Giuseppe Donati and Umberto Calosso

Two Italian political and literary émigrés in Malta

As fascism spread across Italy in the late 1920s, a number of intellectuals were forced to seek exile. Two very prominent antifascists – Giuseppe Donati and Umberto Calosso – were among those who found refuge in Malta, then a British colony. Donati had been active in early attemtps to promote Christian democracy in Italy. Having exposed Benito Mussolini’s link with the assassination in 1924 of the socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, Donati was forced to flee from Italy in 1925. He lived in Paris and ultimately Malta where he spent the last nine months of his life teaching Italian at St. Edward’s College. He died of tuberculosis in 1931. Though an uncompromising antifascist, while in Malta, Giuseppe Donati inadvertently defended Mussolini’s agenda – Malta’s italianità.