Sinead Cusack reads from Frances Stonor Saunders' account of the troubled life of Violet Gibson, the daugher of an Anglo-Irish lord who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in Rome in 1926.

As she was led off by the police in the moments after she had shot Benito Mussolini, Violet seemed confused and surprised to hear what she had done. But her subsequent behaviour showed flashes of remarkable lucidity. Was it an act of sanity to attempt to kill a man whom the world later regarded as deluded?

Abridged by Jill Waters

A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4. Show less