More than a decade ago, two academics browsing in an antiquarian bookshop in Lisbon stumbled across a Portuguese language account of the 1974 Captains’ Coup by Wilfred Burchett. A little digging revealed that while the volume had been translated into Italian and Spanish in the year of its publication, with a Japanese edition appearing the year afterwards, no English language edition had ever been produced. Indeed, nobody seemed to know where the original manuscript might be found. A chance encounter and a helpful librarian located the original typescript in the Burchett papers at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. While this detective story makes for an entertaining preface, it is telling that having tracked down and meticulously prepared the manuscript it then took the editors more than ten years to find a publisher for the first English language edition of The Captains’ Coup.
The Captains’ Coup: From dictatorship to democracy in Portugal (1974-1976) by Wilfred Burchett and edited by Daniela F. Melo and Timothy D. Walker
Verso, £25 hb, 352 pp
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