By Philip Cooke
As mentioned briefly in our June newsletter, the Trust is delighted to have appointed Professor Phil Cooke to succeed Sir Nick Young as Chair from the beginning of 2025. Phil will attend the annual luncheon at the RAF Club in London on Wednesday 20 November.
I am excited and honoured to be taking on the role of Chair of Trustees of the Monte San Martino Trust. I decided to apply for the post for many reasons, but above all for the way its mission and values resonate with my own unequivocal commitment to promoting the understanding of the memory of the Second World War in Italy – in all its complexity. Indeed, the mission of the Trust has acquired greater urgency with the passing of the war generation, and the negative effects of Brexit on international understanding and co-operation.
As an undergraduate student of Italian at Edinburgh University I benefited from a small travel grant which allowed me to travel all the way to Western Sicily to take a language course in Erice in the Summer of 1984. It was August and unbelievably hot. The teachers were all young and really committed. I can still remember one of them insisting that if I really wanted to get good at Italian then I needed, above all, to read. For a 19 year- old from Staines in Middlesex this was a fantastic experience which I will never forget and which set me on the path to my career as a lecturer in Italian, a career which has taken me to Italy on many occasions and which has led to many life-long friendships.
Keith Killby
When I first looked at the MSMT website, and read about the experiences of the young Italians who had come to study English in England, I was reminded of how fortunate I had been to get to Sicily at that stage in my life. The late Keith Killby’s idea was simple and brilliant. These days it would be called an example of ‘effective altruism’. But such terms don’t fully capture the profound humanity which lay behind Keith’s vision. The detail which really struck me was the cucumber sandwiches he would offer to his Italian guests at Sunday tea. I am sure that even many years on the Italians who had this quintessentially English experience can still remember the taste of those sandwiches! As Chair of Trustees I will ensure that Keith Killby’s core vision will continue to be fully supported and enhanced.
Over the last decade the MSMT has expanded its activities by supporting a range of research projects related to Allied POWs in Italy. My own research into the Italian Resistance movement and its complex legacy overlaps neatly with this area. I have strong connections with the network of Resistance Institutes who continue to work closely with the Trust, as well as with many Italian universities. Furthermore, my work has meant that over the course of more than 30 years of research I have met, and in many cases become close friends with, partisans who fought to liberate Italy from the Germans and the Fascists. The same applies to Allied soldiers such as the late Stuart Hood and Philip Gourd.
ASMI
For the last five years I have been the Chair of ASMI – the Association for the Study of Modern Italy (http://www.asmi.org.uk/). ASMI is an international association and a registered UK charity, with members all over the world as well as in the UK and Italy. ASMI promotes the study and understanding of modern Italy, as well as representing its members’ interests. ASMI organises an annual themed conference (usually in December), a summer school for post-graduate and post-doctoral students, as well as an annual lecture. Such events take place in the UK in a wide range of locations (London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol) as well as in Italy (the 2023 summer school was held in Pisa). The photographic exhibition associated with one recent London conference has been shown in Edinburgh and Lisbon, and we hope it will be hosted in Dublin in 2025.
ASMI also awards prizes for outstanding research and offers grants to individuals and organisations to assist with conference/seminar costs. We also offer travel bursaries to students via our Christopher Duggan Travel Grants, in memory of a friend and colleague and former ASMI chair. To give but one recent example, this scheme enabled a young scholar from Florence to spend several weeks working in London archives and museums and carry forward her research into big-game hunting and its connections with British and Italian colonialism. Other awardees have travelled to Italy and the USA, benefiting from a scheme which might be compared to the Trust’s core activity.
As I trust is evident, I have enjoyed my time as Chair of ASMI. It has allowed me to develop many insights into the way such organisations work and has meant I have used my interpersonal skills in a wide variety of contexts. As many colleagues will attest, I have the ability to persuade people to take on roles and tasks whose benefits they initially failed to grasp. With my term as Chair coming to an end in December this year I am delighted to have the opportunity of bringing my experience to the work of the Trust. For me, it represents a natural and logical extension of my activities and allows me to maintain a commitment to pro bono initiatives. I look forward to working with the Trustees and its supporters and to supporting the mission of this wonderful organisation.
Read Julia MacKenzie’s article about Philip Cooke.
