| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | Foreigners | |||||||||||||
When he returned to Portugal, very little remained of the invaluable library he had been gathering his entire life. A massive robbery in Rome and the terrible floods of 1967, which filled his home in Loures with two metres of mud, had taken or irreparably damaged books, furniture, paintings and various valuables collected over his lifetime. However, the auction of what was left still accounts very well for his cultural interests. Among the rare books, true treasures for a bibliophile and more recent publications loom the titles of Diplomatic History and the classics of diplomacy, biographies, chronicles and memoirs, letters, and travel accounts, readings directed at research, with no major theoretical concerns, but seeking all possible information about the Portuguese Diaspora. Everywhere he went on his diplomatic duties he was a tireless devourer of archives, collecting everything he could find on the history of Portugal, always endeavouring not to miss opportunities to praise the memory of patriotic heroes. His romantic nationalism, much to the liking of the authorities of the New State, drew attention to the history of foreign policy and diplomacy, subjects that, until then, were much less studied than the issues of military history. He planned to write a great Diplomatic History of Portugal, but with the disappearance of a major part of his books, records and photocopies of documents, years of work, his courage failed him. Even so, he brought together the elements that he had released in instalments over time, and published a work entitled A diplomacia portuguesa nos séculos XVII e XVIII (Portuguese Diplomacy in the 17th and 18th Centuries, 1979), as a new edition of scattered and out-of-print works, pairing them with information he collected on his missions abroad. He left behind his memoirs Memorial D. Quixote (1976), written with tranquillity, elegance and a good dose of humour. He died in Cascais, on the 7th of December 1987. |
|||||||||||||