Violet Gibson, the Irish Woman Who Shot Mussolini (2020) - full transcript

"But you didn't know it was

Mussolini when you retweeted.

It said, "It is better to live

one day as a lion

than 100 years as a sheep."

That's a famous Mussolini quote,

you retweeted it.

Do you like the quote?

Did you know it was Mussolini?

Sure. It's okay to know it's

Mussolini.

Look, Mussolini was Mussolini.

It's okay... It's a very good quote.

It's a very interesting quote.

And I know it, I saw it.

I saw what... I know who said it but

what difference does it make

whether it's Mussolini or somebody

else.

It's certainly a very interesting

quote.

That's probably why I have between

Facebook and Twitter

14 million people and a lot of

people don't.

It's a very interesting quote and

people can talk about it.

Do you want to be associated with

a Fascist?"

"Under blue skies, the aeroplane

carrying Herr Hitler

comes to rest at Venice.

As the German Chancellor steps from

the machine,

he is greeted by Signor Mussolini.

This is the first occasion on which

these two famous dictators have met.

Each holds in his hand the destiny

of a great nation

and the whole world looks with eager

interest on this meeting.

For any momentous decision made by

either of these men

must affect the whole of Europe,

if not the world.

Austria is the gravest problem in

Europe today,

a problem that can only be

satisfactorily solved by Herr Hitler

and the Duce.

Will they do it?

They can make this unhappy country

the next battlefield.

We're convinced that they will bring

an end to the terrorist campaign

and bring you peace and quiet

in Central Europe."

"Dear Mr Churchill.

One of the reasons which so far has

made the war a failure

is lack of attention to practical

details

which when the crucial moment

arrives, makes all the difference.

Being a very practical person,

I lay a few points before you

in case they have been overlooked.

With regards to the parachutists,

has a map been drawn up

of all the open spaces in England,

Wales and Scotland?

Each enemy plane can bring 50

parachutists.

In one hour, 20 planes could land

1,000 enemy in the country.

Are you prepared for them to try

and land 10,000 men in one night

in different parts of England?

Have you enough rifles, machine

guns, tanks and planes

to deal with the situation?

With regard to assassination, I

give you the assurance that I never

intend to do it again because it is

not my talent.

And all the previous years wasted in

this place must be made up for

by using my real gift which, if I

had been allowed to use before,

would probably have prevented this

war.

It is a mockery to go to war and to

sacrifice all those lives for

the freedom of the individual and,

at the same time,

do nothing towards a case like

mine."

Well, I think that Violet's

childhood was pampered,

was privileged, was, you know,

very far from the blood and mire

of Irish politics and from the slums

on the other side of the Liffey,

from the kind of reality that she

became engaged with

actually later on.

And also because of her illness,

definitely held back from the world,

sequestered, as so many Victorian

young women were.

My grandfather was Violet's brother,

which means that I'm a great-niece

to Violet.

There were four boys in the family

and four girls,

so Violet was one of four girls;

my grandfather was one of the four

boys.

The boys were educated then at

Harrow and Trinity Dublin

and Oxford, but the girls were

educated at home with a governess.

Edward Gibson, Violet's father was

the epitome

of a Victorian conservative.

He was born in 1837, the year that

Victoria came to the throne

and he goes through Trinity and he

has a brief experience with the law

and then he moves into politics with

his father's wealth behind him.

And it's a really good career

decision for him

because he's a very commanding

figure,

very tall with this shock of white

hair on him and a booming voice.

And a lot of people fairly early on

have him tapped

as a potential Prime Minister.

He was elected MP for Dublin

University in 1875

for the Conservatives and he very

quickly becomes a darling

of the Conservative Party.

People like Benjamin Disraeli,

Randolph Churchill

are all taking notice of him.

Two years later, 1877,

he's Attorney General of Ireland

and by 1880 he's Disraeli's

principal advisor on Irish affairs.

And his politics kind of culminates

in his appointment

as Lord Chancellor of Ireland

in 1885.

Just as Gladstone is making

his conversion to Home Rule,

Gibson becomes the Lord Chancellor.

He's also given a seat in the

cabinet and becomes Baron Ashbourne;

he's elevated to the peerage.

Although the father was obviously a

very big and important figure,

he was also very much a family man

and apparently he really delighted

in his family and we've got a lovely

photograph of him

with three of the girls, and Violet

apparently was very fond of him

and they seemed to have been a close

family.

hen he became Lord Chancellor of

Ireland and became Baron Ashbourne,

then his children all became

honourables

and so Violet was then

the Honourable Violet Albina Gibson.

One of her elder sisters, Frances,

was my great-grandmother.

I've known about Violet ever since I

was a little girl

and been very sort of proud of the

story because it's so bizarre.

So, in the picture there is the Duke

of York and the Duchess of York

who are the future king and queen.

So, this is in 1897.

And they were visiting Lord

and Lady Ashbourne in Dublin

and in the picture also as well as

Edward Gibson and his wife,

the Duke of York and the Duchess

of York,

there's also Violet Gibson

on the right,

and she's there as a 21-year-old.

All of the material necessities were

dealt with,

so she was sequestered in this

gilded cage, if you like.

Young Victorian women in the high

echelons of society

and particularly in the Anglo-Irish

ascendency were pampered, adored

and essentially manufactured, if you

like, to make good marriages.

