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Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's Hidden History
 
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Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's Hidden History (Hardcover)

by Andy Beckett (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 280 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber (20 May 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0571202411
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571202416
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 692,061 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

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.


Christopher Hitchens, London Review of Books

'I am stirred and astonished at Andy Beckett's brilliance, and by the imaginative sympathy with which he rekindles the arguments and emotions of a period he never knew.' --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
19 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly informative cross between a history & a travelogue, 26 May 2002
By A Customer
Given that Beckett writes for the Guardian, fans of Pinochet & Thatcher may not enjoy its tone. I haven't been able to put it down. Beckett describes the long term links between the UK & Chile & draws out the parallels in the politics & economics of the two countries. My 2 favourites are the consequences of rail privatisation & the truckers' strikes. Beckett demonstrates quite persuasively that Pinochet's monetarism was a blueprint for Thatcherism and that he was no benign dictator. The chapter entitled 'National Stadium' is distressing.
I could have done with a chronology as he moves back & forth across the centuries quite a bit.
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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Mainly for those with Chilean connections, 11 April 2009
This review is from: Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's Hidden History (Paperback)
Andrew Gibbons review: Pinochet in Piccadilly

This is primarily a book about the links between Britain and Chile over the past two hundred years. Although one chapter deals with Gen. Pinochet's detention in the UK, that is not the main content, although two thirds of the book covers the period from the Allende government to the present.

The book is more likely to appeal to British people with Chilean connections than to the general reader.

It seems quite well researched, both for the historical material on Cochrane and North, and for the twentieth century stuff. Much of the twentieth century material is either based on or enlivened by accounts of meetings with various people involved, from tortured Chilean exiles in the UK to Scottish trade unionists who boycotted Chilean air force work and the economist (Sir) Alan Walters.

The author manages to dig out (or as he might see it, dig up) a fascinating set of connections between Chile and the UK throughout the last two centuries. More speculatively, he makes an excursion into 1970s British far right politics by discussing the potential for an anti-left-wing military coup in the UK.

The book understandably misses no opportunity to dwell on the evils of Pinocho, but more questionably also tries to link his authoritarian excesses to the economic reforms of the British Tories under Margaret Thatcher. Anyone associated with either of these leaders is regarded as at least sinister.

Several times the author writes critically of British commentators who "visited Chile and saw what they wanted to see", but given his own stance, this is clearly something he does too.

Viewed from the globalised twentyfirst century where economic reform is mainstream policy discourse for aspiring countries on all continents, the author's left/right ideological perspective looks a bit dated and Old Labour. It should have been possible to take a more generous view of post-Pinochet developments, given that more time has now elapsed since the end of the military regime than the number of years it was in power (see, for example, Patricio Navia (2004) Las Grandes Alamedas: el Chile Post Pinochet). Economic reform has paid off in democratic Chile as in many other countries, not least China, and it seems churlish to ignore this.
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4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Chilean Connection, 3 Mar 2009
By S Wood (Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's Hidden History (Paperback)
Andy Becketts book (which can be picked 2nd hand for a song here) is a very well written blend of genres - part travelouge, history, politics. Even this does not do justice to the book which includes interviews with participants of the events that unfold in the book who don't normally recieve much of a place in historical writing.

The breadth of this work is impressive: Beckett charts the connections between Britain and Chile going back to the late 18th Century while telling the Story of Pinochets house arrest. The story of the Englishman who went to Chile in 1973 as a journalist supportive of the Allende government who ended up being imprisioned at the National Stadium is particularly moving. The connections between the British Right and Pinochet are put under the spotlight too - Alan Walters (Mrs Thatchers economic guru), various other people from her "entourage" such as the dubious Brian Crozier, Nicholas Ridley and bloody Margaret herself. He also examines those in Britain who seen in the Pinochet regime a template for Britain; the man himself was a great admirer of Thatcher, and especially with regards to how she dealt with the Miners Strike. The tentative moves on the right with regard to a coup in Britain during the 1970s are also covered in some detail.

The campaign to have Pinochet released with its nauseating slogan - "The only political prisoner in Britain" - unofficially headed by Norman Lamont (yes - he of the singing in the bath while sterling goes down the plug hole fame) is enough to make you physically sick: the sheer chutzpah of their bleatings about poor old Pinochet when they must surely be aware of what happened to thousands of Chileans under his brutal regime.

Its a melancholy book, but a necessary one and well worth reading.
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