All non-Fascist political activity is banned in Italy, parliament being replaced with the Fascist Grand Council

D.H. Lawrence's new novel, in which Lady Chatterley is in love with her husband's gamekeeper, is privately printed in Florence

The Lateran Treaty, between the Holy See and the state of Italy, establishes the Vatican City as a free state within the wider nation

Italian writer Alberto Moravia wins success with his first novel, The Time of Indifference

Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli introduces a successful new line for women in the form of the padded shoulder

Benito Mussolini plays host in Venice to Adolf Hitler, the newcomer among European dictators

Elias Canetti publishes the novel later translated into English as Auto da Fé

Italian baritone Tito Gobbi makes his operatic debut in Gubbio in Bellini's La Somnambula

Mussolini uses a disagreement over grazing rights as a pretext for an empire-building invasion of Ethiopia

Mussolini appoints his son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, as his minister for foreign affairs

Hitler and Mussolini form an axis, or alliance, causing Germany and Italy to become known as the Axis powers

Pope Pius XI issues an encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge, condemning the Nazi ideology of racism

Adolf Hitler, entertaining Mussolini in Germany, puts on spectacular demonstrations of German military and industrial might

Eugenio Pacelli is elected pope and takes the name Pius XII

In spite of the Axis agreement of 1936, Mussolini declines to bring Italy into the war on Hitler's side

Mussolini declares war on a France already on the verge of defeat

Mussolini invades France in the last-minute hope of gaining some territory in the armistice settlement

A delegation from France, defeated and partly occupied by Germany, signs in Rome an armistice with Mussolini's Italy

Germany, Italy and Japan form a Tripartite Pact as a military alliance

Mussolini plans a new Roman empire, reaching like the first one round the entire Mediterranean

Italian troops cross the Albanian border in the hope of a blitzkrieg against Greece

British aircraft sink three Italian battleships at anchor in Taranto harbour

The Italian navy, defeated off Cape Matapan, ceases to be a significant factor in the Mediterranean

Italian director Luchino Visconti's first film, Obsession, brings neorealism to the cinema

US poet Ezra Pound, in Italy during the war, broadcasts Fascist propaganda aimed at the United States