Certainly not to be independent,

free-wheeling entities.

It was a sort of a paradoxical

situation.

They had trips abroad,

they followed the season in France,

in St Moritz, in London,

in Buckingham Palace,

the Court of Queen Victoria, in

Mayfair where they also had a house.

Christian Science preaches that

health, wealth and happiness

will come from leading a good life

from being free of sin

and that bad health is a result

of sin and fear.

And so, I think, that must have been

very difficult for Violet

who actually had a lot of ill-health

when she was young.

She certainly had peritonitis and

various other

fairly major illnesses, some

unexplained and these kind of topics

would be discussed in the family and

would have been an important part

of their whole belief system

and I think that must have been

very difficult for Violet to accept

that on one hand if she was free

of sin, she wouldn't be ill,

but she was ill and, and quite badly

ill constantly.

I always think of the family motto

when Lord Ashbourne

was made the first Baron Ashbourne,

he chose a family motto which was

"Open O Ye Heavenly Gates".

And I always see Violet as somebody

who's looking for a way through

towards a new Jerusalem, towards a

kind of ecstatic reality

to substitute for the reality of her

own life which was very boundaried

and contained by these childhood

illnesses and by, I think,

an uncomfortable sense of not really

belonging in the place

into which she was born.

She's attached to theosophy. She

goes to Switzerland to that end.

I think she goes to Germany as well,

Italy and France.

Italy she's been as a child with her

father to the lakes

and has already developed a great

fondness for the country.

But just because you're from an

establishment family doesn't mean

that you are and this seems to be

something that repeats itself

particularly during the 1880s, 1890s

and particularly with women,

lot of women.

Fanny and Anna Parnell

and Jenny Wyse Power

who all found the Ladies' Land

League at this time.

Or one thinks of

Constance Markievicz or Maud Gonne

or Mary Spring Rice.

All of these people who'd grown up

in Protestant households

that were imperial in outlook and

yet the daughters of these families

are saying, "No, let's rebel against

the system."

"For a whole year, I have been

bothering myself over religion

and can now see no way out of

becoming a Catholic.

I have had a terrible time since

giving up Christian Science.

I am very sincerely sorry if you

mind my becoming a Catholic.

I hated the idea myself for a long

time, but gradually saw

that it was mere prejudice which was

keeping me back."

The problem starts when she is

introduced to the idea of converting

to Catholicism, most likely through

her brother Willie.

And it's through Willie, I think

that Violet begins to find a route

to what she believes will be a new

Jerusalem where the heavenly gates

will open and it's a particular kind

of Catholicism.

Willie's converted in Oxford and

that's the centre of what's known as

the Oxford Modernist Movement.

He's a Socialist Catholic and I see

her attachment to Christian Science

and theosophy and then finally

to Catholicism,

to Modernist Catholicism, as

something that's motivated

not only by some sort of spiritual

hunger or sense of deprivation,

but also by a rather sharply attuned

sense of social justice

and her own developing political

world.

And she's been agonising with

this decision for several years.

Uncle Willie we knew him as.

He was my, my great-uncle.

He was referred to in my family

as Mad Uncle Willie.

He, having made this break with his

family over religion,

he was also very strongly Ireland

for the Irish

which wasn't his background, it

wasn't the Anglo-Irish standpoint

and I think that was a massive rift

then.

So, Violet's brother Victor went

to the Boer War,

he was extremely enthusiastic about

it, he went and raised a group

of friends and other aristocrats,

they all went out together,

they trained together, they paid

their own way to go out there.

But it was extremely unsuccessful.

They had very traumatic times there.

They were captured

and I think there was great anxiety

would they come home at all.

Open O Ye Heavenly Gates leading to

a false Jerusalem

and it's devastating for Violet

in particular having suffered

the initial concern about her

brother in 1901, 1902,

when he was sort of effectively

disappears

as a prisoner in the Boer War.

Mussolini's father is a Socialist,

an anti-clerical.

He's called Benito Mussolini after

Benito Juárez,

the famous Mexican revolutionary

leader.

But also the influence of his mother

who was a Catholic,

he understood Catholic Italy.

The other important element of his

youth that I think one would have

to highlight is his move into exile.

He went outside Italy, he went to

the fringes of Italy in Switzerland

and in Austrian Italy and looked

back on Italy from there

and it was that which encouraged him

to use the language of Socialism,

of class struggle as his initial

stepping stone into politics.

"My dearest father. I am also very

grateful for the little fortune

you have given me, as it makes me

completely independent."

He didn't leave his fortune to his

heir who was Willie,

but he left it to my grandfather

Edward who's the next son.

So that Willie, in effect, was

disinherited,

although he inherited the Baron

title.

But it was... it showed how big that

rift had been.

The political rift and the religious

rift

had really torn the family apart.

The following year, he plays a huge

role in fundraising for the purchase

of the German guns that Erskine and

Molly Childers and Mary Spring Rice

then bring into Howth on Asgard

and these of course are the guns

that are going to be so prominent

in the Easter Rising in 1916.

Despite being very ill herself,

having just been diagnosed

with something called Paget's

disease, a form of cancer,

she also has appendicitis,

peritonitis and, you know,

when the surgeons open her up,

they cannot believe the sepsis in

her intestine.

