This account of Portugal […] is not simply a travel book, though the trips we made and the things we saw are described. It tries also to answer some of the first questions of a British reader just starting to be interested in a little-known but colourful country that he might one day think of visiting: “Why is Portugal, the first modern empire-building nation, now so backward, so poor, so illiterate, so stagnant—and why has she submitted to a reactionary dictatorship for an entire generation?” [...]