[2] In the early Forties, he had his first contacts with anti-fascism and, after a short time in the Army, entered the Partito d'azione and became active in the resistance movement in 1943.

My encounter with the culture of the English, and the shock of their language, were for me a determining factor.In 1945 Meneghello graduated cum laude with a thesis on the philosophy of Benedetto Croce.

[2] In 1947 he moved to the University of Reading (England) with a one-year British Council scholarship and afterwards he began teaching aspects of the Italian Renaissance in the English Department.

After an intense academic activity and as a translator (often with the pseudonym Ugo Varnai), in 1963 he published his first book, part novel part autobiography, Libera nos a Malo (English translation titled Deliver Us) about the narrow-minded but vital milieu of his home town, Malo.

This book was considered "one of the few non-rhetorical, and therefore all the more effective, memoirs of the Italian resistance, which is true in every detail" (L. and G. Lepschy, in the "Guardian obituary").