Pinochet in Piccadilly - Hardcover

You will recall that General Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London in October 1998. The former dictator of Chile had been charged with crimes against humanity by a Spanish magistrate. His ensuing 16-month stay in Britain was, to put it mildly, controversial. Journalist Andy Beckett, who writes for the Guardian, the London Review of Books and the New York Times, provides the historical background to that controversy, taking the story back to the early 1970s, when Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende's Marxist government. There is much here that makes for uncomfortable reading, not least the detailed account of the unsavoury special relationship between Thatcher's Britain and Pinochet's Chile, a relationship founded on mutual admiration. It's all very embarrassing, politically, and a huge amount of publicity is guaranteed. The Guardian will serialise.

In October 1998, General Augusto Pinochet, former dictator of Chile, was arrested in London. He had been charged with crimes against humanity by a Spanish magistrate, but over the 16 months that Pinochet was detained, equally intriguing questions went unanswered about his links with Britain. Why was Margaret Thatcher so keen to defend the General? Why was Tony Blair's usually cautious government prepared to have him arrested? And why was Britain the General's favourite foreign country? Andy Beckett offers a compound of history, investigation and travelogue that unravels this strange story.