The Captains’ Coup: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Portugal (1974-1976)
Wilfred Burchett, Verso, £25

WILFRED BURCHETT was one of the most respected journalists of the 20th century and much admired by his Australian compatriot John Pilger. He had a long, distinguished career, from reporting from the front during the second world war on the effects of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, through the Korean and Vietnam wars, to the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, the subject of this book. It was written in 1975-76 but only published in Portuguese; this is the first English edition. The editors and Verso are to be thanked for making Burchett’s incisive commentaries on the April 25 1974 revolution available to non-Portuguese-speaking readers.

By chance, Burchett and I arrived in Portugal at the same time — three days after the coup by disgruntled army officers — to find ourselves thrown into the tumultuous revolutionary ferment of those heady times. He was a consummate journalist with a keen nose for key historical forces and events.