Notable amongst his efforts to bring the cultures of the two countries closer together were his invitation, in 1963, from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to join the Consultative Commission for the Commemorations of the Fourth Centenary of William Shakespeare, and in 1973, when he joined the Commission for the Commemoration of the Sixth Centenary of the Luso-Britannic Alliance, as the representative of the Academia Portuguesa da História (to which he had been elected a member in 1959). It is worth emphasizing that many of his researches on D. Pedro V were made in Britain, so studies such as Diário de D. Pedro. Viagem a Inglaterra (1950), Cartas de D. Pedro V ao Príncipe Alberto (1958), Documentos dos Arquivos de Windsor (1958), Novos Documentos dos Arquivos de Windsor (1958), and his Inéditos de D. Pedro V dos Arquivos Reais de Windsor (1958), along with his translation into Portuguese of T. S. Eliot’s play, The Cocktail Party, published in 1953, form part of his contribution to political and cultural relations between the two countries.

In November 1950, after reading his Páginas II, Salazar deplored his surrealist prose style, remarking to his Minister for Education, Fernando Andrade Pires de Lima, that someone who did not know how to write good Portuguese could neither represent Portugal nor teach the language, and suggesting that he should be removed from his position in England. However, in June 1951 there was no objection raised to his continuing as leitor in London. In June 1952, though, after marrying Rosemary Bach (whom he would divorce in 1973) he resigned the leitorado at King’s College to return to Portugal, a step that caused him many months of anxiety as he looked in Lisbon for the busy life he had led in London, and a job.

In 1954, after just a few months teaching history in the Liceu D. João de Castro, in Lisbon, he gained entry to Brazilian culture: he was taken on by the Brazilian embassy in Lisbon, where he remained until July 1972, and started to edit the embassy’s monthly journal Brasil – Artes e Letras. In 1962 he was appointed Conservador of the Instituto de Cultura Brasileira at Lisbon University’s Faculty of Letters, a position he held until 1967. When the Brazilian President, Juscelino Kubitschek, visited Portugal, Leitão was made a Knight of Ordem Nacional do Cruzeiro do Sul.

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