Marco Respinti
Marco Respinti is a Milan-based journalist, a Senior Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center, and the Director of the Centro Studi Russell Kirk in Italy.
He was born in Milan, Italy, in 1964, where he continues to live and work today. Marco is a Roman Catholic, married, and the father of two sons. He is a journalist, essayist, translator, and lecturer.
A scholar on Anglo-American Conservative thought, he regularly contributes to such daily national newspapers as Libero, Il Foglio, cronache di liberal, and l’Occidentale (online), as well as to the weekly magazine Tempi, and the monthly journals Il Timone and Radici Cristiane. From its founding in August 2002 and up to its discontinuation in November 2009, he worked as a Senior Editor at Il Domenicale, the first and only Italian independent national weekly magazine of culture, serving also in the capacity of Managing Editor [caporedattore] from March 2009.
Marco studied Philosophy and History at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, and since the early 1990s has written for several newspapers, journals and magazines. In 1998 he became a freelance journalist [giornalista pubblicista] until 2005 and then accredited and enrolled in the Italian guild of journalists upon passing the required exam [giornalista professionista]. His journalistic activities, consistently in the field of culture, include hundreds of articles, reviews, short and long essays, notes, opinions, comments, editorials and regular columns, published in various newspapers, journals and magazines in Italy and abroad, among which are il Domenicale, Il Foglio, il Giornale, Libero, Secolo d’Italia, Avvenire, l’Occidentale, L’Indipendente, Ideazione, Charta Minuta, Fondazione Liberal, cronache di liberal, L’Opinione, Cristianità, Studi Cattolici, Fogli, Tracce, Percorsi di cultura politica (also in the capacity of “direttore responsabile”), Il Timone, Radici Cristiane, Historia, Frontiere, Cultura & Identità, La Voce di Romagna, Formiche, L’Arno, Gazzetta Ticinese (Italian-speaking Switzerland), The Intercollegiate Review: A Journal of Scholarship and Opinion, The University Bookman, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture (United States), Right Now! (Great Britain) and Projección Mundial (Mexico). He also appears as a commentator on radio and television programs.
His activities as an editorial consultant and adviser for journals, magazines and publishing houses in Italy has developed through the years while he worked variously as a contributor to a number of publications, a high school teacher, or as a mentor for professional schools in journalism, prior to working as a full-time journalist.
He is a frequent lecturer on various subjects and a radio show host. Originally mentored in the United States of America by the late Russell Kirk, D. Litt. (1918–1994), he has been involved in Anglo-American Conservative circles since 1989, attending, through the years and up to the present, numerous summer schools, lectures, and public events, interviewing notable people, collecting memoirs, periodicals, and books, and being a guest at The Philadelphia Society.
His attention to this world of ideas and principles is his foremost professional and scholarly interest and goal.
A Senior Fellow at The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, in Mecosta, Michigan, since 1996, he is the General Director of its Italian branch, the Centro Studi Russell Kirk (www.russellkirk.eu), based in Milan.
Marco was present at the first Vanenburg Society meeting held in the Vanenburg Castle near Putten, in the Netherlands, in 2006, which, through the efforts of De Edmund Burke Stichting of The Hague, the Netherlands, called for the renewal of European culture. He also attended the third meeting, in Madrid, 2008, as well as the fourth, in Budapest, 2009. Prior to the fourth meeting, at the request of its Board of Trustees, he formally joined the Vanenburg Society and its offspring, the Center for European Renewal, based in The Hague, as a Founding Member.
An alumnus and a speaker at The Leadership Institute (Arlington, Va.), Marco has also lectured outside Italy, at various places in the United States for the Russell Kirk Center, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Wilmington, De.) and Young America’s Foundation (Herndon, Va.); in Great Britain for the Italian Cultural Institute in London; in the Czech Republic for the Občanský Institut–Civic Institute of Prague; in Madrid, Spain, invited by Instituto de Estudios de la Democracia, Cátedra de pensamiento político “Alexis de Tocqueville,” at the Colegio Mayor Universitario de San Pablo; and at the Vanenburg Castle in the Netherlands, in Madrid, Spain, and in Budapest, Hungary for the Center for European Renewal.
He has translated and/or edited works by Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Russell Kirk, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Colin Duriez, Régine Pernoud, and Gustave Thibon.
