The grandson of Barga, born in Glasgow
“These stories were nearly lost. Writing them down felt like an obligation — to my grandparents, to the village, and to a young man in a Dutch grave.”
Robert Rossi was born in Glasgow, the son of Italian parents from Barga, a fortified hilltop town in Tuscany's Serchio valley. Like tens of thousands of Barghigiani before them, they left for Scotland in search of work and a future — bringing him into a city whose ice-cream parlours, fish-and-chip shops and Sunday afternoon cafés had been built, almost street by street, by families from his own home village.
For most of his life, Robert worked in business. The family stories were everywhere around him — over coffee, in Italian sentences he half-understood, in photographs of relatives he'd never met. But like many second-generation children of migrants, he assumed someone else would write them down.
Then, by chance, he discovered a distant cousin he had never known: Fusilier Dennis Donnini. Nineteen years old. Five foot tall. The youngest soldier of the entire Second World War to be awarded the Victoria Cross — the British Empire's highest honour for valour. Buried in the Netherlands. The Donnini family had emigrated from the same valley as Robert's own grandparents, and had settled in a Durham mining village barely thirty minutes' drive from Robert's later home in England.
He had walked past Dennis's story for half a lifetime without knowing it.
“The story touched my soul. I decided to bring it to life.” — Robert Rossi, on the genesis of the Trilogy
That decision became Italian Blood, British Heart — the first novel of what is now The Blood Heart Trilogy. Book two, Jewish Blood, Italian Heart, is loosely based on the life of Robert's own grandfather and travels across four continents in pursuit of safety. The third book is in progress.
Today Robert lives in the UK. He returns regularly to Barga, where about sixty per cent of residents still claim Scottish relatives, and where you might still — improbably, beautifully — hear a Glaswegian accent in a café.
Stories that almost weren't told
Italian migration to Britain is one of the great unexamined chapters of modern European history. Around the turn of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of people walked out of the Tuscan and Lazio mountains and changed the social fabric of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Carlisle, Liverpool and London.
Their grandchildren built the Britain we live in. Their great-grandchildren are forgetting where the journey began.
Robert writes — and speaks — to put the journey back in.
In Robert's words
“Around the turn of the 20th century they left Barga and Garfagnana in their many thousands. Their descendants are now spread the world over and number in the millions — in the sciences, in business, in sport, in religion, in politics, in every art. Today Barga and Garfagnana should be so proud of those emigrants.”
Eight threads that run through everything Robert writes
The collapse of silk
How a single industry's death in 1880s Tuscany sent thousands north into the British coal economy.
The chip-shop empire
Why nearly every legendary Scottish fish-and-chip shop, ice-cream parlour and trattoria has Barghigiani roots.
Internment
The painful summer of 1940, when Italian-British men — many British-born — were sent to camps as “enemy aliens”.
The Arandora Star
The torpedoed liner that took 446 Italian internees to the bottom of the Atlantic, and the families who never recovered.
Dennis Donnini, VC
A nineteen-year-old from Easington Colliery whose grandparents came from Garfagnana, and whose courage redefined a family.
Two passports, one heart
What it means to belong to two homelands at once — and to grieve for both at every Christmas table.
The women who held it together
The mothers, grandmothers and aunts who kept families fed, faithful and recognisable — across thousands of miles.
Going home
The third- and fourth-generation pilgrimage back to a Tuscan village that knew them before they knew themselves.
A speaker your audience will remember
Robert is available to speak at literary festivals, cultural societies, Italian clubs, libraries, museums, Burns suppers, cafés, restaurants, and corporate cultural evenings throughout the United Kingdom and Italy.
A typical evening runs 60–90 minutes: a forty-minute talk threaded with archive photography and short readings, followed by a generous Q&A, with a book signing afterwards. Wine and Italian antipasto pairings can be arranged in partnership with the venue.
Available formats
- The Tuscan-Scottish Story — Barga, Glasgow, and the great fish-and-chip migration. Best for Scottish audiences.
- The North-East Italians — From Lucca to Easington Colliery, and the Donnini Victoria Cross. Best for Newcastle, Durham, Sunderland, Middlesbrough.
- Migration, Memory & Wine — A literary-tasting evening pairing readings with wines from the Serchio valley. Ideal for cafés, restaurants, clubs and cultural festivals.
- Writing Family History as Fiction — A craft talk for writing groups and literary festivals.
An occasional letter from the author
Once a month or so — a story, an archive photograph, an upcoming event. Nothing else.