Iris Origo

Before he died, William wrote to his wife that he wanted their young daughter to grow up in Italy, "free from all this national feeling which makes people so unhappy.

Iris was briefly enrolled at a London school, but mainly taught at home by Professor Solone Monti and a series of French and German governesses.

After the death of her son, Iris Origo began a writing career with a well-received biography of Giacomo Leopardi, published in 1935.

After the war, she divided her time between La Foce and Rome, where the Origos had bought an apartment in the Palazzo Orsini, and devoted herself to writing.

She also cast light on a little-known facet of medieval and early Italian life in an article, "The Domestic Enemy: the Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries".

[9] The Origos holidayed at Gli Scafari, a house built by the architect Cecil Pinsent for Iris's mother, at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezia.

[1] La Foce is the birthplace of a chamber music festival held in Iris Origo's memory, organised by her grandson, the cellist Antonio Lysy.