Ruben Andresen Leitão was born in Lisbon on 26 May 1920. In 1926, his father, Ruben da Silva Leitão, a law graduate and former legal advisor to the newspaper A Mundial, emigrated to Brazil (where he became an antiques dealer), and he was joined a year later by his wife, Gardina Andresen. For two years the young Ruben was looked after by his grandmother, Joana, at the Quinta do Campo Alegre, Porto. In 1931 he entered the Liceu Central do Porto. In later years, as a result of health problems caused by a disastrous accident with a shotgun that had been set up as a defence against burglars, he made successive changes in school (Colégio Universal, Liceu Rodrigues de Freitas and Colégio Almeida Garrett) having failed his exams in the seventh year of schooling. In 1939, he completed liceu, and returned with his parents to Lisbon. In 1940 he matriculated in Historical and Philosophical Sciences in the Faculty of Letters, in Lisbon, but two years later he failed the course unit in Psychology (taught by Matos Romão), in his second year, which strengthened his resolve to ask for a transfer to Coimbra. There he contributed to Ala, the journal of the Juventude Universitária Católica, and to Via Latina.

In 1945 he graduated from Coimbra with a thesis entitled ‘Cartas de D. Pedro V ao Conde de Lavradio’, and in the academic year 1947–48 he obtained a scholarship from the Instituto da Alta Cultura which enabled him to study for an MA at King’s College, London, and he later became a leitor in the same institution. He also became an external examiner for the universities of Cambridge, Ceylon, and Liverpool, and a director of examinations for the Civil Service. In 1949 he organized a staging of the Farsa de Inês Pereira by a group of students at King’s College, and gave a series of talks on Britain for the Portuguese Services of the BBC, entitled ‘Peregrinações Inglesas’, and a public lecture entitled ‘A Geração de Setenta’. In October of the same year, he began a series of columns in the Diário Popular, under the heading ‘Carta de Londres’. (Between 1963 and 1974 he would again work with the same newspaper, reviewing works on Portuguese history and culture.) In 1950 he gave a public lecture at King’s College on the ‘Vencidos da Vida’, and organized a staging of the play Mar, by Miguel Torga, and in the following year of the Auto da Índia, by Gil Vicente. In 1951 he gave public lectures in the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, entitled respectively ‘Portugal Land of Poets’ and ‘As Correntes Modernas da Literatura Portuguesa’. Through these talks and theatre performances he promoted Portuguese culture in Britain (and British culture in Portugal, with his articles in the national press), and he explored ideas similar to those that would lead him to dedicate himself throughout his academic career to the study of D. Pedro V: cosmopolitanism, the connections between Portugal and Europe, the need for economic progress, and the analysis of underdevelopment (economic, social, cultural and intellectual) in Portugal.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | (Pdf)