Giangiacomo Feltrinelli

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was born in 1926 into one of Italy's wealthiest families, perhaps originating in Feltre. His father, Carlo Feltrinelli, controlled numerous companies including Credito Italiano, Edison S.p.A. and Legnami Feltrinelli, which managed vast lumber holdings in central Europe, some having provided sleepers for the enormous extension of Italian railway tracks in the nineteenth century. Carlo died in 1935. At the instigation of Giangiacomo's monarchist mother, Giannalisa, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had him created Marchese di Gargnano at the age of 12 by King Vittorio Emmanuele III. In 1940, Feltrinelli's mother married Luigi Barzini, editor of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. During the Second World War, the family left the Villa Feltrinelli in Gargnano, north of Salò, to be occupied by Mussolini, and moved to Monte Argentario.

In the post-war period, Feltrinelli had joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). However, in 1947 the PSI was engulfed in crisis following the departure of sections of its moderate wing, prompting Feltrinelli (alongside his new wife, Bianca) to rejoin the PCI instead. He remained a member of the party until 1958, when he left in solidarity with 'revisionist' criticism of the Hungarian Uprising and also because of certain conflicts that had emerged within the PCI regarding his publishing house's editorial policy, although he continued to maintain friendly relations with several of the party's leaders.

Third world activism

Feltrinelli spent the 1960s travelling the world and making links with various radical Third World leaders and guerrilla movements. In the Cuban house of the photographer Alberto Korda, Feltrinelli saw and was given Korda's iconic photo of Che Guevara. Within six months of Che's assassination, Feltrinelli sold over two million posters bearing the image. In 1964, Feltrinelli met Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro. In 1967, he went to Bolivia and met with Régis Debray.

Feltrinelli published the writings of figures such as Castro, Che and Ho Chi Minh, and a series of pamphlets on the unfolding insurgencies and wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He was a close friend of the student leader Rudi Dutschke, whom he invited to convalesce in Italy after Dutschke was seriously wounded by an assassination attempt. Feltrinelli gave financial support to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, among other causes.