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.
