Iris Origo (1902–1988) was a British-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy’s fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces. She is the author of Images and Shadows; A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939–1940; Leopardi: A Study in Solitude; and The Merchant of Prato, among others. Lucy Hughes-Hallett is a prizewinning historian and novelist. Her nonfiction book The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio was the winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Costa Biography Award. She lives in London and Suffolk. Katia Lysy was born in Rome. She has worked for Italian television RAI 3, in publishing, as a journalist and as a literary translator from English and French into Italian. She now lives between Rome and Val d’Orcia, in southern Tuscany, where she assists her mother Benedetta, daughter of the writer Iris Origo, in the management and development of the family estate of La Foce, whose historic gardens are visited by Iris Origo readers from all over the world.