Britain and the Dictatorships of Argentina and Chile, 1973-8:
Foreign Policy, Corporations and Social Movements
by Grace Livingstone
(Palgrave Macmillan, £79.99)

DON’T let the rather cumbersome title of Grace Livingstone’s book put you off, even if the price might, because it's a very readable and pioneering work. Although Livingstone is scrupulously accurate and bases her arguments on extensive research, she makes little secret of where her sympathies lie — and they are not with dictators or arms manufacturers.

By examining released government documents of the period and interviewing not only politicians and civil servants but also those involved in the Latin American solidarity movements, she exposes how successive British governments have been centrally involved in selling arms to dictatorial regimes like Pinochet’s in Chile and the military junta in Argentina and how, in doing so, ministers routinely violated their own guidelines on human rights.