Paola Del Din

Two years ago, Alessandro published a book titled Il nome in codice: Renata, or in English, Code Name: Renata.

It's an extraordinary account of Paula Daldin, a native of Northern Italy, who was a British SOE agent.

Earlier this year, Alessandro, who recently recovered from heart and kidney transplant surgery, published a memoir titled I battiti delle montagne, as it's titled in It- in Italian, or Heartbeats of the Mountains in English, and it recounts his post-surgery journey retracing the World War II Allied soldiers and partisans, as well as German deserters and others, through the Apennine Mountains and further north to the Alps.

So Alessandro, welcome to the podcast.

And the mutual recognition, in the end, was what endured.

So now I'd like to turn to the, the story about Paola Deldin and the subject of your book, Il nome codice Renata.

So can you give us an idea about why the SOE recruited Paola as an agent, and tell us a little bit about her work?

Yeah, Paola [laughs] had been a courier for the Osoppo Brigade since 1943.