Specifically, he has published
- his translation and edition of Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke [“Riflessioni sulla Rivoluzione in Francia”, Ideazione, Roma 1998];
- his translation and edition of The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens [“La storia di Gesù”, Gribaudi, Milano 1997];
- his translation and edition of The Idea of a Christian Society [“L’idea di una scoietà cristiana”, Gribaudi, 1998] and The Rock, first Italian version ever, by T. S. Eliot [“La Roccia. Un libro di parole”, Biblioteca di Via Senato, Milano 2004];
- his translation and edition of The Roots of American Order [“Le radici dell’ordine americano. La tradizione europea nei valori del Nuovo Mondo”, Mondadori, Milano 1996] and The American Cause [under the same title in a series of articles for the weekly magazine of culture il Domenicale, Milano 2003] by Russell Kirk;
- his revision of the translation of The Silmarillion [“Il Silmarillion”, Bompiani, Milano 2004] as well as his translation and edition of Letters from Father Christmas, Revised Edition 1999 [“Le lettere di Babbo Natale”, Bompiani 2004] by J.R.R. Tolkien;
- his translation and edition of Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings: A Guide to Middle-earth [“Tolkien e il Signore degli Anelli. Guida alla Terra di Mezzo”, Gribaudi, Milano 2002] by Colin Duriez;
- his translation and edition of Histoire et lumière, [“Testimoni della luce”, Gribaudi 1999] and his new edition of Lumière Du Moyen Âge [“Luce del Medioevo”, Gribaudi, 2000] by Régine Pernoud;
- and his new combined edition in one volume of Diagnostics. Essai de physiologie sociale and Retour au réel. Nouveaux diagnostics [“Ritorno al Reale. Prime e seconde diagnosi in tema di fisiologia sociale”, Effedieffe, Milano 1998] by Gustave Thibon.
For magazines and periodicals Marco has also translated and edited dozens of articles or essays by notable conservative scholars and authors: among them, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Christopher Dawson, Ronald W. Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Gerhart Niemeyer, Peter J. Stanlis, Russell Kirk, Roger Scruton, Lee Edwards, Joshua Muravchik, Patrick J. Buchanan, Michael Novak, E. Christian Kopff, Gleaves Whitney, Clyde N. Wilson, Derek Turner, Annette Y. Kirk, and Jeffrey O. Nelson.
He is presently translating into Italian two books, Beauty and I Drink Therefore I Am (both 2009), by the foremost English Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton.
Among his contributions to books, notable are the essays:
- L’inventore del Polo delle Libertà: Barry Goldwater. Un “excursus” sul conservatorismo nordamericano [“The Man Who Invented the Freedom Coalition: Barry Goldwater. An “excursus” on American Conservatism] in the book, by many authors and with an introduction by Vittorio Feltri, Rivoluzione blu. La sfida di destra alla terza via [“Blue Revolution A Conservative Challenge to the ‘Third Way’”], Koinè/Nuove Edizioni, Roma 1999;
- L’Europa fuori dall’Europa [“Europe outside Europe”] in the book, edited by Fulvio Di Blasi and Giuseppe Romano, L’Europa fra radici e progetto. Civiltà cristiana o relativismo etico? [“Europe between Roots and Project: Christian Civilization or Ethical Relativism?”], Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro) 2005
- La “crociata” per il logos incarnato: ragione e fede [“The ‘crusade’ for the Incarnated Logos: Faith and Reason”] in the book, edited by Gaetano Quagliariello, Alla ricerca di una sana laicità. Libertà e centralità dell uomo [“In Search of a Healthy Lay Thought: Freedom and the Centrality of Man”], Cantagalli, Siena 2007.
He has also published, with Enrico Passaro, the book Paganesimo e cristianesimo in Tolkien. Le due tesi a confronto [“Paganism and Christianity in Tolkien: Confronting the Two Thesis”], Il Minotauro, Roma 2004, and contibuted two essays in the book, edited by Gianfranco De Turris, “Albero” di Tolkien. Come “Il Signore degli Anelli” ha segnato la cultura del nostro tempo [“‘Tree’ by Tolkien: How ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Has Marked the Culture of Our Times”], Bompiani, Milano 2007.
Marco is the author of
- Ronald W. Reagan. Un americano alla Casa Bianca [“Ronald W. Reagan: An American at the White House”], Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2005, a book which also features his translation of essays by Patrick J. Buchanan, Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., Dinesh D’Souza, Father Robert A. Sirico, Paul Craig Roberts, and Peggy Noonan
- Processo a Darwin [“Darwin on Trial”], Piemme, Casale Monferrato (Alessandria) 2007
- Gli artigli del dragone. Crimini, violazione dei diritti umani e cultura di morte nella Cina del terzo millennio [“The Dragon’s Claws: Crimes, Violations of Human Rights, and the Culture of Death in the Third Millenium’s China”], Piemme, Casale Monferrato 2008.
The Italian translations of Régine Pernoud’s Villa Paradis: souvenirs (1992), published as Villa Paradis. Luci e ombre del XX secolo (Gribaudi, 2005), as well as William A. Dembski’s Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology (1999), published as Intelligent design. Il ponte fra scienza e teologia (Alfa & Omega, Caltanissetta 2007), bear Marco’s introductions. The Italian translation of Christopher Dawson’s The Dividing of Christendom (1965), published in 2009 by D’Ettoris Editore in Crotone as La divisione della Cristianità Occidentale, edited by Paolo Mazzeranghi, begins with his presentation.
Marco is a member of the cultural association of Roman Catholic laymen Alleanza Cattolica since 1986, and in 2008 he was nominated as the Coordinator for Italy for the World Congress of Families based in Rockford, Illinois.
He can be reached at