Denis Mack Smith was a historian and academic. He taught at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He specialised in the history of Italy and was probably the leading historian in his field in the second half of the twentieth century. Of his works, a number deal with the life and politics of leading liberals involved in the formation of modern Italy including, Cavour and Garibaldi 1860: A Study in Political Conflict (1954), and biographies of Cavour and Mazzini.
