Don Camillo was a fictional Catholic village priest living in the Po Valley in Italy. Giovanni Guareschi, the author, wrote and published many stories about Don Camillo in his newspaper Candido between 1946 and 1960 which charmingly evoke rural post-war Italy. They describe the struggles faced by the characters to do what was right and to square their actions with the conflicting political and religious beliefs they wanted to display. Much of the conflict was between Don Camillo and Peppone, the Communist mayor of the village. Despite their idealogical opposition they respected each other, and shared similarities, both being physically strong and extremely stubborn.

Giovanni Guareschi

1908 - 1968

The books

Half a dozen books were published in English of collections of the original Italian stories. All are now out of print. The original stories contained cartoons by the author, frequently of a little angel and a little devil, acting as the figures of conscience.

The characters

Don Camilo

Peppone

Other characters

Further Information

Don Camillo has two excellent sites on the Web. The first covers all sorts of information surrounding the books, the second crucially provides the text of the stories printed in English, now out of print.

• Karen Welbourn's Don Camillo site: The Little World Wide Web Homepage of Don Camillo
• Varjang Parvate's Don Camillo site: The Little World of Giovanni Guareschi

Mario Adorf and Brian Blessed starred as Camillo and Peppone in the BBC series of 13 episodes, made in 1980. Neither mentions the series on their lengthy IMdB biographies