The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War

by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s biography of Gabriele D’Annunzio—the story of the Italian poet and aristocrat’s “evolution from idealist Romantic to radical right-wing revolutionary”—offers an insight into the cultish elements of nationalism, the origins of extremism, and the dangers of huge personal charisma. It was declared the ‘biography of the decade’ by The Times, and won both the Costa biography prize and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction (now known as the Baillie Gifford Prize, the UK’s most prestigious prize for nonfiction) in 2013.