She's in a terrible way.

She's fizzing with infection.

And in fact at that point Scotland

Yard open a file on Violet,

having discovered that she's on a

list of the delegation that wanted

to go to the Women's International

Congress and note

that she's a Pacifist and sort

of patsy for German propaganda.

But despite that, she commits

herself to propagandising

against the war.

She goes to Paris and volunteers for

a unit putting out, you know,

peace propaganda.

She's simply not well enough

to participate fully in any of these

things.

But of that 1915, 1916 is the period

where she falls into the arms

of this Father O'Fallon who actually

provides an answer.

He simply says, "You follow

the Jesuitical regime,

the praxis of St Ignatius Loyola

and you will find an escape from

yourself."

And we know that Violet is attached

to this idea of a passion story

as a personal journey of her own and

to the idea of some ultimate Calvary

for herself because of the message

she's taken from Father O'Fallon

in her Jesuitical retreat and

through the spiritual exercise

and through his continuing influence

on her.

If you can die unto yourself and

release yourself from these mundane

earthly physical problems is an

absolutely bonkers thing to say

to a woman like Violet who is

manifestly physically ill and frail.

This is not somatic, I mean she is,

she's very seriously ill.

For many periods in her life but

particularly when she meets him.

Mussolini fights the First World War

as an ordinary soldier.

It's very important.

He might have wanted to be an

officer but he wasn't allowed to be.

In 1917, he leaves the front.

He's wounded in a training accident,

a grenade accident

and the rest of the war he's

licensed really by the government

to continue writing in his newspaper

and to be a propagandist,

and because he continues to write

columns for his newspaper,

Il Popolo d'Italia -

The People of Italy -

this left-wing Nationalist newspaper

that he set up in Milan and which

continues to appear during the war,

he expresses all that in articles.

In fact he constructs a persona and

he constructs a voice for himself.

Victor, despite the trauma that he

must have suffered in, in the Boer,

during the Boer War, kind of repeats

the exercise

at the beginning of the First World

War.

There are a wave of strikes and

bitter battles in the factories

and peasants and landless labourers,

particularly in Central Italy,

in Mussolini's own region,

Emilia-Romagna, take the land,

they seize the land.

Three-quarters of a million

peasants, in fact,

form a trade union and they take the

land and start dividing it up

or farming it co-operatively.

The power of the Fascists begins to

establish itself at a local level.

They form violent squads and they

move into the factories

and in particular they move onto the

land on behalf

of the local landlords and they

suppress the social movements

of the post-war period.

The old liberal elites are

desperately seeking for something

to buttress them against the forces

of this popular Catholicism

and the Socialists.

And who do the appeal to?

They appeal to the squads at the

local level

and they appeal to the Fascists

as they're now calling themselves

when it comes to elections.

Victor's death goes off under Violet

like a bomb.

The first she hears of it is in the

evening paper in London.

She's in very minimal contact with

her family at this point.

We talk about social media now

but in fact news travelled so fast

in those days that it was often

something... you would read

of a death of a parent or a family

member through the newspapers.

He's found one day in the armchair

of a pub in Horsham, Surrey,

and he's dead.

And it's not clear if he's taken his

own life but he was said to be very

thin, malnourished and had only

three shillings in his pocket.

It's a sort of desperate end

for this dashing young man

who'd lost all sense of purpose

as a result of war.

And it makes Violet of course into

an ardent pacifist.

After Victor dies and she has a

nervous breakdown,

and that's the first time we find

her committed.

And Violet's reaction to this was to

go really quite sort of bonkers.

She goes and attacks somebody in

South Kensington who she possibly

thought was an intruder, it's not

clear, but she does draw a knife.

She's kind of lost it at this point.

She's overwhelmed with grief and

shock and the sheer exhaustion

of her long years of physical

illness and she's committed.

And this is Violet's first and sadly

not her last encounter

with the lunatic asylum.

"This is Italy in 1922.

These marching men are charter

members of a new

Italian political party -

the Fascists -

founded and led by a flamboyant

ex-editor, ex-army corporal,

ex-Socialist Benito Mussolini.

Fascism has been Mussolini's dream

for seven years.

Now the march on Rome.

His movement numbers a million

members including uniformed

Blackshirts and Mussolini

successfully forces his leadership

on the Italian King and people.

In the afternoon of October 28th

1922, in a downpour of rain,

Mussolini himself arrives.

Despite the fact that 80% of

Italians still support

the constitutional monarchy, his

threats of violence and revolution

win him the office of premier."

He was a very, very astute

manipulator.

So, he would use the violence of

other people

without necessarily endorsing it.

He would set people in rivalry

against each other and out of that,

as I say, not quite the puppet

master but the master impresario.

He was able to co-ordinate this

emerging and increasingly powerful

Fascist movement.

And at the same time he was

singular. He was Il Duce.

There was only one leader and that

was the way of framing the notion

that the state was hierarchical.

The society was hierarchical and

everybody looked to this figure

who then of course was reproduced in

film and in photographs and so on.

Politicians and, you know, high

society, were all seeking him out

and saying how wonderful he is.

All the women adore him.

He's got this amazing sort of

outdoor physique,

drawn by these wonderful sort of

macho poses of Mussolini

in photographed fencing or boxing or

riding or bare-chested,

scything the corn in the fields

glistening with sweat.

