Editing Rafael Sabatini (section)

== Personal life ==
Rafael Sabatini was born in [[Jesi]], Italy, to an English mother, Anna Trafford, and Italian father, Vincenzo Sabatini. His parents were opera singers who then became teachers.<ref name=ODNB />

At a young age Sabatini was exposed to many languages living with his grandfather in Britain. He attended school in [[Portugal]], and as a teenager in [[Switzerland]]. By the time he was 17, when he returned to Britain to live permanently, he had become proficient in five languages. He quickly added a sixth language – English – to his linguistic collection. He consciously chose to write in his adopted language, because, he said, "all the best stories are written in English".<ref name= swashbucklers>{{cite book|title=The Last of the Great Swashbucklers: A Bio-Bibliography of Rafael Sabatini |first1=Jesse F.|last1=Knight|first2= Stephen |last2=Darley|year=2010|publisher=Oak Knoll |location=New Castle, [[Delaware|DE]] |ISBN=978-1-58456279-5}}</ref>

In 1905, he married Ruth Goad Dixon, the daughter of a [[Liverpool]] merchant. They had a son, Sabatini's only son, Rafael-Angelo (nicknamed Binkie). He was killed in a car crash on 1 April 1927. In 1931, Sabatini and his wife Ruth divorced. Later that year he moved from London to [[Clifford, Herefordshire]], near [[Hay-on-Wye]]. 

In 1935, he married the sculptor Christine Dixon ({{nee}} Wood), his former sister-in-law - she had been married previously to Ruth's brother, Hugh Wainwright Dixon.<ref>https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2965273/lancelot-steele-dixon/</ref> They suffered further tragedy when Christine and Hugh's son, Lancelot Steele Dixon, was killed aged 23 in a flying accident on the day he received his [[RAF]] wings, on 9 April 1940;<ref>[https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2965273/LANCELOT%20STEELE%20DIXON/] CWGC Casualty record Lancelot Steele Dixon</ref> he flew his aeroplane over his family's house, but the plane went out of control and crashed in flames right before the observers' eyes.<ref name=ODNB/>

Sabatini died in Switzerland 13 February 1950. He was buried in [[Adelboden]], Switzerland. On his headstone his wife had written, "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad", the first line of ''[[Scaramouche (novel)|Scaramouche]]''.<ref name="ChaffeeCrick2014">{{cite book|author1=Judith Chaffee|author2=Oliver Crick|title=The Routledge Companion to Commedia Dell'Arte|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BUGLBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA102|date=20 November 2014|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-61337-4|page=102}}</ref>