Iris Origo, Marchesa of Val d’Orcia, was a British-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, near Montepulciano, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she consistently sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy’s fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces.
Iris Origo
British, 1902 — 1988
