Mussolini Shared Services of Sisters

Clara Petacci, Benito Mussolini's lover, took turns with her sister in the bed of Italy's wartime dictator, according to a newly released account by one of those closest to him.

Immediately after the second world war, Ercole Boratto, Mussolini's chauffeur from 1922 to 1943, wrote up his recollections of the Duce at the request of US intelligence. Extracts from his recently declassified memoirs were published yesterday in the Italian daily La Repubblica.

He describes how Clara and her sister, Maria, an actor whose screen name was Miriam Di San Servolo, often joined the dictator at a hotel in the mountains.

"On the evenings that [Clara] felt indisposed, it was Miriam who sneaked into Mussolini's bedroom and who, as the owner of the hotel told me, left it before dawn," Mr Boratto wrote.

The chauffeur portrays a leader with a voracious sexual appetite, so busy with his mistresses and other recreations that, in the summer, he devoted only two or three hours a day to official duties. Some of the dictator's lovers were provided with 'hush money' and, in at least one case, a pension approved by the Grand Fascist Council, his party's highest body.