Book Club: Philippe Sands

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, whose new book 38 Londres Street describes the legal and diplomatic tussle over the potential extradition of the former Chilean dictator General Pinochet. Philippe tells Sam why the case was such an important one in legal history, and presents new evidence suggesting that the General’s release to Chile on health grounds may have been part of a behind-the-scenes stitch-up between the UK and Chilean governments. He sets out some of that evidence and pushes back on our reviewer Jonathan Sumption’s scepticism about the case. Here’s an old case, but not yet a cold case.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Thursday the 15th of May, the Spectator is hosting a live book club event.
0:05.5	Sam Leith, the host of this podcast, will be joined by former Telegraph editor-in-chief
0:09.9	and military historian Max Hastings.
0:12.4	It will be an opportunity to talk about Max's new book, Sword, D-Day, Trial by Battle,
0:17.6	as well as mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
0:20.9	The full details are as follows.
0:22.8	7.30 on Thursday the 15th of May at the Shaw Theatre in Houston, London, and tickets start
0:28.5	from £27.50, although I believe there are ticket options that include a signed copy of the book.
0:34.3	For those tickets, go to www.spector.com.com.com. We look forward to seeing you there.
0:45.1	Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor
0:51.6	of The Spectator. Very pleased to have as my guest this week, the barrister and writer Philippe Sands,
0:57.2	whose new book is 38 Laundra Street, or Londres Street, I'm not sure how you pronounce it,
1:01.7	on impunity, pinniche in England and a Nazi in Patagonia.
1:06.5	Philip, welcome.
1:07.8	This book kind of tells two stories, doesn't it? Could you start by to set out what those two
1:13.7	stories are and what your sort of entry point to both of them is? Sure. Well, it's very nice to join you, Sam.
1:19.6	I think a starting point is 2014. I was doing research on a book that would be known as the Ratline.
1:26.4	Family Archive, the Vechter family, 10,000 pages.
1:30.5	I stumble across a three-page typewritten single-space letter to Otto Vector, former SS man,
1:38.4	from a comrade in Damascus who has escaped, basically tells him, don't come to the Arab world, head to South America.
1:46.7	Vector dies, doesn't get to South America.
1:49.0	I'm intrigued by the writer of the letter.
	...

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