Indro Montanelli (April 22, 1909 - July 22, 2001) was an Italian journalist and historian, known for his new approach to writing history in books such as History of the Greeks and History of Rome.

Generally considered one of the greatest Italian journalists of the 20th century, he was among the 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 years named by the International Press Institute in 2000.

Indro Montanelli Bassi was born at Fucecchio, near Florence.

Throughout his career he retained an idiosyncratic and particularly undiplomatic style, even when this made him very unpopular among his peers and employers. This is particularly well illustrated in his book La stecca nel coro (which translates as "Going against the current") which is a list of leading articles he composed between 1974 and 1994 in the newspaper Il Giornale which he founded and directed after being sacked from the very prestigious Corriere della Sera, in October 1973. It was during this experience, in 1977 that the Red Brigade terrorists shot him four times in the legs in the streets of Milan.

Giorgio Valentino Bocca (28 August 1920 – 25 December 2011) was an Italian essayist and journalist, also known for his participation in the World War II partisan movement.

Bocca was born in Cuneo, Piedmont, the son of teachers, and studied law. He fought in the Alpini corps during World War II, and befriended Benedetto Dalmastro and Duccio Galimberti. Together with them, after the Armistice with Italy (September 1943), he joined the partisan organization called Giustizia e Libertà, becoming the commander of its 10th Division, fighting together with US and British Armies against the nazi-fascists.

Having begun his press career in Cuneo, Bocca wrote for Giustizia and Libertà's magazine during the post-war period. Later, he worked for the Gazzetta del Popolo, L'Europeo and Il Giorno, analyzing Italian culture and politics. In 1971 he was amongst those who signed a document issued by the magazine L'Espresso against police chief Luigi Calabresi after the death of the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, soon after killed by a terrorist group of far left named Lotta Continua. Five years later, Bocca was among the founders of the daily La Repubblica, with which he thenceforth collaborated.

Enzo Biagi (August 9, 1920 – November 6, 2007) was an Italian journalist and writer.

Biagi was born in Lizzano in Belvedere, and began his career as a journalist in Bologna. Active in journalism for six decades and author of some eighty books, Biagi won numerous awards, among which the 1979 Saint Vincent prize and the 1985 Ischia International Journalism Award. In 1987, he won the Premio Bancarella, for his book Il boss è solo, interviewing former Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta, who had turned pentito (state witness). He worked on the Italian national TV channel Rai Uno until 2001.

On May 9, 2001, just two days before the general elections in Italy, during his daily prime time 10-minute TV show Il Fatto, broadcast on Rai Uno, Biagi interviewed the popular actor and director Roberto Benigni, who gave a hilarious talk about Silvio Berlusconi declaring his preference for the other candidate, Francesco Rutelli from the Olive Tree coalition.

Biagi disappeared from TV screens a few months after Berlusconi's declarations in Sofia named also Editto Bulgaro, where the then-Prime Minister accused the popular journalist, together with fellow journalist Michele Santoro and showman/comedian Daniele Luttazzi, of having made criminal use of the public television service.

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (Italian pronunciation: [beˈniːto musːoˈliːni]; 29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party, ruling the country from 1922 to his ousting in 1943, and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of fascism.

Originally a member of the Italian Socialist Party and editor of the Avanti! from 1912 to 1914, Mussolini fought in World War I as an ardent nationalist and created the Fasci di Combattimento in 1919, catalyzing his nationalist and socialist beliefs in the Fascist Manifesto, published in 1921. Following the March on Rome in October 1922 he became the 27th Prime Minister of Italy and began using the title Il Duce by 1925, about which time he had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means, aspiring to create a totalitarian state. After 1936, his official title was Sua Eccellenza Benito Mussolini, Capo del Governo, Duce del Fascismo e Fondatore dell'Impero ("His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the Empire") Mussolini also created and held the supreme military rank of First Marshal of the Empire along with King Victor Emmanuel III, which gave him and the King joint supreme control over the military of Italy. Mussolini remained in power until he was replaced in 1943; for a short period after this until his death, he was the leader of the Italian Social Republic.

Aldo Moro (Italian pronunciation: [ˈaldo ˈmɔːro]; September 23, 1916 – May 9, 1978) was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years.

A leader of Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy, DC), Moro was considered an intellectual and a patient mediator, especially in the internal life of his party. He was kidnapped on March 16, 1978, by the left-wing Red Brigades (BR), and killed after 55 days of captivity.

Moro was born in Maglie, in the province of Lecce (Puglia), into a family from Ugento. At 4, he moved with his family to Milan, but they soon moved back to Puglia, where he gained a classical high school degree at Archita lyceum in Taranto. Till 1939 he studied Law at the University of Bari, an institution where he was later to hold the post of ordinary professor of philosophy of Law and Colonial Policy (1941) and of Criminal Law (1942).