Cunningham & Cape Matapan: taking on Mussolini’s battle fleet

To Benito Mussolini, the Mediterranean was Mare Nostrum, ‘Our Sea’ -- a term borrowed from the Romans, but reinvented by Italy’s fascist dictator to mean something akin to Hitler’s concept of Lebensraum, or ‘Living Space’. And on 10 June 1940 -- the date on which Mussolini declared war on the Allies -- both the Sea and the land surrounding it looked ripe for the taking. Il Duce (‘the Leader’) had hesitated initially to enter the war, following Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. But now he believed the opportune moment had arrived to implement his so-called ‘Pact of Steel’ -- the formal alliance he had signed with Hitler the previous year, linking