Una delle due - book presentation

The Keats-Shelley House is delighted to invite you to the presentation of the book Una delle due by Maria Giuseppina Di Monte on Thursday 3 April at 5 p.m.

Please note that this event will be in Italian and can only be attended in presence.

The novel is based on a well-known news story, the mysterious and dramatic story of Anthony Blunt, curator of the Royal Collection of Art and also related to the British royal family. A leading expert on the French painter Nicolas Poussin and internationally renowned scholar of European art, Blunt found himself at the centre of a major scandal that the world press followed with great interest and curiosity in the 1970s.
The plot develops around this character, broadly tracing the crucial episodes of the spy story set between London and Moscow, which the novel enriches with details and re-elaborates by selecting Rome as the setting, alongside the British capital.
The story begins in a remote village in the province of Foggia and follows the relationship between two foreign language students, Sara De Vito and Angela Laganella, who get to know each other in Rome, navigating their ups and downs, common aspirations, generational complicity and concealed grudges. The story, set ten years after the events of the famous Blunt scandal, continues in London where Angela meets  Anthony Blunt, who is twenty years older, for a work commitment. A controversial relationship develops between them, first professional and then amorous, with the author skilfully exploring its darker sides. He is thus rehabilitated, becoming the catalyst for the emotions, feelings and reflections of the various characters involved, whose personalities emerge and are defined in the light of Blunt's own actions.

The book will be presented by the author as well as by Milena Gammaitoni, Associate Professor at Roma Tre University, and Adriano Monti Buzzetti, professional journalist and the Chief Culture Editor of TG2.

Admission is free, but booking is mandatory due to the limited number of places (please write to info@keats-shelley-house.org). 

Maria GIuseppina Di Monte, orn in 1963, is an art historian and PhD graduate from the University of Basel. She has been director of the H.C. Andersen Museum since 2021, and was formerly director of the M. Praz and G. Manzù museums in Rome (MiBact). Her fields of study are museology, art criticism, 19th and 20th century art. Recent works include Visualizzare la guerra. L’iconografia del conflitto e l’Italia (2016), Giacomo Manzù con Lucio Fontana (2016), Meret Oppenheim. Opere in dialogo. Da Max Ernst a Mona Hatoum (2017), Tom Jones. Roma e Napoli nel Settecento (2018).

Milena Gammaitoni is an associate professor and lecturer in General Sociology at the University of Roma Tre, Department of Education Sciences. She did her doctorate in Theory and Social Research at La Sapienza University and a post-doctorate at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris; she specialised in qualitative research in social sciences (La Sapienza University) and in equal opportunities and the history of women's thought (University of Roma Tre). She lectures in sociological science disciplines at the Universities of RomaTre, Jagiellonian University of Cracow, Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.
Recent publications include Le direttrici d’orchestra nel mondo. Una galleria di ritratti da Marin Alsop a Xian Zhang, Zecchini Editore, 2023; Musiciste e compositrici 2. Creazione, interpretazione, didattica con Bianca Maria Antolini e Orietta Caianiello, SEdM 2024.
Her latest work La sociologia: storia, concetti e ricerca empirica will soon be published by UTET Edizioni.

Adriano Monti Buzzetti, born in 1968, is a professional journalist, essayist and writer. With a degree in Political Science from LUISS, he is chief Culture Editor of TG2, for which he has also hosted the Tg2 Weekend newscast and managed thematic spaces in the Achab Libri column, as well as editing some dossiers on historical, literary and current affairs topics. Previously he worked for RAI's parliamentary news service, where he also signed some documentaries on the art and history of Montecitorio; and before that at Vatican Radio and the media of the Holy See, extensively following for a decade the activities and international travels of St John Paul II and interviewing personalities such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Mother Teresa and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He has written about art, literature, folklore, military history, the Church and customs for Focus Storia, Avvenire, Diario della Settimana and numerous other newspapers and periodicals. For over thirty years he has been writing about literature, particularly fantasy, with books, articles, lectures, essays and works of fiction.