College Record 2017

scholar. He was the first in his family to go to university. His interest in Italy, he
later claimed, was first sparked at school, but was also linked to a later encounter
with the great liberal historian G M Trevelyan; however, his main reference point at
Peterhouse was the historian Herbert Butterfield, a harsh critic of the Whig tradition
represented by Trevelyan.
In 1946, Denis spent an extended period in Italy looking at archival material relating
to Sicily in 1860. Later he remembered ‘the hunger and the silence of that period ...
I passed entire months without talking to anyone.’ The country was still recovering
from the trauma of the Second World War and people were throwing out books that
had enjoyed favour during the Fascist period. Denis bought up vast amounts from
street stalls and sent them back to the UK, thus forming the basis of a personal
library that would aid his writing.
The philosopher Benedetto Croce took Denis under his wing, giving him access to
the library of his house in Naples, but only at night. Croce would occasionally join
the young scholar, dressed in his night shirt. In 1949, Denis met one of Garibaldi’s
daughters in Rome, and she invited him to visit the family home on the island in
Caprera. He later said that it was one of the great regrets of his life that he had not
been able to do so.
After being a Fellow of Peterhouse (1947–62), Denis was elected to a Research
Fellowship at All Souls (1962–87). A tall, dashing, charming and elegant man, he
was generous with his time and learning. In later years he entertained Italian scholars
at his house near Oxford and gave them books from his extensive collection. His own
other publications included a biography of Mussolini (1982), and further, separate
studies of Garibaldi and Cavour were joined in 1994 by a biography of Giuseppe
Mazzini, the other leading figure of the Risorgimento. Denis also edited The Making
of Italy, 1796-1866 (1988), and co-authored A History of Sicily (1986) with Moses
Finley and Christopher Duggan. He had supervised Duggan’s doctorate, and one
of the last times he was seen in public was at Duggan’s memorial service in 2015.
Denis well into his 90s was still hosting lunch in Oxford and would insist on driving
his guests back to the station afterwards at some speed.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his popularity in Italy, many mainstream historians
there despised Denis, and wrote scathing reviews of his books. When the Italian
historian Renzo De Felice published an explosive interview-book concerning his
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