“This newspaper was born from a revolt and a challenge.” It was June 25, 1974 and so began Indro Montanelli’s editorial in the first issue of his “Giornale”. He spent twenty years at the helm of the newspaper he founded and it is not difficult to think that that revolt and that challenge will remain the distinctive feature of Montanelli’s work. A journalism without flags, but always aligned, free by instinct, controversial, but often conservative, challenging by definition, nonconformist by intimate nature, rebellious because to some extent anarchic, pirate, corsair, as in the title of the new book “Like a pirate vessel “, which comes out on Tuesday 4 June from Rizzoli with the double signature of Indro Montanelli and Luigi Mascheroni. In the year of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of “il Giornale”, the book with the subtitle “50 years of il Giornale in the words of its founder”, will also be released as an attachment with the newspaper starting from Tuesday 4 June.
The volume opens with an in-depth and compelling essay by Luigi Mascheroni (the cultural journalist of the “Giornale” is also the editor) which retraces the events of the newspaper under the guidance of Indro, twenty years of political, cultural and rights battles until the well-known epilogue and the break with Silvio Berlusconi in January 1994, he was no longer just a publisher, but “took to the field” in the political arena. To provide tangible proof of Montanelli’s extraordinary pen, a selection of editorials, articles, italics, responses to the reader and “Countercurrent” designed to give an insight into the director’s commitment, ranging from politics to sport, from history to customs, from rights to ‘environment.
The book presents itself as a precious collection, useful to those who remember Montanelli’s “il Giornale” well and to those who today are curious to rediscover it. Finally, at the end of the volume, a surprising gallery: memories of Indro signed by more or less unsuspected characters: from Mara Venier to Michele Serra, from Pier Luigi Bersani to Enrico Vanzina, from Giampiero Mughini to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, many have accepted to offer for the occasion an anecdote, a thought, a snapshot of the director. A tribute to the reader, the one to whom Montanelli wrote in the first editorial: “this newspaper has no masters, because neither are we. You alone, the reader, can be one, if you want it. We offer it to you”.