Sarah Freethy on her research into women’s lives in Italy during World War II

We know history is written by the victors. Seen from 60,000 feet, it’s disseminated through official documents: newspapers and dispatches, even letters from the front. It’s tallied in numbers, of men killed, miles marched, battles lost and won. Much less frequently we hear it from the home front. From those cooking in the kitchen, waiting in the parlour for the telegram to come, yet these voices have so much to say. War is experienced in the details – through conversations with neighbours, and ration books and kindnesses extended. Hurried whispers about what to tell, or not to tell, the children. Where you turn to when there is nothing in the shops and how you offer others hope when yours is fading.

When I began researching The Seeker of Lost Paintings, I realised I needed these perspectives. My central protagonist, Maddalena, was a young woman working for a wealthy family in Rome. I wanted to read about women living in the city, before and during the war, and the subsequent bloody occupation by the Nazis. I was searching for a needle in a haystack. Though there are many excellent accounts of this time in Italy, almost all are written about the experience of men. If I wanted to paint a realistic picture of Maddalena’s life, I would need a different source.

Happily, I finally came across the diary of Iris Origo. An Anglo-American writer, she lived on a sprawling Tuscan estate with her Italian husband in the run up to the war. She had friends in high places, but it was the minutiae of life that made her journals vital. How the conflict closed in on her community over time. The radio broadcasts, the propaganda, the petty, bureaucratic inconvenience. Her words offered the clear-eyed view of an outsider. One who loves her adopted country, and weeps to see it crushed by an authoritarian regime.

Origo’s writing is precise and beautiful, but unsentimental. She introduced me to the selpolti vivi – the buried alive – a nickname for boys and men who went into hiding to avoid conscription or forced labour by the Nazis, some literally bricking themselves up. She showed me the stoicism of ordinary people, and she was not the only one.

‘Jane Scrivener’ was the pseudonym of Sister Luke, an American Nun who lived in Rome and worked in the Vatican throughout the occupation. Her journal, ‘Inside Rome with the Germans’, included meticulous details about the rationing and restrictions she endured. It enabled me to chart the chokehold the fascists and the Nazis held, which tightened over time. But instead of allowing it to crush them, the women of the city started fighting back. I learned about the incredible courage of the ‘staffette’: girls and women who faced unimaginable danger to resist in every way they could. Ada Gobetti was one such fighter and her ‘Partisan Diary’ was a vivid and vital record of their exploits.

Where there is bravery, there is love and Maddalena’s kitchen is the beating heart of the book. As an enthusiastic consumer of good food, I’ve always loved Anna del Conte’s writing, her eloquence about cooking and ingredients, both passions born out of childhood. Her memoir, ‘Risotto with Nettles’, describes growing up in Italy during the war, feeding the imagination, even as she makes you ravenously hungry. I turned to it for inspiration, for recipes and descriptions of the kitchen’s warmth. How love and comfort were dispensed there by the forkful. Discovering the words of these four incredible women helped me find my way in. Were it not for them, I don’t think my story would exist in this form today.

The Seeker of Lost Paintings is published by Simon & Schuster on 11 September 2025