Gabriele D'Annunzio may have been a goggle-eyed gargoyle but was irresistible – to Italian crowds, as the man who could save their national honour; and to women, who stampeded to lose theirs. As one of his mistresses ruefully remarked: “In heaven, dear poet, there will be reserved for you an enormous octopus with a thousand women’s legs (but no head).” D’Annunzio was a man of letters – his collected works run to 48 volumes – and was ranked by Joyce alongside Kipling and Tolstoy; but he was also a frenzied demagogue for whom writing was a martial art “to spark uprisings and to set nations ablaze”. Craving cataclysmic violence, he helped to create the appetite for fascism, plus many of its motifs. This biography is as well written as it is expertly structured.