He made a documentary about architecture in Nazi Germany and followed the Stalinist heritage trail. For his latest BBC4 film, Jonathan Meades is turning his camera towards Il Duce – one fascist monument at a time

'Boastfully retrospective’ … Sacrario di Monte Grappa.
'Boastfully retrospective’ … Sacrario di Monte Grappa. © Nico Piotto/Flickr Vision

.... Mussolini, at least for his first decade in power, wasn’t quite as interested in architecture as his fellow dictators. While enthusiastically censoring film-makers, writers, academics and journalists, he let architects do as they please. “He neglected to exploit architecture’s potential to affect his subjects,” as Meades puts it. “He failed to harness its capacity to suppress and control them, to exhilarate them, to bend them to his will.” ....