Mussolini the Spy

News has emerged the Italian Fascist dictator got an early break when he was paid £100 a week to spy for MI5, the British intelligence agency. Working as a journalist, he was paid to spread positive propaganda to ensure Italy continued to fight in World War 1 as an ally of the British. Cambridge historian Peter Martlett writes, "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict...It was a lot of money to pay a man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash...I have no evidence to prove it, but I suspect that Mussolini also spent a good deal of the money on his mistresses."

PS: The official authorised history of MI5 has just been published. Here is a review.