A New Dawn On the Adorable Douro ; Philip Norman Heads to the Valley of Port and Finds Centuries-Old British Firms Facing a Robust Home-Grown Challenge [Scot Region]

Summary

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IN THE shrinking league-table of nations that still like and admire us British, Portugal easily comes top. You feel it there wherever you go, from Lisbon to the Algarve - that special warmth and kindness towards 'ingleses' which even our worst holiday hooligans cannot destroy.

Militarily speaking, the Portuguese are Britain's oldest allies. Two hundred years ago, their support was crucial in the Duke of Wellington's campaign to expel Napoleon Bonaparte from the Iberian peninsula, so checkmating a European dictator whom some modern historians compare to Hitler.

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A New Dawn On the Adorable Douro ; Philip Norman Heads to the Valley of Port and Finds Centuries-Old British Firms Facing a Robust Home-Grown Challenge [Scot Region]

But Portugal's special relationship with Britain dates back still further, to the 17th and 18th Centuries, when a community of English and Scottish entrepreneurs settled in the northern city of Porto and began shipping home the fortified wine named after the town.

Port seems the most quintessentially British of tipples, for ever associated with red-faced old men in Pall M...

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