Nelson's Duchy

This unique book describes the history of the Duchy of Bronte, the Sicilian estate given to Admiral Lord Nelson by the grateful Neopolitan Bourbons in 1799 for saving them from the revolutionary mob and the French army, an extraordinary anomaly in a remote and beautiful setting. This book describes not only the story of the estate and its very foreign owners, but also that of the English in Eastern Sicily during the 19th and 20th centuries. Not only was the Castello di Maniace the seat of a dukedom, but the estate had been one of Sicily's greatest mediaeval abbeys and played a significant part in the island's past. The book contains maps and photographs from a collection long dispersed, sadly the last Duke of Bronte sold the property over twenty years ago so they document a way of life that no longer exists. All facets of an unusual Anglo-Sicilian relationship, with mutual miscomprehension usually uppermost, are recorded here, sometimes touchingly. This book is being produced in the bicentennial year of the Battle of Trafalgar, the year of Nelson's greatest victory, although its scope extends from prehistory to modern times.