He also founded the eponymous publishing house in Milan in 1946 and was a mentor-like figure for Indro Montanelli (a journalist and historian, and the founder of Il Giornale, one of Italy's biggest newspapers).

[1][2][3] Between 1927 and 1950, Longanesi published several magazines, including L'Italiano (1926), Omnibus (1937), and Il Borghese (1950), the last of which is a cultural and satirical weekly paper with conservative orientation.

Longanesi was an elegant and refined cartoonist who wrote several books of memoirs, characterised by a ruthless streak such as In piedi e seduti, Una vita, and Ci salveranno le vecchie zie?

He became friends with leading intellectuals like Galvano Della Volpe, Giorgio Morandi and Vincenzo Cardarelli, and with young rising politicians like Leandro Arpinati, Dino Grandi and Italo Balbo.

[15] With Maccari and popular writer Curzio Malaparte, Longanesi began a cultural movement called Strapaese (literally "great country"), which believed Italian Fascism to be the bearer of rural traditions and patriotic virtues.

"The Italian") from 1926 to 1942, headquartered first in Bologna and then in Rome, with Maccari, American playwright Henry Furst, and writer Giovanni Comisso, former legionnaire of Fiume with Gabriele D'Annunzio.

[17] During Mussolini's dictatorship (from 1926 to 1943), Longanesi was both loyal and critical to Fascism, and was ironic about the Battle for Grain (marshes' recovery policy), the mystification of the Ancient Rome, and imperialist dreams of Africa.

His dismissal was because of a strong and irreverent piece on Senator Giuseppe Tanari, financer of the squadrismo (literally "squadronism"), a radical tendency inside Fascism, members of which attacked, assaulted, and sometimes killed political dissidents.

"The Muses' Sofa"), and published successful works like The Tartar Steppe (1940), Don Giovanni in Sicily (1941) and The Truth about the Motta Affair (1937, reedited in 1941).

On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war against France and the United Kingdom, in alliance with Nazi Germany and other Fascist-inspired nations of the Axis Powers.

[26] Despite his personal beliefs, and remaining faithful to his controversial and eclectic nature, Longanesi chose to stay loyal to the Fascist regime, worked for Primato magazine, directed by former Public Education Minister Giuseppe Bottai, and invented war slogans like "Taci!

The new Prime Minister Pietro Badoglio, however, secretly signed the armistice of Cassibile with Allied Powers on 3 September 1943, while all of Italy was directly under German military influence.

On 8 September, with a proclamation, Pietro Badoglio announced the switching allegiances from the Axis to the Allies, after which he fled to Brindisi with the royal family and the government, leaving military and public authorities without orders.

[27] On 1 October, Longanesi moved to Naples, where, along with Steno and Soldati, he collaborated with Allied authorities on an anti-fascist propaganda FM radio named White Star.

[26] On 5 June 1944, Rome was finally liberated, and Longanesi returned to the capital on 1 July, writing the comedy Il suo cavallo (transl.

During the 1948 election, fearing a victory of the Soviet-sponsored Popular Democratic Front, Longanesi and Montanelli campaigned for the "less worse" Christian Democracy (DC), printing and publishing pamphlets, fliers, posters and hosting Radio Garibaldi, an illegal FM transmission in Milan.

[2][3] After the defeat of the Front, Longanesi left Il Libraio, and in 1950 founded the magazine Il Borghese, collaborating with Montanelli, Giovanni Ansaldo, Giuseppe Prezzolini, Giovanni Spadolini, Alberto Savinio, Mario Tedeschi, Ennio Flaiano, Colette Rosselli, Irene Brin, Goffredo Parise, Mario Missiroli and Piero Buscaroli.

In Longanesi's view, Il Borghese should be an expression of a new right-wing anti-communist movement, who he named "Brothers of Italy's League", and organized political circles in several cities.

Giving liberty to the masses means losing liberty.In the early 1950s, Longanesi tried to transform his movement into a large right-wing party, formed by former Fascists, monarchists, Catholics, liberals and conservatives.