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Neal Ascherson on one of the lowest points in British postwar diplomacy Grace Livingstone’s letter about Richard Gott (6 November) brings back the memory of Richard roaring like a red-bearded lion and reducing a British ambassador to a pallid cringe. It was the first, terrible days following Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973. All over Santiago, desperate fugitives were scaling foreign embassy walls to find sanctuary from the death squads. But the British embassy, almost alone, refused to take them in. The ambassador was thrilled with the putsch. He told assembled British journalists: “Our business chaps here have been having a really difficult time, you know.”Nevertheless, they had managed to sell British fighter jets to Pinochet’s forces that led the attack on President Salvador Allende’s offices. The ambassador’s wife added brightly: “It was so marvellous to see our Hawker Hunters circling up there.” Continue reading...