In this highly acclaimed "inside view" of the Vatican and Fascist Italy, Owen Chadwick offers a new and rare perspective into the predicament of the papacy, the struggle to keep Italy out of the war, the question of condemning atrocities, the fall of Fascism, and the German occupation of Rome.

This is a collection of Owen Chadwick's principal writings on Lord Acton, the distinguished Victorian historian and founder of The Cambridge Modern History. Some of the pieces are no longer readily available, while one has never before appeared in English. All have been revised, sometimes extensively. This book explains the important aspects of Acton's complex mind and his great contribution to historical studies. Professor Chadwick, himself a former holder of Acton's Regius Chair, is the leading senior authority both on Acton and on matters of church and state in the nineteenth century.