In 1975, a 549-page book was published in translation by the Italian publisher Einaudi. Its original English title was Politics and Society in Post-War Naples; it came with a distinctive orange cover, and its author was a British academic from the University of Reading called Percy Allum. The book caused a sensation in Italy. A rigorous analysis of the way politics and society worked in Naples, it was written with verve, panache and crystal clarity. Most incredibly of all, it named names.
Allum’s analysis of the political power structures used by the Christian Democracy party and other groupings in that southern city, and particularly what he called the “clan” around the Gava family, and the “bosses” Silvio and Antonio Gava, sent shock waves through Naples and its political establishment.