I think there were 2,500 poses but

about 30 million photographs

of those poses reproduced

and circulating in Italy.

But Fascism in return gave to the

Papacy what it had long wanted

and that was the Vatican as an

independent state within Rome.

But it was a deal which certainly

left dissident Catholics,

other Catholics like Violet Gibson

who may have had their own

contentions with the Papacy

out in the cold.

Giacomo Matteotti is one of the

principal critics of Mussolini

after the victory in the April 1924

elections.

He also has powerful international

connections

including with the Independent

Labour Party in London

who would publish a book of his

which had appeared in Italian

denouncing the Fascist violence in

the elections.

He also has inside information

apparently on a secret deal between

Sinclair Oil, an American oil

company and the Fascists,

giving backhanders in exchange

for a monopoly

of oil distribution in Italy.

He's driven down the Tevere in Rome.

He's stabbed, he's

sexually assaulted,

the ultimate degradation and insult.

And then his body's taken about

12 kilometres outside the city

and dumped where it's left to rot.

It's not discovered in fact until

August.

And it's an absolutely shocking

moment.

I think when she leaves London,

she is preparing for the

assassination of Mussolini.

She left in November 1924, very

suddenly, and she took with her

a sort of a hapless sweet woman

called Mary McGrath from Co. Meath

who I imagine she might have known

as a servant or a relation

of some of the servants that the

Ashbourne family had

in Dublin perhaps, and McGrath,

ever kind, ever faithful,

joins her and is with her right

through

this passion story as it begins

to unravel.

I think when she leaves London in

1924,

the murder of Matteotti is

uppermost in her mind.

The idea that she can avenge it by

assassinating Mussolini,

I think that's forming in her mind

at the time.

She certainly intends some great

grand gesture

because she packs a gun in her

luggage, a small revolver.

She'd been in doubt when she left

London.

I think this is the time where it

crystallises in her head,

in her mind that it's Mussolini who

needs to be taken out.

Mussolini is the killer of

Matteotti,

he is the sponsor of the squadristi,

these Italian Fascist squads.

"On his first anniversary, with the

aid of gunfire, kidnapping and

castor oil, he is absolute dictator.

Italians must call him Duce."

And we find her in this period,

1924, '25, right up until March '26

going to Trastevere a lot.

And Trastevere at that time was one

of was a very, very poor

working class district of Rome.

English guidebooks advised tourists

not to go anywhere near it

and you were likely to be, you know,

murdered, raped and robbed

in that order or the other way

round.

So, she goes and she was taking

little envelopes and preparing them

with bits of money to give as alms

to poor people.

But this clearly had become a sort

of ritualised journey for her

to go to Trastevere, so the

Socialist Christian mission,

that's the most obvious place she

would go to carry out

looking after the poor and giving

alms.

But Trastevere is important for

another reason.

It's where what's left of the

underground political opposition

to Mussolini is.

It's the place where opponents of

Fascism are gathering around,

various characters, one's called

Ernesto... Father Ernesto Buonaiuti

and he's a well-known Italian

Catholic Modernist,

connected to Willie Ashbourne,

her brother,

and no doubt introduced to her by

Willie and it's known that,

police records show -

because he was under surveillance -

that he was having meetings,

clandestine meetings

and that Violet Gibson was also

attending. So, we have a link there.

We have the Matteotti trial and we

have Trastevere as two sort

of hotbeds if you like of the secret

and ever-receding

in terms of visibility opposition to

Mussolini.

If Violet's intention in going to

Italy with a revolver is to shoot

Mussolini, say, she, she falters in

1925, in February,

just four months after she's

arrived.

She decides that perhaps the

sacrifice that's required of her

is a different one.

And she locks herself in her cell,

if you like,

in the convent where she's staying.

(GUNSHOT)

Violet has got herself into bed and

held a sheet and wore her modesty

to her chin but it's noticed that

some blood is coming out

of the corner of her mouth.

And amazingly, the bullet enters her

ribcage and sort of ricochets around

and ends up in her shoulder,

but other than that,

she sustains no real injury.

She's taken in and the bullet

is removed.

A statement is made to the police

who confiscate the gun, crucially.

She now has no gun and a priest is

sent to hear her confession.

I suppose you've come to take me

out of here?

Yes, dearest.

I am not suggesting...

At least consider London.

We could...

The family would...

The atmosphere in these places is

not conducive...

You don't seem to realise, Willie,

I'm with the nuns here.

Without the nuns...

You must try to re-enter real life.

Real life?

Really, Willie?

Might I remind you, you,

you led the way.

I'm not talking about your faith.

No. You're not.

Willie obviously didn't see it in

the same way.

I think he probably just thought she

was mad

and so he left when she'd refused

to come back with him

and that was the last she ever

saw of him.

Although they had been very,

very close.

He'd been a major influence

on her life

and on her conversion to

Catholicism.

"In the event of my death,

or that I am for some reason

unable to transact my own affairs,

will you please see that all my

belongings, papers and notebooks

are given to Miss Enid Dinnis,

36 Milton Road, East Sheen, London.

Much love from your affectionate

sister, Violet Gibson."

Miss McGrath. Would you mind going

to the dressmaker tomorrow

to pick up my order?

