Walking down Lamparilla, I was half listening for the wolf whistles accompanying Milly as she returned from school down Avenida de Belgica. By the end of the month in which it came out, Fidel Castro and his forces had entered Havana and a very different period in the country’s history began. Our Man in Havana was published over 50 years ago.
There was no sign of any vacuum cleaner shop down the quiet, sunny street but I’d not been in Havana five minutes before being transported into the world of Graham Greene. I looked around for a street sign that might help me find my accommodation.
I climbed out of the airport taxi and carried my bag past the huge cannons upended into the pavement and through the plaza beside the Convento de San Francisco de Asis.
When I visited the Havana I was fascinated to find a city that lives up to its nostalgic reputation but demands to be engaged with in the present. ‘Our Man in Havana’, Graham Greene’s classic “entertainment” poking fun at the British secret service abroad was published just before the Revolution changed Cuba forever.
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