Not many people know that the founder of AC Milan and father of Italian football was not a Paolo, or a Franco or a Giovanni……but a Herbert.
Herbert Kilpin was a Victorian textile-worker and amateur footballer, who left Nottingham for Italy in 1891, never to return to the land of his birth. Although he died in obscurity and poverty in Milan in the middle of the Great War, the club he founded went on to become one of the most famous and successful in world football.
Kilpin lived, first in Turin and then in Milan, through an extraordinary period in the development of modern Italy. A century after his death, Kilpin has become the figurehead of the fans on the Curva Sud of the San Siro stadium in Milan. His uncomplicated love of the game, and for the club he founded, serves as a counterpart to the commercialism of modern calcio.
Robert Nieri spent the best part of a decade researching Kilpin’s story before launching his book at il Milan to mark the centenary of Kilpin’s death in 2016. The following year he helped bring to the big screen an award-winning documentary about Kilpin and the fans he continues to inspire.
Robert has also been instrumental in acquainting the people of Nottingham with one of the city’s most influential sons. Kilpin’s birthplace has been renovated; a heritage plaque has been placed on its façade; a Kilpin bus arrives at a Kilpin bus stop outside his house, and passes close to the Kilpin pub in the city centre. The primary school children of Nottingham compete for the Kilpin Trophy in the park where Kilpin played football as a teenager over 130 years ago.
After a century of obscurity, The Lord of Milan has finally come home. Come and hear the amazing true story of Kilpin’s life – and his after-life
Drinks and canapés will be offered after the talk
A Bold and Dangerous Family is the third volume in a quartet about the Resistance before and during World War 2 in Italy and France. It tells the story of Carlo and Nello Rosselli and their mother Amelia, who defied Mussolini during the turbulent years of Fascism and ultimately paid the highest price for their courage. The fourth and last volume of the series, A House in the Mountains, to be published in November 2019, will be about Italian partisans during the 20 month period of civil war in Italy (between September 1943 and April 1945). It is told around the lives of four women fighting in Turin and the mountains of Piedmont. A Bold and Dangerous Family was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award in 2017.
Caroline Moorehead is a historian and biographer. She has previously written lives of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Heinrich Schliemann and Lucy de la Tour du Pin and her role in the French Revolution. She is also the author of various works of with a human rights theme, most recently Human Cargo, a book about refugees. Ms Moorehead is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Drinks will be offered after the talk
PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE HELD AT:
Queen Alexandra’s House, Bremner Road Kensington Gore,
London SW7 2QT
Italy is a fascinating destination for lovers of Old Masters, but it also has attractions for contemporary art lovers. Private art foundations, often based in former industrial sites converted into cultural venues, are playing an important role in shaping the contemporary art scene.
Prominent examples are: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaurengo in Turin, created by collector Patrizia Re Rebaurengo and located in a converted railway engine shed; Fondazione Prada, developed by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli and built around their private art collection in a part of Milan which used to be a distillery; and Fondazione Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in a building in an industrial quarter of Milan originally used to build railway carriages and locomotives.
These fondazioni organize multi-disciplinary exhibitions and educational programmes which incorporate painting, sculpture, performance, and multi-media installations. The exhibitions also encompass photography, cinema, video, design and architecture. The fondazioni collaborate with Italian and international museums, and with other institutions and schools, in an effort both to provide artists with new possibilities to explore and to make contemporary art accessible to a wider audience.
Silvia Badiali is a professional Adviser on Art and Finance. She regularly speaks at international art fairs, and at universities in Italy, about the art market and art as an investment. Silvia graduated in economics from Bocconi University in Milan and took a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute in London. She worked in the City of London as an investment banker for more than twenty years, before devoting herself to her real passion, the visual arts.
Drinks will follow the talk
The President of the British-Italian Society, Mrs Olga Polizzi, and her husband Mr William Shawcross, generously opened their beautiful home in London to members of the Society on 4 December for an evening of festive drinks and chicheti. The Venetian chicheti were prepared by Skye McAlpine based on recipes from her book A Table in Venice.
It was a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas and the end of the year. The Society raised a substantial sum, in contributions from members to the event, to draw on in supporting good causes which reflect the Society’s aims in the coming year.
We are grateful to Olga and William for their generous hospitality, and to Skye for her culinary contribution.
The British-Italian Society organised a fascinating visit for a group of members to the exhibition Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly on Tuesday 6 November.
The RA arranged an excellent introductory talk about the exhibition in the wonderful surroundings of the Academicians’ Room on the first floor. The group were then able to tour the exhibition itself, before returning to the Academicians’ Room to compare impressions over drinks and canapés.
All those who took part found the exhibition stimulating and informative. It was imbued throughout with the very human character of Italy’s most famous architect: indeed Renzo Piano had had a hand himself in selecting and arranging the exhibits.
We are grateful also to Rocco Forte & Family Hotels, sponsors of the exhibition, whose generous support made our visit possible. All in all, a very enjoyable and sociable occasion.