Is this a new outfit for a special

occasion?

No.

But I... I do need a day quiet

and alone.

She's now a woman alone with her

Irish maid who she keeps by the way

giving excuses to and saying,

"I'll be back in a minute,"

and then she just goes off.

She's very good at escaping, Violet,

at evasion in all senses

of the word.

And McGrath was rather desperate

because she doesn't,

can't account for her and she knows

she's meant to be looking after her.

In these periods she's going to

Trastevere, we know that for sure.

Where else would she have got hold

of a gun, a second gun?

She's got to have got that in Italy

somewhere.

Very hard to get an unlicensed gun,

any gun at all in Fascist Italy.

It's not like someone sent it to her

in the post from England.

She wouldn't have brought two guns

out with her.

I'm absolutely convinced that the

second gun, the one that she's going

to turn on Mussolini, she gets from

the circle of Ernesto Buonaiuti

or somebody else in Trastevere.

And I think they, they put her up

for it

and she's very much up for it.

I'm sorry to say but I have no

further need for your services.

Why, Miss Gibson? Did, did I do

something wrong?

No. Absolutely not. And I must ask

you not to disclose this matter

to anyone or disclose anything about

your dismissal.

Can you promise me that?

Thank you.

I've made all the arrangements

for your travel

back to Ireland on Monday.

On, on Mon... on Monday?

Yes.

Is there any... are you sure...

is there anything I can do?

Thank you, Miss McGrath.

You may go now.

"Mussolini.

Domani.

Piazza del Littorio.

(CROWD MURMURING)

(CHEERING)

(MUMURING CONTINUES)

Il Duce! Il Duce! Il Duce!

(CHEERING "IL DUCE" CONTINUES)

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(CHEERING "IL DUCE" CONTINUES)

(FEINT SCREAMS)

(YELLING)

Everybody stay calm!

Nothing!

It will take more than this to

finish Il Duce!

Don't be afraid, my friends.

I am here. I will always be here!

This is a trifle, a mere trifle!

(CAMERA CLICKING)

She is completely calm having almost

been lynched by the mob.

She has had this great apotheosis;

this great moment of success.

She lies there like Prince Andre

in "War and Peace"

and looks up at the sky in a moment

of great beauty and release.

It's extraordinary.

And meanwhile Italy just erupts,

up and down the country.

The facista squads are out beating

up anyone they can find

who seems a worthy target.

Another response is of course

in Thanksgiving

and the tolling of the bells,

the "Te Deum" is played,

and various church bells and service

is held in many churches.

St. Mark's bells ring out in Venice;

The Vatican rings out the bells

of St. Peter's;

The Pope sends a message saying how

relieved he is

Mussolini has been spared by God;

protected by God.

Telegrams come in from the president

of the United States,

from the Irish president,

from Chamberlain obviously,

from King George V,

who says how appalled he is at this

terrible thing.

King George V, of course,

who 30 years earlier has stood

in the same photograph, just feet

away from the young Violet Gibson

who was then a beautiful debutant.

Do you understand?

Do you understand?

Miss McGrath knew nothing.

I dismissed her so that could

not be implicated.

As the person who tried to

assassinate

the Prime Minister of Italy you will

face the full rigour of the law.

Do you understand?

Where did you get the gun?

Who gave you the gun?

You want to know where

I got the gun?

Well, I had an old friend

in England

who gave me the gun before he died.

And I brought it with me to Rome.

When she's imprisoned she's

very calm and I think

sort of satisfied.

(RUSTLING/PAPERS SCRUNCHING)

(MUSIC INTENSIFIES)

Chief Superintendent Pennetta is a

fascinating character.

He believes, he suspects, and then I

really think he does believe

after a period of time that Violet

was part of a conspiracy.

The Gibson family regrets

the incident

and expresses warm sympathy.

I'm only surprised she shot

Signor Mussolini

given the fact that she repeatedly

declared the desire

to assassinate the Pope.

Miss Constance Gibson arrived two

days ago to represent the family.

We have succeeded in inducing Ferry,

one of the leading pathological

lawyers in Rome,

to undertake Violet Gibson's case.

Miss Gibson was having such an

awkward time here

that she needed police protection.

No hotel wished to give her

accommodation,..

He insists on wearing a kilt

on all occasions

and as this particularity has been

signalled in the press,

he would run serious risk of being

assaulted in the street.

No one will know my judgement

except myself.

I will be silent.

I love the Italians and hope they

will allow me to stay with them

and I hope everyone will be

patient with me.

Violet tries to get her... requests

her checkbook from the convent

and the inquiry reveals that she has

an awful amount of money,

a lot of money in her account and

this must have been some part

of a plot because why would she need

thousands of pounds in today's terms

in her account unless it were to

promote some kind of

conspiracy or something?

And she said, "No, no, no," she

writes an incredibly rational letter

saying, "Well no, obviously not.

It's what we call credit.

I have 100 pounds a week on credit

but it doesn't mean I'm going to

spend 100 pounds a week."

And Pennetta looks and that and

says, you know, to himself

In fact he notes it.

"These are not the words of a woman

who is insane.

This is completely lucid and

completely practical.

She has, I think, mounting evidence,

circumstantial that suggests to him

that she's been part of a plot

and the more I think about it the

more I think she was.

