Arrigo Levi, journalist, writer, TV presenter, died in the night between 23 and 24 August in his Roman home. Born in Modena on July 17, 1926, he was 94 years old. Among the numerous prestigious positions held during his long career he was director of the Press and columnist of Corriere della Sera. Defender of ethical and secular values, with an international ‘gaze’, he was also an advisor to two presidents of the Republic.
He had started working as a journalist in Buenos Aires, a city where his family had fled to escape racial persecution and where, as a young student, he ended up in prison for participating in the demonstrations against Peron. After graduating in Philosophy in Bologna, the experience at the BBC, then at the Incom Week, at the Gazzetta del Popolo, and finally landed at Corriere della Sera in 1955, first as a correspondent from London, then from Moscow.
From 1973 to 1978 he was director of the Press, where – among other things – he founded Tuttolibri, an independent newspaper dedicated to absolutely anomalous culture in the panorama of the time. And he returned to the press as a columnist in 2005 called by the then director Giulio Anselmi. He was a longtime Times columnist and author of a Newsweek column.
His innovative and multifaceted spirit soon led him to television: he was host and coordinator of Tg Rai, where he made memorable direct reports on the 1967 Six Day War and on the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. With Vittorio Citterich he led the weekly Tam tam ; from 82 to 87 he was in Fininvest; back in Rai he collaborated, among other things, with Mixer. Then fourteen years at the Quirinale, from 1999 to 2013, as a consultant to Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and then to Giorgio Napolitano.
Among his books: ‘Dialogues on faith’ (2000), ‘Latin America: memories and returns’ (2004),’ Five speeches in two centuries’ (2004), ‘A country is not enough’ (2009), ‘From Livorno at the Quirinale. Story of an Italian ‘(2010, story of the life of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi), all for Il Mulino, and’ People, places, life ‘(Aragno, 2013).
Among the awards obtained: the Trento Prize for Journalism (1987), the Luigi Barzini Prize as best correspondent (1995), the Ischia Internazionale Prize (2001). In May 2008 he won the second edition of the Giorgio Calcagno literary prize. In May 2012 the national journalism prize ‘Novara becomes – The tradition of innovating’. In 2013 the Giovanni Spadolini Political Culture Award.
