De Felice's biography of Mussolini; De Felice himself was often criticised as a revisionist historian whose biography of Mussolini was said to be near hagiographic.
In his review of the book, Mark Simpson wrote in The Independent that Mussolini, after Ida Dalser, Rachele Mussolini, Clara Petacci, and Adolf Hitler, had found another "wife" in Farrell, who he said had "possessively proposed a new Mussolini" as a "prisoner of love", whose defects were transformed into virtues. In The Daily Telegraph, popular historian Andrew Roberts criticised Farrell's statement that "Mussolini saved more Jews than Oskar Schindler" and that Mussolini was not antisemitic but anti-Jewish. Despite the criticism, the book was popular enough to be translated into six languages.
In 2010, Farrell had a diatribe with Marco Travaglio and Malcom Pagani about the alleged Mussolini diaries, which appeared to support his more sympathetic thesis in his 2003 book about Mussolini but were proven to be forgeries. Farrell had stated that noted British historian Denis Mack Smith told him that the diaries were true; however, there was no evidence that this was true other than Farrell's claim. Mack Smith himself had a negative opinion on Farrell's book, which depicted Mussolini as neither corrupt nor a tyrant, that he was not a reactionary and that he won power by consent rather than violence, and that he was not responsible for the assassination of Matteotti and other victims of fascism. In a 2013 interview to promote his book Il compagno Mussolini. La metamorfosi di un giovane rivoluzionario, co-written with Giancarlo Mazzuca, Farrell reiterated his fringe view about fascism being left-wing. In 2020, his biography of Mussolini, titled Mussolini. Il primo populista, was published by Rusconi.

Personal life

In the summer of 1998, Farrell moved to Italy in Emilia-Romagna, more specifically in Predappio, a town he calls "the fascist Bethlehem", where Mussolini was born and buried, with a significant far-right following. An avid smoker and drinker, particularly of Sangiovese, Farrell often discussed this in his columns, including being stopped for driving under the influence. Farrell married an Italian woman with whom he has six children, aged 10 to 22 as of November 2025. During his career, Farrell wrote a number of articles referencing his personal life and family. In October 2025, Farrell wrote an article for The Spectator discussing his family's disagreement about the Gaza war and the related Gaza genocide. He wrote that his family supported the view that Israel was guilty of genocide and that the Meloni government and the prime minister were complicit in the genocide, while he supported Israel and held the view that "a country called Palestine does not exist", and three of his children took part at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Forlì. His 18-year old daughter wrote him a response that was published in The Spectator.

Selected works

Articles

  • Books

  • Interviews

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