She's carrying that stone wrapped in

a leather glove in her pocket

when she goes to Campidoglio.

She's got the pistol and she's

got the stone.

Would you think of that?

I don't know, I wouldn't.

I think that sounds like someone

with some sort of vaguely

professional idea of how to

assassinate someone

might have told her that.

Where did she go?

Who did she meet?

Who are her accomplices?

Do you expect me to believe

this lady, this Irish lady,

this aristocrat dreamed this up

all by herself?

She went and got a gun all by

herself

and there was no one behind her

pulling the strings?

Who were they? Who are they?

You will of course be subject

to the full rigours of the law.

I am setting it out what it is

we want to know.

You will get her to give a full

account of herself.

Write her a letter. Is that clear?

(BELL RINGING/FLAG WAVING IN WIND)

Do you remember that you once asked

me that I loved Rome more than you?

You must know that at this moment

nothing interests me more

beyond helping you, if I am able.

I'm taking this opportunity

to ask you in the name of God

that when you next see the

magistrate,

you are perfectly frank and answer

all the questions he puts to you.

This is in your interests

and for your own good.

Miss Gibson, look at you.

Miss McGrath!

How are you?

These are for you. How are you?

What are you doing here in Rome?

And how did you afford the trip?

Don't worry, Miss Gibson,

the Italian consul in Dublin,

they offered to pay for a first

class return ticket.

The Italian consul?

The other day I met with your sister

Frances, Mrs. Bolton,

at her home in Dublin.

She's very concerned about you.

Frances?

Concerned? I doubt that.

And your dear friend Enid,

she has been...

She has been writing and asking

about you.

How is Enid?

She's good but she's very worried

about you.

Everybody is worried about you.

Look at your face.

I hate this place.

It does get terribly lonely.

Are you eating?

Are you eating properly?

The food here is terrible.

The visit is over. Andiamo!

No I have to...

Please come back again soon,

Miss McGrath.

I will, I promise. I promise.

Come back soon.

She said to the mother superior,

I think, at St. Brigida,

before she set... a few days before

she set out to kill Mussolini,

she said, "I've been asked by

several people, four people,

have told me to do it but I don't

know if I'm up to the task;

I don't know if I'm up to it."

Why did I shoot Mussolini?

Well, I did it for love.

When I arrived in Rome in 1924,..

..I learnt to my great sadness

that Geovanni,

Geovanni Colonna, Duca di Cesarò,..

..was married.

I wanted to do something to

impress him.

So, I had heard that he had become

an opponent of the fascist regime,

so I decided to kill Mussolini.

Of course he knew nothing of my

plans.

That's all I'm prepared to say

at the moment.

I'm tired and I would like

to return to my cell.

She plays poor Pennetta and the

others who come to interrogate her.

"Who, me? Are you sure? I shot

Mussolini? I don't think so."

And the next day she's saying, "Ah,

yeah, no, I did, I did. I did it.

Why? I did it for the glory of God."

"Did you have any accomplices?"

"I did, I did," she'd say,

I had, I had all the great saints

who've died guiding me.

I met Geovanni, the Duke...

He approached me and said,

"Great things tomorrow".

And then she writes at some point

to her friend Enid Dinnis,

she does write a letter saying,

"I'm so glad God gave me an Irish

tongue...

..to lead them all a merry dance.

Viva Mussolini! Viva Mussolini!

It is against the will of God that

Mussolini should continue to exist.

At this point she got her room and

it's a rather nice

newly opened asylum up in the hills

above Rome

and allowed a certain degree

of freedom.

She said to one of the nuns there

that she had people

who had helped her, but that she

would always remain silent about it

so as not to compromise them.

We have the preliminary details.

Name: Violet Albina Gibson.

Una metro, cinquantasette

centimetri.

Left breast amputation.

She'd subjected to, I'd say,

a really intrusive -

given the context - examination.

What could it possibly have

justified?

Finding the seat of her hysteria,

literally, touching her womb?

This is something I find very

uncomfortable talking about

and I find incredibly uncomfortable

reading the details

of this vaginal examination.

The hymen is not intact.

It permits with ease the

introduction

of two exploratory fingers.

The uterus is retroverted.

Ovaries normal.

There is no pathological secretion

of the urethra

even after it is squeezed.

I think for a woman who was so

resolutely private

and who was effectively living

as a celibate -

although she'd had lovers

when she was younger -

this must have been... this must

have felt like a punishment.

It must have been very humiliating

and I think that's what it was

intended to be.

When Lucetti misses, she confides to

the same nun after that.

She says that it was a pity

he missed.

The nun then reports of her to the

investigating magistrate

and he demands she be taken straight

back to prison.

She knows she's made a mistake

because she's then

in floods of tears for days

afterwards and really shaky.

Violet's eyes, which were shown in

close-up

in newspapers all over the world,

including the Daily Mail, were,

without comment, were simply

presented as evidence

of a depraved personality of a mad

woman with malicious intent.

It's not surprising Ferri comes up

with this defence of lucid insanity.

Basically a deal was done.

Ferri, who I'm sure enjoyed going

through the motions

because Violet Gibson was a

fascinating objective study

as was Mussolini who he'd also

studied,

Ferri was given the nod that

Mussolini wanted this over with

as soon as possible and he wanted

Violet spirited out of the country.

