With the rise of Reform and the flag-raising phenomenon, it’s hard not to recall my family’s struggles with racism, from Teddy Boys attacking my pregnant mother to me being told to ‘go back to the jungle’ at only five years old, writes ROGER MCKENZIE

ON APRIL 25, 50 years ago, Portugal was hit by an earthquake. It wasn’t like the geological one of 1755 which razed the capital Lisbon to the ground and killed around 50,000 people; this one was a political earthquake and there were only four victims, shot by the fascist secret police.
It sent shock waves around the world: Portugal’s 41-year-old dictatorship, the oldest in Europe, had been overthrown in just 24 hours. Working for GDR television at the time, I was sent to cover events as they unfolded.
We touched down at Lisbon airport on the morning of the 27th, immediately unpacked our camera and started filming. We hardly put the camera down from then on. Already at the airport, the atmosphere was charged: large groups of people waited for their loved ones to arrive, exiled for years by the dictatorship. There were ecstatic embraces, laughter and tears of joy.

JOHN GREEN has doubts about the efficacy of the Freedom of Information Act, once trumpeted by Tony Blair

JOHN GREEN is enchanted by the story of women’s farm work, both now and the the 1940s, that brims with political and social insight

JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist

Despite the primitive means the director was forced to use, this is an incredibly moving film from Gaza and you should see it, urges JOHN GREEN