Hello and welcome to Battleground 44 with me, Saul David.

Today I'm talking to prize-winning historian Keith Lowe about his new book, Naples' 1944, War, Liberation and Chaos.

Keith, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Now, the title Naples 44, a lot of people will be familiar with, but it's really interesting.

At the outset of the book, you explain that there really is quite a

big gap in the historiography of World War II that you were hoping to fill. So the book, of course,

I'm referring to as Norman Lewis, who is a British intelligence officer, I think. You'll tell us in a

moment. But tell us about this gap in the historiography and what you're hoping to achieve with this book.

Well, yeah, I mean, Norman Lewis's book is a classic of its time, but it is only a memoir.

And, you know, like all people who were trying to remember 30 years before, in this case,

he makes mistakes and he gets dates wrong and so on.

Not a criticism.

It's just you can't rely on it exclusively.

And there hasn't really been, certainly in English,

an exploration of what happened in Naples during 1943 and 1944.

I think mostly it's because people like to follow the the story of the battles and so you know you

the battle of salerno and then it moves on up to the volterno and up to casino and so people sort of

follow that but what's happening behind the lines in naples naples is i mean it's the it's the de facto

capital of the whole of the south of italy And it's also the big centre where all the

supplies come through. It's where all of the soldiers go to have their leave. So, I mean,

it's really important in the history. And there hasn't, in English, in fact, not really even

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