This coincides with perfect timing

with Winston Churchill -

then chancellor's - visit to Rome

to meet Mussolini

and of course Churchill comes out

and gives Mussolini

the great bona fides of the

recuperative leech

who will draw the Bolshevik threat

away from Italy

and by implication,

the rest of the free world.

The Italian bit of this story ends

with this much quieter

piece of theatre but it is

nonetheless a piece of theatre.

When, essentially, people in

disguise as civilians

but are in fact Violet's future

custodians,

they're nurses and attendants from

St. Andrew's Lunatic Asylum

and plainclothes policemen,

you know,

she's surrounded by people who then

spirit her onto this train

and I'm absolutely sure she had

no idea who they were

other than he own sister

Constance.

Can you believe it, Constance?

I'm going home.

I won't be staying here long.

I will be returning to Italy

as soon as possible.

Why?

To shoot Mussolini.

Miss Gibson, I concur with my

colleague.

You behaviour is hysterical

and suspicious, unbalanced

and unreliable.

Doctor! My behaviour since the

incident...

Even unstable and dangerous.

My behaviour since the incident,

all of it,

has been conducted with the view to

preparing my defence of insanity

after I attacked Mussolini.

I'm sorry. I cannot see it.

That is not my diagnosis.

(BIRDS CHIRPING/LEAVES BLOWING)

(STEPS CREAKING)

And of course there's the reveal,

isn't there?

There's the reveal when she's

finally dumped at St. Andrew's.

Is that when the nurses take

their civvies off?

I don't know, they already changed

into their uniforms

and their starched collars.

I'm not sure.

It's a great deception

that get's her back without any

sort of protest.

But it's a story full of

theatricality.

Some of it hysterical and

melodramatic

and other a little bit more subtle

and oblique and causes one to think

more about the destiny of the

protagonist of this story.

(HEAVY BREATHING)

The world feels less and less

like a home.

Good morning, Miss Gibson.

Good morning, Miss Clarke.

It's a beautiful day, Miss Gibson.

I heard the blackbirds singing on my

way over this morning.

I was thinking about you.

You have such an extraordinary way

with the birds.

Maybe you can go to the garden

today.

I do hope so, Miss Clarke.

This room is so stuffy at night.

It's bad for my chest.

I have had tuberculosis, you know.

I need fresh air.

I'm going to write to Dr. Tennent

to ask him

that my windows be left unlocked at

night as they were previously.

Even the junior nurses have their

windows unlocked at night.

And why not I?

Who am methodical and careful.

I'll see what I can do, Miss Gibson.

Thank you, my dear.

"I was alone with her for an hour

and a half and I wondered

suppose she was to attack me or my

sister Lady Bolton,

seize our coats and hats,

whether or not it would have been

perfectly easy for her to walk out."

Out!

Out!

Devil!

Out!

Get out!

It's done!

Get out, devil!

Get out!

Get out!

Get out!

Stop, Violet.

Stop. It's only a dream.

It's the devil. It's that devil.

It's that devil.

He won't leave me alone. He won't

leave me alone.

He won't leave me alone.

My dear Constance, once again I have

seen the devil

and was so mad last night they had

to put me in a padded cell.

Will you forgive me and come

and take care of me

as I should have let you done

in the beginning.

Please be very forgiving and come

as soon as you can.

With love, from Violet Gibson.

My dearest Enid,

My protestant sisters have taken

charge of my affairs

and sent me to an asylum where there

is no chapel,

not even for Sunday Mass

and where obviously I cannot

receive communion.

I feel that I have no friends.

I don't know if there is still

anybody who loves me.

Help me to understand my situation.

(KNOCKING)

Oh my God!

(HEAVY COUGHING)

Hello?

Violet, it's me, Constance.

I don't want to see you.

I don't want to see you or anyone.

But my dear Vizzie,

I've come all the way to see you.

Just go away, Constance.

I don't want to see you.

Please!

Leave me alone.

It was Constance who would go and

visit Violet

when she was in this mental hospital

for the rest of her life.

The rest of the family didn't go

and see her.

Possible one sister visited once.

But it was Constance who went I

think every month to see her

and was in correspondence with

the hospital all the time

and was looking out for Violet,

and doing her best for her.

She survived and at times she made

the best of it and she was calm

and at peace and was given certain

privileges.

She could go out

and feed the birds.

I think she was please she

had arrived

to the point through patient

waiting

where the birds were feeding

on her hand.

I think she was also kind of

slightly flattered

that this put her into the same kind

of iconography

as the saints, like St. Francis.

Your paper, Miss Gibson.

Thank you.

It's not really until 1935 that you

hear the British press

or the English-language press

this includes the Americans,

in 1935 when Mussolini

invades Ethiopia.

Abyssinia.

It's not really until then that it

ever enters the minds of

British diplomats that Mussolini

might be a danger to others.

"To acts of war, we will reply

with war."

In a brutal war in Abyssinia in

which mustard gas was used,

there is there, I think no doubt

that fascist imperialism was,

well let's put it this was, amongst

the worst of the variants

of European imperialism in Africa.

By 1938, the student Hitler has

(inaudible) the teacher Mussolini.

But Il Duce has given Italy's king

and queen a temporary

Ethiopian empire and together with

Hitler,

has helped spread fascism to Spain

as well.

Single-handed, he defies the League

of Nations and gets away with it.

Now all Europe trembles at the sound

of the Axis goosestep which

Il Duce in compliment to Hitler has

introduced among his own troops.

As world war seems inevitable,

England and France sign

peace commitments with the Axis

at Munich, September '38

on the Axis's own terms.

Definitely the junior part

of the Axis,

Mussolini still has a whip hand over

Chamberlain and Daladier.

He's welcomed home from Munich.

New year he overruns Albania.

A year afterward, with France

defeated and England tottering,

he takes Italy into World War II.

Dear Mr. Churchill.

In 1926, I tried to assassinate

Mussolini.

One year's internment would have

been ample for that.

But because I hung myself three

times,

and because for every two years

I can be kept here,

1000 pounds clear profit is made and

because I have a family

of the plausible cat species,

I have not been set free.

The war situation is great.

I hope you will prove yourself to be

a Prime Minister

equal to dealing with it,

and so, easing the gratitude

of the whole world.

Yours sincerely, Violet Gibson.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

It's so wonderful to get out

into the fresh air.

Even if I'm confined to this garden.

I don't think anyone cares about me.

I've been tossed aside.

Oh, Vizzie.

You know that's not true.

In all these years Willie never came

to visit me.

And I wasn't allowed to go to his

funeral either.

And as for the others...

But I come to visit.

I do so care about you, Vizzie.

I know you care.

But in a strange way.

Why can't I go to a convent where I

can be looked after

and where I can find peace?

Oh, Vizzie, please don't be

troubling yourself.

Good morning, Miss Gibson.

How are you this morning?

Now very well, Miss Clarke.

Oh, are you ill?

No...

My nephew has taken on

responsibility for my affairs.

And it seems my family can no longer

afford for me

to stay in a private room.

With my own nurse.

And I may need to move to the

dormitory.

I am sorry to have to tell you...

..that I will be leaving this

hospital soon

to take up another position.

Oh no.

More bad news.

I will miss you.

You have been very kind to me.

You are indeed a special woman.

I should not be locked up and buried

alive in this evil place.

Miss Gibson, this is not

an evil place.

You are not evil.

But this place is.

Hitler's boyfriend, the deflated

Mussolini was carted off

to Germany by plane following his

rescue by Nazi paratroops.

Captured enemy films show how after

being kept a prisoner

in Central Italy he was whisked off

to become a Nazi stooge.

At Hitler's headquarters the comedy

of errors reached a peak

of buffoonery as Muso tried oh so

hard to look his former self

in front of Mr. Schicklgruber.

A kiss for papa.

Mussolini's son who is with the

Nazis held back on a crack

about how well he thought he looked

and the fraudulent head

of a fake fascist regime shook hands

with Ribbentrop.

What a parody of those former

meetings.

One arrogant career which has hit

the ignominious bottom.

Yes, there you have them: Hitler,

Ribbentrop and the flat tyre.

However, the Germans occupied Italy

down to Rome

and remained in possession and so

the last two years of the war

the Allies slogged there way up

Italy and behind the lines

an Italian civil war broke out

between the partisans,

the resistance and the supporters of

the fascist regime.

The fascist and his mistress

are displayed.

The degraded Duce is spurned in

death by raging people

and the place from which he launched

the march on Rome.

The world will not forget the life

and death of Benito Mussolini,

the strutting, pompous braggard.

Now the one time Duce has been

executed and his body spat upon

by his countrymen.

An example other war criminals

will not overlook.

He's fleeing from the partisans who

will eventually shoot him

and hang him and Clara like

prosciuttos at the petrol station

in Milan.

In his bag he's carrying files

relating to the Violet Gibson case,

which I can only assume the only use

of that would be as

a bargaining chip to say

"I did you guys a favour."

She wanted to go to a convent,

somewhere by the coast.

She wasn't fit enough to jump over

walls and assassinate people.

She was no risk to anybody.

Of course she wasn't.

And of course those wishes

were never granted.

One remembers that what seems long,

long ago,

people spoke well of one

and loved one,

whereas in these days one is held

is such derision

that it requires a strong act of

faith to believe

that anyone ever did love one.

(STRUGGLED BREATHING)

I found these letters that she'd

written to the Queen,

to other notables,

anyone she could think of,

mentioning her father, mentioning

her time at court

when she was a young woman trying to

use the social credentials

that she shared actually and had

been so oppressive to her,

now to trying to use them to get...

secure her release.

But the devastating thing is if the

letters are still in the file

in the envelopes with the stamp on,

they were never sent.

She really was silenced and buried

alive.

The end of this black and white

movies,

turning into colour, finished,..

I'm happy that it's not.

Because I think in oblique

and sometimes...

..troubling ways,

the story of Violet,

the question of her madness and/or

at the same time sanity...

..asks us to present different ways

into a much bigger history

of violence, of fascism,

of international politics,

of politicking as some kind of

grand parlour game.

These smaller characters who get

these marginal parts

and appropriate to marginal parts

are then marginalised.

They do actually shine and sparkle

in the margins

and tell you something the official

histories have left out,

which I think is of value.

I think her life is of value

and needs to be...

That needs to be recovered.

For her but for us, for now.

Because it tells us a lot of what's

going on now.